Why Africa is rooting for David Oyelowo to win an Oscar

Until Lupita Nyong'o bagged the Best Supporting Actress Oscar in 2014 for her role in 12 Years a Slave, the Academy Awards were just another international awards ceremony that Africans watched. Lupita's win not only made Africa's light shine brighter, it also gave us something to truly celebrate finally, one of our own was being recognised. By Kemong Mopedi

Only our passion for the world of celebs tied us to the nominees who are mostly either American, of European descent or from another faraway part of the world.

Now in 2015, British-Nigerian actor David Oyetokunbo Oyelowo has given Africans yet another Academy moment to look forward to and someone to root for.

Oyelowo was nominated in the Best Actor in a Motion Picture category for the movie Selma in which he played Dr Martin Luther King. Selma is a movie about the events leading up to the Voting Rights Act of 1965 being passed into law. Instead of trying to be a Martin Luther King replica, Oyelowo took the role and truly made it his own and therein lies his strength as an actor.

Great storytelling, great writing is always going through the highest moment of tension, the deepest moment of conflict, and that's what this represented, Oyelowo told TIME Magazine.

Here are a few interesting facts about this 38-year-old star:

David Oyelowo (pronounced Oh-Yellow-Oh) as born to Nigerian parents (of Yoruban descent) in Oxford, England. A family man himself, he's been married for 17 years and has two sons.

Oyelowo and Lupita Nyong'o are rumoured to be the leads in the movie Americanah adapted from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's 2013 novel.

Oyelowo first received the script for Selma in 2007. The movie will be out in the US and the UK on 6 February (a South African release date is still unknown).

He fell in love with acting after a girl he'd been trying to impress invited him along to a youth theatre group back in Oxford. Then in 1999, he joined the prestigious Royal Shakespeare Company. There he played King Henry VI and was the first black actor to ever play an English queen in a big stage performance.

He moved to the US seven years ago to pursue a career in film. His first big Hollywood film that earned him some recognition was Middle Of Nowhere, The Butler and The Paperboy

He's featured in 23 films to date and the international movie scene is in agreement that 2015 will be the year in which his career will take centre stage. Other movies he appears in include: Interstellar, A Most Violent Year, Default and Captive.

SOURCES: Time, Wikipedia, Entertainment Wise, GQ, Huffington Post

http://www.destinyconnect.com

LINK:	http://www.filmcontact.com/news/nigeria/why-africa-rooting-david-oyelo...
	See more stories from filmcontact

Most recent headlines