Jeffrey Wright

Born: 1966
Where: Washington DC, USA

The award-winning actor become the first African-American to play James Bond's CIA colleague Felix Leiter in an official 007 release.

Previous actors to play the role have included Jack Lord, Rik Van Nutter, Norman Burton and David Hedison.

Wright has also impressed on stage with a Tony Award-winning performance as a gay nurse forced to take care of a homophobe dying of AIDs in Angels in America.

He was raised by his customs lawyer mother and aunt after his father died when he was just one year old.

The family lived in a black neighbourhood but he commuted across town to the elite private St Albans School for Boys.

He subsequently attended Amherst College, receiving a bachelor's degree in political science and planned to continue on to law school but switched to acting.

Early appearances included off-Broadway runs and he landed his first major film role in 1990 as an attorney in the thriller Presumed Innocent, starring Harrison Ford.

In 1991, Wright joined John Houseman's national touring repertory company The Acting Company with productions of A Midsummer Night's Dream and Athol Fugard's Blood Knot.

He continued with his stage performances and in 1994 was cast as gay nurse Norman 'Belize' Arriaga in Tony Kushner's award-winning play Angels in America.

In 1996, Wright portrayed doomed New York painter Jean-Michel Basquiat in the film Basquiat alongside Gary Oldman and David Bowie.

Subsequent appearances included Woody Allen's Celebrity, the blaxploitation throwback Shaft with Samuel L Jackson and 2001's Boycott, where he gave a critically acclaimed performance as Martin Luther King, Jr.

In 2003, Wright reprised his role as Norman 'Belize' Arriaga in the award-winning TV adaptation of Angels in America starring alongside screen veterans Al Pacino, Emma Thompson and Meryl Streep.

The following year he appeared in Jonathan Demme's remake of The Manchurian Candidate opposite Denzel Washington, Meryl Streep, and Liev Schreiber.

He impressed as Washington attorney Bennett Holiday in Stephen Gaghan's political thriller Syriana alongside George Clooney and played Bill Murray's eccentric Ethiopian neighbor Winston in Jim Jarmusch's existential road movie, Broken Flowers.

In 2005, he starred in the play This Is How It Goes alongside Ben Stiller and Amanda Peet and also appeared as one of the tenants in M. Night Shyamalan's Lady in the Water.

In 2006, Wright featured as Leiter in Casino Royale and reteamed with Bond co-star Daniel Craig, for the alien invasion suspense thriller, The Invasion, with Nicole Kidman.