Biography

Chiwetel Ejiofor, biography, life and quotes, Actor, Writer, Director.

Chiwetel Ejiofor

Chiwetelu Umeadi Ejiofor popularly known as Chiwetel Ejiofor was Born on July 10, 1977, in London, England. He is an English actor, Director and a writer.

Chiwetel Ejiofor was born in London's Forest Gate, to Nigerian parents

of Igbo origin. His father, Arinze Ejiofor, was a doctor, and his mother, Obiajulu Ejiofor, was a pharmacist. His younger sister is a CNN correspondent known as Zain Asher.

In 1988, when Chiwetel Ejiofor was just 11years old, during a family trip to Nigeria for a wedding, he and his father were driving to lagos after the celebrations when their car was involved in a head-on crash with a lorry. His father was killed, leaving young Ejiofor alife but badly injured. The scars he got are still visible on his forehead. He is the second of four siblings,

Ejiofor began acting in school plays at the age of thirteen at Dulwich College and later joined the National Youth Theatre. He thereafter got into the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art but dropped out after his first year, after being cast in Steven Spielberg?s film Amistad. He played the title role in Othello at the Bloomsbury theatre in September 1995, and again at the Theatre Royal, Glasgow in 1996, when he starred opposite Rachael Stirling as Desdemona.

Chiwetel Ejiofor was a stage actor before landing a part in the 1997 film Amistad. Many moreprojects were to follow, including Dirty Pretty Things, Serenity, Kinky Boots, Talk to Me,Redbelt and Othello. Having been nominated for three Golden Globes, Ejiofor earned further critical acclaim for his role as Solomon Northup in the biopic 12 Years a Slave. The film also earned Ejiofor an Academy Award nomination for best actor in 2014.

It is worthy to note that Ejiofor developed a passion for reading and the stage at a very early age.

During the early 2000s, Ejiofor featured in lead and supporting roles in many big-screen projects that showed his versatility as an actor, taking work in a variety of genres across the moral spectrum.

Some of the highlights: He received raves as a sleep-deprived taxi driver and hotel clerk with a medical background in the Stephen Frears thriller Dirty Pretty Things (2002), acting opposite Audrey Tatou. Ejiofor was then part of the large ensemble cast of 2003's Love Actually and later played villains in two notable sci-fi films?namely Joss Whedon's Serenity (2005) and Alfonso Cuarón's Children of Men (2006). Ejiofor also collaborated with Spike Lee in the films She Hate Me (2004) and Inside Man (2006), working with co-star Denzel Washington in 2007's American Gangster as well.

Ejiofor was the lead character?singing drag diva Lola?in the 2006 film Kinky Boots, for which Ejiofor earned a Golden Globe Award nomination. (The movie eventually went on to be adapted into a Tony Award-winning musical written by Cyndi Lauper and Harvey Fierstein.) Ejiofor received additional Golden Globe nods for his part in HBO's Tsunami: The Aftermath (2006) and, three years later, for his role portraying Thabo Mbeki in the South African drama Endgame.

Ejiofor also directed the 2008 short film Slapper; the same year he appeared in the David Mamet martial arts film Redbelt and performed lead in a stage revival of Othello, winning the Laurence Olivier award. After another ensemble venture with 2012 (2009), the busy actor starred as a government agent in the Angelina Jolie spy thriller Salt (2010).

The year 2013 was a major one for Ejiofor. He reunited with Mamet to be featured in the HBO biopic Spector and, in the summer, appeared in the Joe Wright play Season of the Congo, in which Ejiofor portrayed Patrice Lumumba. The actor also starred in the Nigerian film Half of a Yellow Sun?a drama about the Biafran War based on the novel by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie?which was shown at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2013.

October saw the U.S. limited release of 12 Years a Slave, a biopic by British director Steve McQueen in which Ejiofor plays Solomon Northup, a free African-American musician who was kidnapped and forced into bondage during the 1840s. Ejiofor garnered much critical acclaim for the role, including a best actor Golden Globe nod (actor Matthew McConaughey ultimately took the Globe for his lead role in 2013's Dallas Buyers Club) and an Academy Award nomination for best actor in 2014.

Some of Chiwetel Ejiofor?s favourite quotes are:

?I loved reading when I was young. I was just completely taken by stories. And I remember taking that into English literature at school and taking that into Shakespeare and finding that opened up a whole world of self-expression to me that I didn't have access to previously.?

?Even though I loved the part [in the film Kinky Boots], there's always this possibility that it just wasn't in me; that I'd throw on the wig and say the lines and look like a moron or a fraud. But actually something different happened.?

?I think Shakespeare's so astute in his understanding of people being vulnerable, you know. And that love is so easy to corrupt. I think so many of Shakespeare's plays are about how fragile love is?how perfect and beautiful it is, but also how terrifying and easy to manipulate it is.?

?I think there's an obsession with arc, the arc of a character, the character's journey--but I don't think people change all that much in the end. I think people have a very primal, immediate nature, and they spend most of their time struggling against it or trying to reconnect with it.?

?I look at scripts really for whether they can be moving or penetrate some kind of truth. You are constantly chasing that feeling as an actor when every part of a production comes together.?

?I think I have a constant reflective relationship with [my father], but don't we all have that to some extent with people we have lost??

?I decided to fly back to Nigeria to see my grandfather ... I had to get a car out from Lagos to Enugu and I realized this would be the first time driving on the same road that killed my father; making the decision to do that and confront it was a really important part of me coming to peace with the place.?

The film 12 years a Slave really shot him to limelight. After the success of 12 Years a Slave, Ejiofor has tackled several projects. He received an Emmy Award nomination for his performance in 2014 for his work on the cable miniseries Dancing on the Edge. He played British jazz band leader Louis Lester in this 1930s musical drama.

On the big screen, Ejiofor appears in the upcoming crime drama Triple Ninewith Aaron Paul and Kate Winslet as well as the post-apocalyptic tale Z for Zachariah with Chris Pine and Margot Robbie. He has also signed on to play a convicted drug trafficker imprisoned in Bolivia, which is based on the 2003 book Marching Powder.

It was announced in June 2014 that Ejiofor would play real life drug dealer Thomas McFadden in film based on the bookMarching Powder: A True Story of Friendship, Cocaine, and South America's Strangest Jail, written by McFadden and Australian journalist Rusty Young.

In 2015, it was announced that Chiwetel Ejifor had been cast as Baron Mordo in the 2016 film Doctor Strange.

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