Thandie Newton: Embracing Otherness, Embracing Myself

Actor Thandie Newton tells the story of finding her “otherness”, first, as a child growing up in two distinct cultures, and then as an actor playing with many different selves. A warm, wise talk.

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ABOUT Thandie Newton

“Filmgoers first encountered Thandie Newton in the 1991 film ‘Flirting’, a tender and skin-crawlingly honest film about young love and budding identity.

In her career since then, she’s brought that same intimate touch even to big Hollywood films (she was the moral centre of Mission: Impossible II, for instance, and the quiet heart of the head-banging 2012), while maintaining a strong sideline in art films, like the acclaimed ‘Crash’ and last year’s adaptation of Ntozake Shange’s ‘For Coloured Girls’.

Born in England, her mother is Zimbabwean, and Thandie is active in non profit work across the African continent. In 2008, she visited Mali for a campaign to bring clean water to six African nations, and as a V Day Board member, she visited the Congo earlier this year to raise awareness of the chronic issue of sexual violence toward women and girls.

The VIDEO