Danielle Deadwyler (born May 3, 1982) is an American actress. She began her career appearing on Atlanta stage, including in the 2009 production of For Colored Girls, and made her screen debut in the 2012 drama film A Cross to Bear. Deadwyler appeared in the primetime series The Haves and the Have Nots (2015–2017), the series P-Valley (2020), the miniseries Station Eleven (2021–2022), and the miniseries From Scratch (2022).
Deadwyler garnered critical acclaim for starring in the western film The Harder They Fall (2021) and the biopic Till (2022). Her portrayal of Mamie Till in the latter earned her many accolades, garnering the Gotham Independent Film Award for Outstanding Lead Performance and earning BAFTA Award, Critics' Choice Movie Award and Screen Actors Guild Award nominations.
Early life
Deadwyler was born in Atlanta, Georgia and raised in Southwest Atlanta. She is the daughter of a legal secretary and a railroad supervisor and has three siblings. Deadwyler graduated from Grady High School (now Midtown High School) and then Spelman College. She received a Master's of Arts in American Studies from Columbia University and another master’s degree in creative writing at Ashland University in 2017.