NIGERIAN BRITISH ACTRESS NIKKI AMUKA BIRD

Nikki Amuka-Bird was born in Benin, Nigeria where her father lives. She left there as a young child and was brought up by her mother in the UK and in Antigua. Attending boarding-school in Britain, Amuka-Bird originally hoped to be a dancer until that ambition was thwarted by injury: "I hurt my back and at that point was deciding what to do university-wise and I thought I would try for drama college because I knew you could do some dancing there but it didn't have to take over everything. It was only really when I went to drama college that that world [acting] opened up to me and I fell in love with it and became obsessed like everybody else.”She went to LAMDA and subsequently performed with the RSC for the first time.

Her theatrical credits include Welcome to Thebes (National Theatre); Twelfth Night (Bristol Old Vic, for which she won an Ian Charleson Award nomination in 2004 for playing Viola); World Music (Crucible Theatre, Sheffield, and Donmar Warehouse); Top Girls (Oxford Stage Company);A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Tempest and The Servant of Two Masters (Royal Shakespeare Company); Doubt: A Parable (Tricycle Theatre).

Her film credits include The Omen (2006 remake), Cargo, Almost Heaven as well as the screen adaptation of Alexander McCall Smith's novel The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency. On television, Amuka-Bird has appeared in Spooks, The Line of Beauty, The Last Enemy, Robin Hood,Torchwood, and a recurring role in the reimagined BBC apocalyptic series Survivors. In 2010 she appeared as Det. Supt Gaynor Jenkins in the BBC's Silent Witness.

She appeared in the BBC adaptation of Andrea Levy's award-winning novel, Small Island, broadcast in December 2009