Amandla Stenberg

Amandla Stenberg (born October 23, 1998) is an American actress and singer.

Stenberg made her acting debut with the film Colombiana (2011), and had her breakthrough playing Rue in the film The Hunger Games (2012), for which she won the Teen Choice Award for Best Chemistry.

In 2011, she appeared in her first feature film, Colombiana, as a younger version of Zoe Saldana's character.

Her breakthrough came at the age of 14, when she was cast as Rue in the 2012 film The Hunger Games.

The film was a critical and financial success, and Stenberg's performance was praised.

She received a number of awards and nominations, including a Black Reel Award nomination.

She had the recurring role of Macey Irving in the series Sleepy Hollow (2013–2014) and starred as Halle Foster in the sitcom Mr. Robinson (2015).

In 2013, she was cast in the short film Mercy playing the daughter of Robin Thicke and Paula Patton; Thicke directed the film.

Stenberg had a recurring role on season one of Sleepy Hollow from 2013 to 2014.

In 2013, Stenberg began performing on the violin and singing harmonies at Los Angeles venues with singer-songwriter Zander Hawley.

In 2014, Stenberg voiced Bia in the animated film Rio 2, which was a commercial success.

She was included in Time's list of Most Influential Teens in both 2015 and 2016, and has received several accolades, including a Teen Choice Award, an NAACP Image Award, and nominations for four Black Reel Awards and a Critics' Choice Award.

In 2015, she made her musical debut as part of the folk-rock duo Honeywater.

Her single "Let My Baby Stay" was featured in her film Everything, Everything.

Amandla Stenberg, born in Los Angeles, California, is the child of Karen Brailsford, an African-American spiritual counselor and writer, and Tom Stenberg, who is Danish.

She has Greenlandic Inuit ancestry from her paternal grandmother.

Stenberg has two older half-sisters on her father's side.

Her first name means "power" or "strength" in the South African languages of IsiXhosa and Zulu.

At age four, Stenberg started doing catalog modeling shoots for Disney.

She has appeared in commercials for clients such as Boeing and Kmart.

In 2015, Stenberg released her first EP in August 2015 as the folk-rock duo Honeywater.

In 2015, she released the video "Don't Cash Crop My Cornrows".

She played series regular Halle Foster on the short-lived series Mr. Robinson, which ran in 2015.

Stenberg co-wrote the comic book Niobe: She is Life with Sebastian Jones, which was illustrated by Ashley A. Woods, and published in November 2015.

It is the first nationally distributed comic that has a black woman as its protagonist, author, and another as the artist.

In 2016, Stenberg appeared in Beyoncé: Lemonade by Beyoncé, and won the BET YoungStars Award.

In the same year, she signed with The Society, a modelling agency.

Also in 2016, Stenberg had auditioned for the role of Shuri in the superhero film Black Panther, however, she walked away because she felt that she was not right for the role.

She garnered acclaim for her portrayals of Maddy Whittier in Everything, Everything (2017) and Starr Carter in the film The Hate U Give (2018), the latter of which won her the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Actress in a Motion Picture and earned her a nomination for the Critics' Choice Award for Best Young Actor/Actress.

In 2017, Stenberg and Sebastian Jones released Niobe: She is Death, the second part of the trilogy.

In the same year, she starred in the romantic drama Everything, Everything, directed by Stella Meghie, and co-starring Nick Robinson.

Her single, "Let My Baby Stay", was featured in the film's soundtrack.

She received praise for her performance, and earned a Teen Choice Award nomination.

Stenberg also starred as Ruby in The Darkest Minds (2018), Alana Beck in Dear Evan Hansen (2021) and Sophie in Bodies Bodies Bodies (2022).

Stenberg has been recognized for her outspoken views, particularly towards her activism for LGBT youth, which has received significant media coverage.

She told Variety magazine in 2018: "It was so exhilarating to see it fulfilled by people who should have been a part of it and who deserved it and who were right for it. I just wasn't."

The role was instead given to actress Letitia Wright.

In 2018, she played the lead role of Starr Carter in the contemporary drama The Hate U Give, based on the novel of the same name, which is about the Black Lives Matter movement.

The film was received positively, and Stenberg received critical acclaim for her performance, with the magazine Rolling Stone writing "It is impossible to over-praise Stenberg's incandescent performance, a gathering storm that grows in ferocity and feeling with each scene."

The film's director, George Tillman Jr.., wrote that "She has this ability to make you feel like you're seeing the real deal, which comes from a level of dedication to the material that's rare at any age."