Chiwetel Ejiofor Biography

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Chiwetel Ejiofor in Universal Pictures' Inside Man - 2006

Birth Date: July 10, 1977

Birth Place: Forest Gate, London, England, UK

Chiwetel Ejiofor made his feature film debut in Amistad and was the star of the critically praised independent movie Dirty Pretty Things.

Classically trained at The London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts (LAMDA), Ejiofor earned the London Evening Standard Award and the British Independent Film Award for Best Actor in 2003 for Dirty Pretty Things. He was nominated for BIFA honors as Best Newcomer that year. He was also nominated for a Laurence Olivier Theatre Award in 2001 as Best Supporting Actor for his performance in Blue/Orange, which played at the Royal National Theatre and the Duchess Theatre in the West End.

Ejiofor recently starred in Four Brothers with Mark Wahlberg and appears in the upcoming independent films Red Dust with Hillary Swank and Slow Burn with Taye Diggs and Ray Liotta. His other films include Spike Lee's She Hate Me, Love, Actually and Woody Allen's Melinda and Melinda. He just finished filming the Spike Lee film Inside Man (out March 2006) opposite Denzel Washington.

Born in the Forest Gate section of London to Nigerian parents, Chiwetel Ejiofor started acting in school plays at the age of 13. He earned a scholarship to the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, then made his feature film debut in 1997 in Steven Spielberg's Amistad. Ejiofor would follow this performance with turns in Stephen Frears' critically acclaimed Dirty Pretty Things (where he was many critics' pick for best actor), Richard Curtis' Love Actually, Spike Lee's She Hate Me, Woody Allen's Melinda and Melinda, John Singleton's Four Brothers and Joss Whedon's Serenity. This year, Ejiofor received a nomination for the 2006 BAFTA Orange Rising Star award, which recognizes exceptional talent and outstanding performances in young actors.

Ejiofor will next been seen as the lead in Kinky Boots, which played on the opening night of the 2006 Sundance Film Festival and will be released by Miramax this spring. Shot in London, the film follows the story of a Soho transvestite (Ejiofor) who helps resuscitate an ailing North Hampton shoe factory.

He recently completed shooting Universal's Children of Men, directed by Alfonso Cuarón, in which he stars opposite Clive Owen and Julianne Moore. Based on the novel of the same title by P.D. James, Children of Men is set in the year 2027; Ejiofor plays Luke, the leader of a radical political faction, who is in a race against Faron (Owen) to control the future of the human race.

Ejiofor has also completed Tonight at Noon, in which he stars with Connie Nielsen and Lauren Ambrose, with appearances by Ethan Hawke, Nick Nolte and Radha Mitchell. The independent film is written and directed by Michael Almereyda (Hamlet). Ejiofor plays two characters in the film, which centers on several New Yorkers who experience random encounters that define their lives.

Ejiofor was voted Outstanding Newcomer at the London Evening Standard Awards in 2000 for his performance in Blue/Orange, a play about a mental patient who claims to be the son of an exiled African dictator; he was also awarded the Jack Tinker Award for Most Promising Newcomer at the 2000 London Critics Circle Theatre Awards (Drama) for the performance.

In 2001, he was nominated for a Laurence Olivier Theatre Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in Blue/Orange at the Royal National Theatre. In 2003, he was nominated for Best Actor by the Washington Area Film Critics Association and won a British Independent Film Award for Best Actor for his work in Dirty Pretty Things.

Chiwetel Ojiofor Filmography

Salt (2010) Peabody

2012 (2009) Adrian Helmsley

American Gangster (2007)

Slow Burn (2007) Ty Trippin

Talk to Me (2007) Dewey Hughes

Children of Men (2006) Luke

Inside Man (2006) Detective Bill Mitchell

Kinky Boots (2006) Lola

Four Brothers (2005) Victor Sweet

Melinda and Melinda (2005) Ellis

Serenity (2005) The Operative