Jude Akuwudike

Jude Akuwudike is a Nigerian actor born in 1965 whose career has been based primarily in the United Kingdom, encompassing stage, screen, and voice work. Originally from Nigeria in West Africa, he relocated to Britain and attended St Augustine's College in Westgate-on-Sea, Kent, an independent Roman Catholic boarding school. In 1985 he enrolled at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, completing his training there in 1987.

Akuwudike's professional stage career began in 1988, when he took on the role of Captain Watkin Tench in Our Country's Good at the Royal Court Theatre. That same year he made his film debut, appearing as a priest in A World Apart. A leading stage role followed in 1989, when he played in The Fatherland by Murray Watts at the Bush Theatre at Riverside. His early television work included the role of Sergeant Gummer in the drama serial Virtual Murder in 1991.

Over the course of his career, Akuwudike has performed with both the Royal National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company. His National Theatre credits include Not About Nightingales, Moon on a Rainbow Shawl, and Ion. In 1998, he originated the role of the Queen, a gay prisoner, in the first British production of Tennessee Williams's Not About Nightingales, directed by Trevor Nunn at the National Theatre. That production subsequently transferred to Broadway in 1999, marking Akuwudike's appearance on Broadway. In 2002, he appeared in a Royal National Theatre production of Edmond alongside Kenneth Branagh, playing the black pimp.

From February to May 2011, Akuwudike portrayed Abel Magwitch in an English Touring Theatre production of Great Expectations, adapted by Tanika Gupta, with Lynn Farleigh appearing as Miss Havisham. On screen, he played Supreme Commander Dada Goodblood, leader of an unnamed West African nation embroiled in civil war, in Cary Joji Fukunaga's 2015 film Beasts of No Nation. In September 2018, it was announced that Akuwudike had been cast in the Cinemax television serial Gangs of London, joining Joe Cole and Sope Dirisu in the production.