Thandiwe Newton

Melanie Thandiwe Newton OBE (/ˈtændiːweɪ/ TAN-dee-way; born 6 November 1972), formerly credited as Thandie Newton (/ˈtændi/ TAN-dee), is a British actress. She has received various awards, including a Primetime Emmy Award, a BAFTA Award, and nominations for two Golden Globe Awards. Moreover, she was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2019 New Year Honours for services to film and charity. Having played a plethora of roles in her illustrious career, she's known for starring roles such as the title character in Beloved (1998), Nyah Nordoff-Hall in Mission: Impossible 2 (2000), Dame Vaako in The Chronicles of Riddick (2004), and Maeve Millay in Westworld (2016–2022), among others.

Born in the Westminster area of London on 6 November 1972, Thandiwe did not fit into her environment as the black atheist kid in an all-white Catholic school. She later changed her middle name to make it 'Thandie'. She studied at Downing College, Cambridge, where she obtained a degree in social anthropology in 1995. Newton's film career officially kicked off with a debut role in Flirting (1991). She delivered stunning performances which earned her the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role and a nomination for a Screen Actors Guild Award, to mention a few. In 2017, she served as a narrator for the documentary entitled Bill Cosby: Fall of an American Icon, an exposé on the sexual assault charges laid against Cosby, and received a BAFTA TV Award nomination for Best Actress for her role in BBC One's Line of Duty.