A multiple award-winning actress including a BAFTA Award, Thandie Newton is a TV and film actress from English who is best remembered for playing the role of Linda in the critically acclaimed The Pursuit of Happyness and Nyah Nordoff-Hall in Mission: Impossible 2. The actress who was raised in London, Penzance and Cornwall, had a very awkward childhood; at a TED conference, she said that she was very much aware that she did not fit among the all-white kids in a Catholic school, which was run by the nuns.
A graduate in social anthropology, Newton started her career in the entertainment business with a small role in Flirting, an Australian coming of age comedy-drama film in 1991. Post her maiden appearance on the big screen, she subsequently starred in films like Interview with the Vampire (1994), The Leading Man (1996) and Gridlock'd (1997), before eventually gaining wide recognition and fame with her role as Barbara Cook in the 1998 film Besieged. Her brilliant performance in the film earned Newton her maiden award nomination at the Black Reel Award for Best Actress.
Newton followed the success of Besieged with stellar performances in Beloved (1998), and Mission: Impossible 2, which earned her many award nominations. The biggest success of her career, however, came in 2004 when she won Black Reel Award for Best Ensemble, London Film Critics Circle Award for British Supporting Actress of the Year for his brilliant role in Crash. Her other notable film credits include The Pursuit of Happyness (2006), How to Lose Friends & Alienate People (2008), For Colored Girls (2010), Half of a Yellow Sun and Gringo (2018) and Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018).
Apart from films, Newton has also worked extensively in the TV industry and has been quite successful at it too. Her maiden appearance on the small screen was with the TV film Pirate Prince in 1991. She made her debut in a TV series with ER (2003-09) where she played the role of Makemba Likasu. Newton won the Critics' Choice Television Award for Best Supporting Actress in a Drama Series for her role in Westworld (2016).