Noma Dumezweni is a Laurence Olivier Award

Laurence Olivier Awards

The Laurence Olivier Award is presented annually by the Society of London Theatre to recognise excellence in professional theatre. Named after the renowned British actor Laurence Olivier, they are given for West End shows and other productions staged in London...

-winning English actress based in London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

.

Personal life

Born in Swaziland

Swaziland

Swaziland, officially the Kingdom of Swaziland , and sometimes called Ngwane or Swatini, is a landlocked country in Southern Africa, bordered to the north, south and west by South Africa, and to the east by Mozambique...

, of South African parents, Dumenzweni came to England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 with her family as a child, first living in Suffolk

Suffolk

Suffolk is a non-metropolitan county of historic origin in East Anglia, England. It has borders with Norfolk to the north, Cambridgeshire to the west and Essex to the south. The North Sea lies to the east...

, where she was educated, before moving to London.

Theatre

Dumezweni's work in theatre includes: President of an Empty Room and The Hour We Knew Nothing Of Each Other

The Hour We Knew Nothing Of Each Other

The Hour We Knew Nothing Of Each Other is a one-act play without words written by Peter Handke. The play has 450 characters and focuses on a day in the life of an unspecified town square...

at the National Theatre

Royal National Theatre

The Royal National Theatre in London is one of the United Kingdom's two most prominent publicly funded theatre companies, alongside the Royal Shakespeare Company...

, London; Breakfast with Mugabe, Antony and Cleopatra

Antony and Cleopatra

Antony and Cleopatra is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written sometime between 1603 and 1607. It was first printed in the First Folio of 1623. The plot is based on Thomas North's translation of Plutarch's Lives and follows the relationship between Cleopatra and Mark Antony...

and Much Ado About Nothing

Much Ado About Nothing

Much Ado About Nothing is a comedy written by William Shakespeare about two pairs of lovers, Benedick and Beatrice, and Claudio and Hero....

for the RSC

Royal Shakespeare Company

The Royal Shakespeare Company is a major British theatre company, based in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England. The company employs 700 staff and produces around 20 productions a year from its home in Stratford-upon-Avon and plays regularly in London, Newcastle-upon-Tyne and on tour across...

; A Raisin in the Sun

A Raisin in the Sun

A Raisin in the Sun is a play by Lorraine Hansberry that debuted on Broadway in 1959. The title comes from the poem "Harlem" by Langston Hughes...

for the Young Vic at the Lyric Hammersmith

Lyric Hammersmith

The Lyric Theatre, also known as the Lyric Hammersmith, is a theatre on King Street, in the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham, which takes pride in its original, "groundbreaking" productions....

, London (for which she won her Laurence Olivier Award for Best Performance in a Supporting Role); A Midsummer Night's Dream

A Midsummer Night's Dream

A Midsummer Night's Dream is a play that was written by William Shakespeare. It is believed to have been written between 1590 and 1596. It portrays the events surrounding the marriage of the Duke of Athens, Theseus, and the Queen of the Amazons, Hippolyta...

, The Master and Margarita

The Master and Margarita

The Master and Margarita is a novel by Mikhail Bulgakov, woven around the premise of a visit by the Devil to the fervently atheistic Soviet Union. Many critics consider the book to be one of the greatest novels of the 20th century, and one of the foremost Soviet satires, directed against a...

, Nathan the Wise and The Coffee House at Chichester Festival Theatre

Chichester Festival Theatre

Chichester Festival Theatre, located in Chichester, England, was designed by Philip Powell and Hidalgo Moya, and opened by its founder Leslie Evershed-Martin in 1962. Subsequently the smaller and more intimate Minerva Theatre was built nearby in 1989....

, 6 Characters Searching for an Author at the Gielgud Theatre

Gielgud Theatre

The Gielgud Theatre is a West End theatre, located on Shaftesbury Avenue in the City of Westminster, London, at the corner of Rupert Street. The house currently has 889 seats on three levels.-History:...

 and The Bogus Woman at the Traverse

Traverse Theatre

The Traverse Theatre is a theatre in Edinburgh, Scotland. It was founded in 1963.The Traverse Theatre commissions and develops new plays or adaptations from contemporary playwrights. It also presents a large number of productions from visiting companies from across the UK. These include new plays,...

 and the Bush

Bush Theatre

The Bush Theatre is based in Shepherd's Bush, in the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham. It was established in 1972 above The Bush public house by Brian McDermott, and has since become one of the most celebrated new writing theatres in the world. An intimate venue renowned for its close-up...

. In spring of 2009 she is appearing in the RSC's "A Winter's Tale".

