Melanie Thandiwe Newton OBE (/ˈtændiweɪ/ TAN-dee-way; born 6 November 1972), formerly credited as Thandie Newton ( /ˈtændi/ TAN-dee), is a British actress.
Newton is known for starring roles such as the title character in Beloved (1998), Nyah Nordoff-Hall in Mission: Impossible 2 (2000), Tiffany in Shade (2003), Dame Vaako in The Chronicles of Riddick (2004), Christine in Crash (2004), Linda in The Pursuit of Happyness (2006), Libby in Run Fatboy Run (2007), Stella in RockNRolla (2008), Condoleezza Rice in W. (2008), Laura Wilson in 2012 (2009), Tangie Adrose in For Colored Girls (2010), Maeve Millay in Westworld (2016–2022), Roz Huntley in Line of Duty (2017), and Val in Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018).
Newton has received various awards, including an Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series, a BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role, and two Critics' Choice Awards, in addition to nominations for two Golden Globe Awards, a Saturn Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, and a British Academy Television Award for Best Actress. She was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2019 New Year Honours for services to film and charity.
Early life
Melanie Thandiwe Newton was born in the Westminster area of London on 6 November 1972, the daughter of Zimbabwean mother Nyasha Jombe and English father Nick Newton. Her mother was a member of a Shona chieftaincy family, while her father worked as a laboratory technician and artist. Her parents lived in Zambia, and she was born while they were back in England to visit relatives; they then returned to Zambia, where her younger brother was born. This has led her birthplace to be incorrectly reported as Zambia in some sources, but she has confirmed in interviews that she was born in Westminster. "Thandiwe" is a name of Nguni origin and means "beloved".
When Newton was three years old, she returned with her family to England, where they settled in Penzance so her father could help run his family's antique business. She attended St Mary's Roman Catholic Primary School. She later said of her upbringing, "From about the age of five, I was aware that I didn't fit. I was the black atheist kid in the all-white Catholic school run by nuns. I was an anomaly." She began dropping the letter "w" from her first name, making it "Thandie" (pronounced /ˈtændi/ TAN-dee). She studied dance at the Tring Park School for the Performing Arts, then studied at Downing College, Cambridge, where she obtained a degree in social anthropology in 1995.
