Chiwetel Ejiofor

At 46 years old, Chiwetel Ejiofor has this physical status:

Career

In the 1996 film Deadly Voyage, Ejiofor made his film debut. He went on to become a stage actor in London. As interpreter Ensign James Covey, he praised Djimon Hounsou's Cinque in Steven Spielberg's Amistad. He appeared in the British film G:MT – Greenwich Mean Time in 1999. He appeared in Blue/Orange at the Royal National Theatre (Cottesloe stage) and later at the Duchess Theatre in 2000. He was nominated for the Ian Charleson Award last year in William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. In 2000, Ejiofor was named Most Promising Newcomer at the Critics' Circle Theatre Awards. Ejiofor's appearance in Blue/Orange received the London Evening Standard Theatre Award for Outstanding Newcomer in 2000 and a nomination for Best Supporting Actor in 2001.

In Jeremy Cameron's It Was a Mistake (2000), Ejiofor had his first film role in playing Nicky Burkett. He appeared in Dirty Pretty Things, for which he received the British Independent Film Award for best actor. He appeared in a BBC adaptation of Chaucer's The Knight's Tale in the following year, and also appeared on the BBC series Trust. He appeared in the lead role of Augustus in Rita Dove's poetic drama "The Darker Face of the Earth" on radio in 2003, marking the International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition. In Red Dust (2004), he appeared alongside Hilary Swank, portraying South African politician Alex Mpondo.

He appeared in Peter Spafford's radio play I Was a Stranger, and in Andrew Rissik's film Dionysus, based on Euripides' Bacchae, he appeared alongside Paul Scofield's Cadmus and Diana Rigg's Agave. He also received acclaim for his role as a complex antagonist in the film Serenity (2005). In the film Children of Men (2006), Ejiofor played a pioneer. He received a Golden Globe Award and a British Independent Film Award nomination for his singing and acting role in Kinky Boots. In 2006, he was also nominated for the BAFTA Orange Rising Star Award, which honors emerging British film talent. In 2007, Ejiofor's appearance in Tsunami: The Aftermath received a Golden Globe Award nomination for Best Actor – Miniseries or Television Film.

In 2007, Ejiofor starred opposite Don Cheadle in Talk to Me, a film based on Ralph "Petey" Greene's true life (played by Cheadle), an African-American radio celebrity in the 1960s and 1970s. He appeared on stage in The Seagull from 18 January to 17 March 2007, then as Othello at the Donmar Warehouse later this year, with Kelly Reilly as Desdemona and Ewan McGregor as Iago. The production received largely praised feedback, with Ejiofor especially lauded. "Chiwetel Ejiofor conducts one of Othello's most memorable performances in recent years." He received the Laurence Olivier Award for his performance. He also narrated Partition: The Day India Burned (2007), which was based on Partition of India, the Partition of India. Mike Terry starred in the 2008 cult film Redbelt, which attracted critical praise.

In the 2008 Birthday Honours, Ejiofor was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE). He made his directorial debut in the short film Slapper, which he also wrote about, inspired by editor/director Yusuf Pirhasan's theory. In the film 2012 (2009), Ejiofor appeared alongside John Cusack. The film earned over $700 million and is one of the top-grossing films of all time, placing 5th of the top films of 2009. Darryl Peabody, a CIA officer in Salt (2010), and the Golden Globe Award-nominated leading role of band creator Louis Lester on BBC Two's Dancing on the Edge (2013), which appeared on Starz in the United States.

On casting, director Steve McQueen said:

Ejiofor said he briefly considered playing Northup at the Toronto International Film Festival. "You wait for a good script to come through the door." You're hassling your agent and all that, but then it's revealed and your first reaction astounds you. "Can I do this?" is your first reaction. He accepted the position about 24 hours later. Ejiofor learned to play the violin, gathered slave stories, maintained a slave's edge up hairstyle, and partake in some of the physical labor that Northup did not like picking cotton. Ejiofor also observed the co-worker Michael Fassbender, who worked with McQueen on Hunger (2008) and Shame (2011), who hadn't worked with McQueen before. "I'm really grateful to bring the film to his families and see them be so proud of it" on Northup. Ejiofor felt a duty, even though he wasn't American, to get the Solomon Northup story as accurate as he could," he said.

A Slave has received widespread attention, with several commentators blaming Ejiofor's performance and naming him as the most likely Academy Award nominee for Best Actor. "It's Chiwetel Ejiofor's astonishing appearance that holds the film together, and it allows us to watch it without blinking," Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly says. He plays Solomon with a strong inner strength, but he never soft-pedals Solomon's daily life." "Ejiofor has had some notable performances in the past (Dirty Pretty Things, Serenity, Talk to Me), but this is by far his most significant role to date," Christopher Orr at The Atlantic says. He is the point of stillness and decency around which spin the film's madnesses. He is a tyrant, watchful man who sacrificed himself just enough to survive." "Ejiofor is a fantastic character in a demanding role who has been put through the ringer physically, mentally, and emotionally," Todd McCarthy wrote in his "The Hollywood Reporter review. On January 16, 2014, Ejiofor was officially nominated for Best Actor for the 86th Academy Awards.

As of September 2013, Ejiofor was supposed to play Patrice Lumumba in a film version of Aimé Césaire's A Season in the Congo, a role in which he had appeared onstage at the Young Vic. Joe Wright, the playwright, would also direct the film.

Ejiofor appeared in the Nigerian film Half of a Yellow Sun with Thandiwe Newton in 2014.

In June 2014, it was announced that Ejiofor would play real-life drug dealer Thomas McFadden in film based on the book "Marching Powder: A True Story of Friendship, Cocaine," and South America's Strangest Jail, written by McFadden and Australian journalist Rusty Young. In 2016, Ejiofor co-starred with his buddy Benedict Cumberbatch and played Baron Mordo in the Marvel film Doctor Strange. He would appear in the forthcoming film Mary Magdalene, written by Helen Edmundson and directed by Garth Davis. On November 1, 2017, he was officially selected for the role of Scar in the computer animated remake The Lion King (2019) directed by Jon Favreau. Scarlett, a 1994 animated film starring Jeremy Irons, was more "psychologically possessed" and "brutalized" than in the original. "Especially with Scar, whether it's a vocal quality that allows for a certain sense of wellbeing or a certain aggression," Ejiofor said, "you're going to know that at the end of it, you're playing someone who has the ability to turn it on its head in a split second with bizarre acts of violence, which can completely change the temperature of a scene." "[Scar and Mufasa's] friendship is irreversibly damaged and brutalized by Scar's way of thinking," he continued. He has this disorder of his own body and his own desire." "He" is just a fantastic actor, who gives us a little of the mid-Atlantic cadence and a new interpretation of the role, according to Favreau. He brings the feeling of a Shakespearean villain to bear because of his work as an actor. It's amazing to see someone as mature and veteran as Chiwetel; this man breathes such life into this tale." The Elephant Queen, directed by Ejiofor, was a 2019 documentary film directed by Ejiofor.

In 2019, Ejiofor made his film directorial debut with The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, a book by William Kamkwamba about a boy who built a wind-powered water pump in Malawi. In 2022, Ejiofor returned to Mordo in the Multiverse of Madness's sequel film Doctor Strange.

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