Thandie Newton mini-bio: Newton was born to a white English father and a black Zimbabwean mother. According to Newton, her mother is a Zimbabwean Shona Princess. She was raised in Zambia and Penzance, Cornwall, England, and educated at Downing College, University of Cambridge. Newton made her film debut in Flirting (1991). She had a small role as the Creole slave Yvette in Interview with the Vampire with Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt. She gained international recognition opposite Nick Nolte in the Merchant-Ivory production of Jefferson in Paris as Sally Hemmings, which led to her being cast in Jonathan Demme's Beloved (1998), in which she played the title character and costarred with Danny Glover and Oprah Winfrey. She played the female lead Nyah Hall in the film Mission: Impossible II with Tom Cruise. When this film went over schedule, she had to pull out of the film Charlie's Angels, and her character ultimately went to Lucy Liu.
Fine-boned and soft-spoken, Thandie Newton displays a deceptive fragility that is betrayed by the strong, resilient characters she often portrays. The actress was born in Zambia in 1972 to a Zimbabwean mother and British father who moved their family to London when Newton was four. It was while a student at a private school in North London that the actress met Australian director John Duigan, who was casting his coming-of-age tale Flirting (1991). Newton won a leading role as the smart, worldly girlfriend of the film's protagonist and starred alongside a then relatively unknown Nicole Kidman.Her next film of any significance was 1994's Interview With the Vampire, in which she had a minor role which, ironically enough, called for her to be killed off by Kidman's husband, Tom Cruise. The same year Newton acted as part of an ensemble cast in Loaded, a fairly obscure film directed by Anna Campion, sister of The Piano's Jane. She was then reunited with Flirting director Duigan in 1995 for The Journey of August King, a little-seen feature in which she starred with Jason Patric. Greater recognition came in the form of the same year's Jefferson in Paris, a critically maligned but impressively cast film in which Newton played Sally Hemings, slave and lover of Nick Nolte's Thomas Jefferson. Acting alongside individuals such as Nolte, James Earl Jones, and Gwyneth Paltrow certainly did little to hurt Newton's reputation, and the next year she had yet another starring role, this time opposite Jon Bon Jovi in her third film with director Duigan, The Leading Man. Despite her leading status, Newton still hovered on the border of relative obscurity, something that finally began to change with three 1998 films in which she had major roles. The first was Vondie Curtis Hall's Gridlock'd, a film that won Newton raves for her turn as a heroine-addicted jazz singer opposite Tim Roth and Tupac Shakur. Beloved, Newton's second film that year, won her further recognition, both for her mere presence in the highly-anticipated adaptation of Toni Morrison's novel, and for her portrayal of the mysterious, ghostly girl who torments Oprah Winfrey's Sethe. Finally, it was with her third film of 1998, Besieged, that Newton graduated from relative obscurity to the rank of Hollywood Up and Comer. The film, which was directed by Bernardo Bertolucci and co-starred David Thewlis, received stellar reviews, many of which singled out Newton's performance for particular praise. This, along with a coveted spot on the April 1999 cover of Vanity Fair's annual Hollywood Issue, further cemented the actress' well-deserved status as one of the industry's latest Forces to Be Reckoned With. In 2000, Newton further ascended the ranks of recognition when she starred opposite former Interview With the Vampire co-star Tom Cruise in John Woo's Mission: Impossible II; although the film received mixed reviews, Newton earned almost unanimous approval from critics who praised her strong, dynamic performance.
Newton recently played Kem, the love interest of Dr. John Carter on the American television series ER. She also appeared in The Chronicles of Riddick and Crash. Her performance in Crash, as an upper-class light-skinned black woman married to an equally upper-class light-skinned black man and forced to assess her attitudes after being molested by a white police officer (played by Matt Dillon), was honoured with a BAFTA award for Best Supporting Actress in 2006. Crash also won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 2005. Newton married English writer and director Ol Parker in 1998. The couple have two daughters: Ripley, born in 2000, and Nico, born in 2004.
isma1981posted 454 days ago
