African British Actors You Should Know

As part of our African British series, we’ve compiled five African British actors you should know and some of their best works:

 

This Black History Month, there’s a lot you can do to support the Black community. One way is to support Black-focused media. So, here are our favourite up and coming African British Actors of the moment.

Abubakar Salim

Abubakar Salim is an actor and video game voice actor of Kenyan descent who provided his voice and motion capture for Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed Origins. This earned him a BAFTA nomination. He also acted as Father in the streaming series Raised by Wolves.

Salim is also the founder and CEO of Silver Rain Games and is motivated to pursue a career in video game development and create his own studio.

Olive Gray

Olive Gray portrays Mia Stone in the children’s TV series Half-Moon Investigations. They’ve been diagnosed with ADHD and identify as non-binary and queer.

Their acting debut was in the TV series The Story of Tracy Beaker as Alice. They also appeared in an episode of the sitcom Uncle in 2017 as Anna and as series regular Commander Miranda Keyes in the Paramount+ series Halo in 2022.

David Jonsson 

David Johnson is both a filmmaker and actor. He plays the co-lead in Rye Lane for Fox Searchlight / DJ Films and the leading regular roles of Gus in HBO/BBC series, Industry. 

He also played opposite David Tennant in Patrick Marber’s Don Juan in Soho in the West End.

He can be seen in Endeavor for ITV and Series 2 of Deep State for Fox.

Gbemisola Ikumelo

Gbemisola Ikumelo is an actress, comedian and writer. She’s been awarded a TV BAFTA for her short film, Brain in Gear, in 2020. She’s also praised as the best female comedy performance by the Royal Television Society for her role in Famalam.

Ikumelo is a main cast member of the series A League of Their Own, an Amazon series about the creation of a women’s American baseball team.

She will be starring in the BBC series Black Ops and was also named for cast in a remake of the 1989 film Road House, opposite Jake Gyllenhaal, Daniela Melchior and Billy Magnussen.

John Boyega

John Boyega is a British actor known for playing Finn in the Star Wars sequel trilogy: The Force Awakens, The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker.

Boyega received the Rising Star BAFTA in 2016 and has been cast in many smaller projects, such as Detroit, Kathryn Bigelow’s film about the 1967 Detroit Riots. He also won the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor – Series, Miniseries or Television Film.

Boyega has expressed support for the Black Lives Matter movement and advocated for better inclusion by Disney in their films, even criticizing Disney for sidelining his character in the Star Wars sequel trilogy.