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Thandiwe Adjewa "Thandie" Newton (born November 6, 1972) is a BAFTA and SAG Award-winning British actress. This classically beautiful (and Cambridge-educated) British/Zimbabwean player won critical kudos for her film debut, "Flirting" (1990), John Duigan's sequel to his acclaimed "The Year My Voice Broke" (1987). Portraying an Ugandan student at a stuffy boarding school for girls in 1960s Australia, Thandie (pronounced 'Tandie') Newton was cast as a character who aroused controversy by falling in love with the protagonist, a white student (played by Noah Taylor) from a nearby boys' school. Newton was born in Zambia, the daughter of Nyasha, a Zimbabwean health-care worker/nurse, and Nick Newton, a white English laboratory technician and artist. The name "Thandiwe" means "beloved" in Ndebele and the name "Thandie" is pronounced TAN-dee. Newton played a character named "Beloved" in the film adaptation of the Toni Morrison novel Beloved in 1998. According to Newton, her mother is a Zimbabwean Shona Princess. She was raised in Zambia and at Penzance, Cornwall, and educated at Downing College, University of Cambridge. Newton began studying dance and acting at age 11 as a student at the UK's Arts Educational School. After "Flirting,” Newton chose to concentrate on her studies, majoring in social anthropology at Cambridge. Between exams, she maintained a busy film career, appearing in "The Young Americans" (1993), a crime drama starring Harvey Keitel, and Neil Jordan's blockbuster horror outing "Interview With the Vampire" (1994), as a sultry Creole maid who becomes Brad Pitt's first victim. 1995 brought additional exposure when Newton was cast in the Merchant-Ivory production "Jefferson in Paris.” As Sally Hemmings, slave and supposed mistress of future president Thomas Jefferson (Nick Nolte), Newton brought a beguiling innocence to the role and walked away with some of the best notices in an uneven film. After completing this role, Newton returned to Cambridge to finish her degree. Newton made her film debut in Flirting (1991). This Australian movie was also a launch pad for a young Nicole Kidman, with whom she has remained friends. Her first post-graduate project was "The Journey of August King" (1995), as a runaway slave in 1815 protected by landowner Jason Patric. In Anna Campion's mystery thriller "Loaded" (filmed in 1993, released in 1996), Newton was one of a group of tragedy-prone high school grads. She reunited with director Duigan for the British-filmed "The Leading Man" (1996), in which she played an actress dallying with a movie star (Jon Bon Jovi). After a well-received turn as a drug addict in "GRIDLOCK'd" (1997), Newton landed the title role opposite Oprah Winfrey and Danny Glover in "Beloved" (1998), based on the novel by Toni Morrison, where she demonstrated her powerful dramatic acting chops in a markedly unglamorous role, and she essayed Nyah Hall, the female lead opposite Tom Cruise in "Mission: Impossible 2" (2000), where she showed off her radiant beauty to the best effect yet and exhibited a gift for playing romantic heroines. 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, Kimberly Elise, and Oprah Winfrey. She played the female lead Nyah Hall in the film Mission: Impossible II. 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. Between 2003 and 2005, Newton played Makemba "Kem" Likasu, the love interest of Dr. John Carter on the American television series ER, and in 2004 also appeared in The Chronicles of Riddick. She appeared in Crash as a wealthy black woman who, along with her husband, finds herself the target of a racist policeman (played by Matt Dillon). The policeman molests her before ultimately saving her life. Newton was honoured with a BAFTA award for Best Supporting Actress in 2006. Crash also won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 2005. In 2007, she starred alongside Eddie Murphy in the comedy Norbit as his love interest, and opposite Simon Pegg as his ex-girlfriend in the comedy Run Fat Boy Run. Ms. Newton's next role will be her portrayal of U.S. National Security Advisor-turned Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, in W., Oliver Stone's upcoming film biography of President George W. Bush, set to begin production in 2008. Newton was an introducer at Wembley Stadium on July 7, 2007 for the UK leg of Live Earth. She was due to introduce Al Gore to the concert, but he was delayed, leaving Newton to tell jokes to try and entertain the audience. Newton married English writer and director Ol Parker in 1997. The couple have two daughters: Ripley, born in 2000, and Nico, born in 2004. Her daughters were named after the character Ripley in the Alien films and the cult singer of The Velvet Underground fame. Despite two showy roles in dramatically different vehicles, however, Newton remained criminally underutilized in films. It wasn't until 2002 that Newton landed another major leading role, playing opposite of Mark Walhberg in the romantic thriller "The Truth About Charlie,” a remake of the 1963 Cary Grant-Audrey Hepburn film "Charade." Jonathan Demme, Newton's "Beloved" director, cast her in the Hepburn role as the widow of a man revealed to be a spy who gets caught up in a romantic espionage scheme. After a turn in the well-regarded indie film "Shade" (2004) as a slinky, seductive card sharp con artist playing both ends of the deck, Newton resurfaced in the sci fi/action sequel "The Chronicles of Riddick" (2004) as the sultry scheming Dame Vaako on the hunt for the fugitive Riddick (Vin Diesel). Her next effort, as a member of the top-flight acting ensemble assembled for the racially charged, multi-plot drama "Crash" (2005) was one of her best; Newton played the biracial wife of a Hollywood director who is unnecessarily manhandled by a racist cop (Matt Dillon) during a routine traffic stop, with far-reaching results. |
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