Gugu Mbatha-Raw

Gugulethu Sophia Mbatha-Raw, MBE (; born 21 April 1983) is an English actress. She began acting at the National Youth Music Theatre and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, and gained acclaim for her roles as Juliet in Romeo and Juliet and Octavia in Anthony and Cleopatra in 2005 at the Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester. She made her West End and Broadway debut portraying Ophelia in Hamlet in 2009. For her role as the title character in Jessica Swale's 2015 play Nell Gwynn, she received an Evening Standard Theatre Award nomination. She took early roles in television acting in Doctor Who (2007), Undercovers (2010), and Touch (2012). She earned acclaim for her leading film roles in Belle (2013), and Beyond the Lights (2014) and took supporting roles in Miss Sloane (2016), Beauty and the Beast (2017), A Wrinkle in Time (2018), Motherless Brooklyn (2019), and Misbehaviour (2020). She took leading roles in the Netflix Black Mirror episode San Junipero (2016) and the Apple TV+ drama series Surface (2022–) and acted in The Morning Show (2019), and the Disney+ series Loki (2021–2023). In 2017, Mbatha-Raw was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) by Queen Elizabeth II for services to drama. In February 2021, Mbatha-Raw was appointed a global Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).