Kwame Kwei-Armah

His father, Eric, moved to Britain in 1960, at a time when there was high unemployment in Grenada, and found work in London at the local Quaker Oats factory.

When he was one year old, Kwei-Armah's family moved to a two-storey terraced house in Southall where they let two rooms to help to pay for the mortgage.

Kwei-Armah started at his first primary school as a five-year-old, and after a teacher disciplined him by kicking him in the back, his mother took on three jobs to pay for him and his two siblings to go to a private stage school, the Barbara Speake Stage School in London – working as a child minder, as a night nurse at Hillingdon Hospital, and doing some hairdressing work.

He also attended The Salvation Army, and received musical training there.

At the age of about 35, his mother had a stroke leading to left-sided weakness, from which she slowly recovered.

Kwei-Armah's mother moved to Britain in 1962.

Kwame Kwei-Armah (born Ian Roberts; 24 March 1967 in Hillingdon, London) is a British actor, playwright, director and broadcaster.

Kwei-Armah grew up in West London's Southall in the 1970s at a time when Asian families were moving in and white families were moving out, and he perceived animosity from the Asian community towards the Afro-Caribbean community.

One day, at the time of the April 1979 Southall riots, his father came home after the evening work-shift and took him out to see the Hambrough Tavern on fire.

Kwei-Armah saw a police van arrive, and when the police started to charge at the crowd using batons and shields he ran home frightened.

He claims to have seen from the upstairs front room the police chasing black and Asian boys along the street followed by skinheads, who also had batons and shields, chasing behind the police.

The event shocked him making him feel that he was living in an alien environment, and reinforced his resolve to do well in his education.

He later wrote about the event in his first play, A Bitter Herb.

(In 1990, Ray Harrison Graham's Fringe First award-winning play Gary played at the Arts Theatre.) Kwei-Armah's award-winning piece Elmina's Kitchen transferred to the Garrick Theatre in 2005.

Kwei-Armah appeared in the original London production of Elegies for Angels, Punks and Raging Queens, which played at the Criterion Theatre in 1993.

He is best known for playing paramedic Finlay Newton in the BBC medical drama Casualty from 1999 until 2004.

Kwei-Armah first achieved fame playing the paramedic Finlay Newton in the BBC drama series Casualty from 1999 to 2004.

His other television credits include appearances in episodes of Casualty′s sister series Holby City, the BBC's Afternoon Play, Between the Lines and The Bill.

In 2003 he appeared as a contestant on the Reality TV programme Comic Relief does Fame Academy and subsequently released an album, Kwame.

In 2005 he became the second black Briton to have a play staged in the West End of London.

Kwei-Armah was seen in the episode "Who Shot the Sheriff?" in the 2006 BBC One revival of Robin Hood, as an ambitious town planner in Lewis, and in the feature film Fade to Black opposite Danny Huston, Christopher Walken and Diego Luna.

He is also a regular on TheatreVoice.

In 2007, he starred as E. R. Braithwaite in the two-part BBC Radio 4 adaptation of Braithwaite's novel To Sir, with Love.

He presented the 15 February 2009 episode of the Channel 4 documentary Christianity: A History, during which he spoke about his own Christian faith and African identity, in addition to the African origins of Christianity in Ethiopia.

In the summer of 2009, he presented the Channel 4 series On Tour with the Queen, which looked at the impact of Queen Elizabeth II's tour of the Commonwealth that took place between November 1953 and May 1954.

He also met with King George Tupou V of Tonga, Sitiveni Rabuka and Queen Elizabeth II herself on the trip.

In March 2010, Kwei-Armah appeared in the penultimate and final episodes of the fourth series of Skins.

For a number of years Kwei-Armah has appeared as a panellist on the arts discussion show Newsnight Review.

He also appeared on Question Time on two occasions and reported for The Culture Show.

Kwei-Armah was chancellor of the University of the Arts from 2011 to 2015.

He served as the artistic director of Baltimore's Center Stage Theater in the United States from 2011 to 2018.

Kwei-Armah was born at Hillingdon Hospital in West London, and named Ian Roberts.

He changed his name when he was aged 19 after tracing his family history (in which he first became interested as a child after watching the TV series Roots), through the slave trade back to his ancestral African roots in Ghana, descendant of Coromantins.

His parents were born in Grenada, then a British colony.

His maternal grandmother moved to Trinidad, where she died, leaving her five children including Kwei-Armah's mother as orphans in Grenada.

He was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2012 Birthday Honours for services to drama.

He was artistic director of the Young Vic theatre in London, succeeding David Lan, announcing his departure in February 2024.

Brought up in Southall, West London, he changed his name at the age of 19, after tracing his family history, through the slave trade back to his ancestral African roots in Ghana.

His parents were born in Grenada.

He has four children.