Film and Television

Year	Title	Format	Role	Notes
2001	Macbeth Macbeth The Tragedy of Macbeth is a play by William Shakespeare about a regicide and its aftermath. It is Shakespeare's shortest tragedy and is believed to have been written sometime between 1603 and 1607...	TV Film	Witch
2002	Dirty Pretty Things Dirty Pretty Things (film) Dirty Pretty Things is a 2002 film directed by Stephen Frears and written by Steven Knight, a drama about two illegal immigrants in London...	Film	Celia
2003	Holby City Holby City Holby City, stylised as Holby Ci+y, is a British medical drama television series that airs weekly on BBC One.The series was created by Tony McHale and Mal Young as a spin-off from the established BBC medical drama Casualty, and premiered on 12 January 1999...	TV Series	Hannah Keelan	Episode: "The One You Love: Part 2"
2005	Silent Witness Silent Witness Silent Witness is a BBC crime thriller series focusing on a team of forensic pathology experts and their investigations into various crimes. First broadcast in February 1996, the series is still airing to the present day, with a fifteenth series expected to air in January 2012. The series was...	TV Series	DS Erin Jacobs	Episodes: "Ghosts: Part 1" and "Ghosts: Part 2"
	The Bill The Bill The Bill is a police procedural television series that ran from October 1984 to August 2010. It focused on the lives and work of one shift of police officers, rather than on any particular aspect of police work...	TV Series	Building Society Manager	Episode: 403
2006	Mysterious Creatures	TV Film	Chanelle Pinkerton
	Holby City	TV Series	Hesta Mukaka	Episode: "Fly Me to the Moon"
	After Thomas After Thomas After Thomas was a one-off drama, first broadcast in the United Kingdom on 26 December 2006, on ITV.It stars Keeley Hawes , Ben Miles , Andrew Byrne, Sheila Hancock and Duncan Preston.- Plot :Kyle Graham is scared...	TV Film	Paula Murray
2006-8	Little Miss Jocelyn Little Miss Jocelyn Little Miss Jocelyn is a British TV sketch comedy written by and starring Jocelyn Jee Esien. The show is made up of studio sketches and hidden camera footage in which unsuspecting members of the public become part of a sketch.-History:...	TV Series		Episodes: Series 1, Episode 5 and Series 2, Episode 2
2007	Shameless Shameless Shameless is a British television drama series set in Manchester on the fictional Chatsworth council estate. Produced by Company Pictures for Channel 4, the first seven-episode series aired weekly on Tuesday nights at 10pm from 13 January 2004...	TV Series	Mrs. Newman	Episode: Series 4, Episode 5
	The Grey Man	TV Film	Sergeant
	Fallen Angel	TV Series	Carla
	New Tricks	TV Series	Sophie Oyekambi	Episode: "Casualty"
	EastEnders EastEnders EastEnders is a British television soap opera, first broadcast in the United Kingdom on BBC One on 19 February 1985 and continuing to today. EastEnders storylines examine the domestic and professional lives of the people who live and work in the fictional London Borough of Walford in the East End...	TV Series	D.C. Wright	Episode: 17 August 2007
2008	The Last Enemy The Last Enemy (TV series) The Last Enemy is a BBC TV series starring Benedict Cumberbatch and featuring Robert Carlyle and Max Beesley which first aired on 17 February 2008.-Plot:...	TV Series	Valerie	Episode: Series 1, Episode 1
	The Colour of Magic The Colour of Magic (TV film) The Colour of Magic is a two-part television adaptation of the bestselling novels The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic by Terry Pratchett. The fantasy film was produced for Sky One by The Mob, a small British studio, starring David Jason, Sean Astin, Tim Curry and Christopher Lee as the...	TV Film	Marchessa
	Fallout	TV Film	Joyce Abena
2008-9	Doctor Who Doctor Who Doctor Who is a British science fiction television programme produced by the BBC. The programme depicts the adventures of a time-travelling humanoid alien known as the Doctor who explores the universe in a sentient time machine called the TARDIS that flies through time and space, whose exterior...	TV Series	Captain Erisa Magambo	Episodes: "Turn Left Turn Left (Doctor Who) "Turn Left" is the eleventh episode of the fourth series of British science fiction television series Doctor Who. It was written by showrunner Russell T Davies and broadcast on BBC One on 21 June 2008.... " and "Planet of the Dead Planet of the Dead "Planet of the Dead" is the first 2009 special of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who that was simultaneously broadcast on BBC One and BBC HD on 11 April 2009. It was the second of five special episodes broadcast throughout 2009 and early 2010, which served as lead actor... "

Radio

In radio, she has appeared in Jambula Tree, Seven Wonders of the Divided World, From Fact to Fiction, From Freedom to the Future, Handprint, Jane's Story, Sagila, Shylock, The Farming of Bones

The Farming of Bones

-Plot introduction:The Farming of Bones begins with narrator Amabelle Desir speaking of her lover, Sebastian Onius. These two Haitians are later separated following the beginning of the 1937 massacre...

, The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency, The Seven Ages of Car, The Bogus Woman and Breakfast with Mugabe.

External links