Delroy Lindo

Delroy George Lindo was born on 18 November 1952 at University Hospital Lewisham in Lewisham, London, England, to Jamaican parents who were part of the Windrush generation. His mother had immigrated to the United Kingdom in 1951 to work as a nurse, and his father held various jobs. Lindo grew up in Eltham and attended Woolwich Polytechnic School for Boys, where an appearance in a school nativity play first sparked his interest in acting. As a teenager, he relocated with his mother to Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and later to San Francisco. At age 24, he enrolled at the American Conservatory Theater, completing his studies there in 1979.

Lindo made his stage debut in a 1975 production of Of Mice and Men and his film debut the following year in the Canadian comedy Find the Lady. He played an army sergeant in More American Graffiti in 1979. His Broadway career began in 1982 when he stepped in as a replacement for Danny Glover in "MASTER HAROLD"…and the boys, directed by its South African author Athol Fugard. Lindo subsequently joined the national tour of the production, appearing alongside James Earl Jones. Throughout the 1980s, he worked repeatedly at the Yale Repertory Theatre under artistic director Lloyd Richards, whose guidance Lindo has cited as a significant turning point in his development as an actor. At Yale Rep, he starred as Walter Lee Younger in the 25th anniversary production of A Raisin in the Sun alongside Mary Alice, Beah Richards, and Courtney B. Vance, a production that the Roundabout Theatre Company later brought to the Kennedy Center. He also appeared in Yale Rep productions of James Yoshimura's Union Boys and Lee Blessing's Cobb.

In 1988, Richards brought Lindo into the pre-Broadway run of August Wilson's Joe Turner's Come and Gone to replace Charles Dutton, who had originated the role of Herald Loomis at Yale Rep. The performance earned Lindo a Tony Award nomination for Best Featured Actor in a Play as well as a Drama Desk Award nomination for Outstanding Actor in a Play, both in 1988. Boston Globe critic Jay Carr described him as "an ax blade, ready to fall," while New York Times critic Frank Rich called the performance "imposing and intense," writing that the play partly hinged on Lindo's transformation of Herald Loomis from a man of "opaque, defeated blackness" into a "truly luminous 'shining man.'" The production ran for approximately 105 performances before closing in June 1988.

Lindo returned to film with the 1989 science fiction picture The Salute of the Jugger, which has since developed a cult following. Though he had declined a role in Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing, Lee later cast him as West Indian Archie, a psychotic gangster, in Malcolm X in 1992. Lindo went on to appear in two additional Lee films: Crooklyn in 1994, in which he played Woody Carmichael, and Clockers in 1995, in which he played neighborhood drug dealer Rodney Little. Between 1995 and 2000, he appeared in a succession of commercially successful films, including Get Shorty, in which he played Bo Catlett, Ron Howard's Ransom, John Woo's Broken Arrow, The Cider House Rules, in which he played Arthur Rose, Gone in 60 Seconds, in which he played Detective Castlebeck, and Romeo Must Die, in which he played Isaak O'Day. He also co-starred as baseball player Satchel Paige in the 1996 television film Soul of the Game and received a Satellite Award for his portrayal of African-American Arctic explorer Matthew Henson in the 1998 television film Glory & Honor, directed by Kevin Hooks. The film depicted Henson's nearly two-decade partnership with Commander Robert Peary and their 1909 effort to reach the Geographic North Pole. In 1999, Lindo starred as Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas in the television film Strange Justice, directed by Ernest Dickerson and based on the book by Jane Mayer and Jill Abramson chronicling the 1991 confirmation hearings and Anita Hill. That film received a Peabody Award. Lindo also voiced the character Beta in Pixar's animated film Up in 2009.

In the early 2000s, Lindo appeared in a series of films including The Last Castle, The Core, Domino, and Sahara. He also starred in the British independent film Wondrous Oblivion in 2003, playing Dennis Samuels, the father of a Jamaican immigrant family in 1950s London, a role he has said he took in honor of his own parents' similar experience. He was set to appear in the Broadway premiere of August Wilson's Gem of the Ocean in 2004 but departed the production during pre-Broadway rehearsals at the Huntington Theatre due to what the production described as creative differences, with Anthony Chisholm replacing him in the role. In 2006, Lindo appeared in the NBC drama Kidnapped, and in 2007 he directed Tanya Barfield's play The Blue Door at Berkeley Repertory Theatre in Berkeley, California. That same year he played Joe Black in the film This Christmas.

On television, Lindo starred as Alderman Ronin Gibbons in the series The Chicago Code in 2011, as Winter in the fantasy drama Believe in 2014, and as Adrian Boseman in The Good Fight from 2017 to 2021. His film work continued with The Harder They Fall in 2021, in which he played Bass Reeves. His performance as Paul, a Vietnam War veteran, in Spike Lee's Da 5 Bloods in 2020 earned him the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actor and the National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Actor. In 2025, he received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of blues player Delta Slim in Ryan Coogler's horror film Sinners.