Nikki Amuka-Bird

Nikki Amuka-Bird (born 1976) is a Nigerian-born British actress of the stage, television and film. 2Early life Nikki Amuka-Bird was born in Delta, Nigeria, where her father still lives. She left there as a young child with her mother and was brought up in England and in Antigua. Attending boarding school in Britain, Amuka-Bird originally hoped to be a dancer. 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 the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA) and subsequently performed with the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC). 2Career Amuka-Bird's 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 (RSC); 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 Survivor