CV: David Oyelowo

Currently starring as Javert in Les Miserables (9pm, BBC1), David has enjoyed great success as an actor in both Britain and his adopted home of America…

Born in Oxford in 1976, David spent his early years in London and, between the ages of six and 14, he lived in Nigeria, where his parents are from – and where his grandfather was the king of a region in the west of the country. He trained as an actor at drama school Lamda.

His stage break came playing Henry VI in the RSC’s landmark 2001 season.

In a coup of colour-blind casting, he

became the first black actor to play an

English king in a major Shakespeare production. His big break on screen was in the espionage saga Spooks. He joined the show for its first series

in 2002, as agent Danny Hunter, who made a heroic exit at the end of the third series, in 2004. In America, David first worked with writerdirector Ava DuVernay in 2012, in Middle Of Nowhere; she later cast him in Selma (2014) as Martin Luther King Jr. He has worked twice with another acclaimed AfricanAmerican film-maker, Lee Daniels, in

The Paperboy and The Butler. He

reunited with DuVernay for a third

time last year, lending his voice to

sci-fi adventure A Wrinkle In Time. Known for taking on meaty dramatic roles, David recently branched out – very successfully – into comedy in last year’s Gringo. He has four children with his wife, Jessica, also an actor, whom he married in 1998. They live in California.