A BRITISH-BORN PRINCE OF THE YORUBA PEOPLE OF NIGERIA, HE MIGHT SEEM AN UNLIKELY ACTOR TO SO CONVINCINGLY INHABIT QUINTESSENTIALLY AMERICAN FIGURES ON SCREEN. BUT THAT’S HOW GOOD ACTOR DAVID OYELOWO IS. HE’S ALREADY COMMANDED THE BIG SCREEN BRILLIANTLY PORTRAYING MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. IN SELMA AND IS NOW OWNING THE SMALLER SCREEN AS OLD WEST LAWMAN BASS REEVES IN EXECUTIVE PRODUCER TAYLOR SHERIDAN’S NEW INSTANT CLASSIC.
Oyelowo downplays the African-royalty thing — “It sounds way more impressive than it actually is. There are so many royal families in Africa,” he told The Independent — but there’s no denying he’s Hollywood royalty these days, even if he eschews the part.
As that 2013 Independent article put it — and this, on the heels of roles in Lincoln, Jack Reacher, and The Butler — “He’s descended from Nigerian royalty and was the Royal Shakespeare Company’s first Black Henry VI. Now actor David Oyelowo’s reign extends to Hollywood.” Oh, and by 2016, he’d get to tack OBE on his name, having been made an officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in his native England for services to drama.
Credit Oyelowo’s upbringing with teaching him how to operate — you might say act — in vastly different worlds. Born in 1976 in Oxford, England, to Nigerian parents, he moved with his family to Lagos, Nigeria, at age 6 and went to a military-style
