Celebrity Online NewsOnline Celebrity Gossip and News

Sophie Okonedo extracted from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia, distributed under the GNU Free Documentation License

Sophie Okonedo
Okonedo at the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival
Born	1968 London, England

Sophie Okonedo (born 1968)¹² is an Academy Award-nominated British actress.

Contents 1 Early life 2 Career 3 Personal life 4 Filmography 5 References 6 External links

Early life

Okonedo was born in London, England, the daughter of Joan (née Allman), a pilates teacher, and Henry Okonedo, who worked for the government.³ Her father is Nigerian and her mother, an Ashkenazi Jew, was born in the East End to Yiddish-speaking immigrants from Poland and Russia; Okonedo was raised attending synagogue.⁴⁵⁶ Her father left the family when Okonedo was five, and she was subsequently raised in poverty by her single mother.⁷

Career

Okonedo trained at Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.⁸ She has worked in a variety of media including film, television, theatre, and audio drama. She performed in Scream of the Shalka — a webcast based on the BBC television series Doctor Who — as Alison Cheney, a companion of the Doctor. As well as providing the character's voice, Okonedo's likeness was used for the animation of the character. Okonedo also played the part of Ms. Tulip Jones in the movie Stormbreaker (2006) and Nancy in the 2007 television adaptation of Oliver Twist.

She was nominated for an Academy Award in the category of Best Supporting Actress in 2004 for her role as Tatiana Rusesabagina in Hotel Rwanda and nominated for a Golden Globe for a Lead Actress in a Miniseries for her work in Tsunami: The Aftermath.

She played alongside Queen Latifah, Jennifer Hudson, Alicia Keys, and Dakota Fanning as May Boatwright, a woman who struggles with depression, in the film The Secret Life of Bees (2008).

In 2009, Okonedo is set to portray Winnie Mandela in the BBC drama Mrs Mandela.⁹

Personal life

Okonedo has a daughter, Aoife (11).¹⁰ from her previous relationship with Irish film editor Eoin Martin.¹¹ They live in Muswell Hill, London. On her heritage, Sophie says, "I feel as proud to be Jewish as I feel to be black" and calls her daughter an "Irish, Nigerian Jew".¹²

Filmography

• Young Soul Rebels (1991)
• Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls (1995)
• The Jackal (1997)
• This Year's Love (1999)
• Dirty Pretty Things (2002)
• Hotel Rwanda (2004)
• Æon Flux (2005)
• Stormbreaker (2006)
• Tsunami: The Aftermath (2006)
• Scenes of a Sexual Nature (2006)
• Martian Child (2007)
• Oliver Twist (2007)
• The Secret Life of Bees (2008)
• Skin (2008)
• Father & Son (TV Series) (2009)
• Mrs. Mandela (2009)

References

External links

• Sophie Okonedo at the Internet Movie Database
• Sophie Okonedo at the British Film Institute's Screenonline