Nonso Anozie
Nonso Anozie is an actor, born 1978.
Nonso Anozie was born in Camden, London in 1978 and arrived on film with an unusually strong two years: Frank Mace in Atonement and Batiatus in The Last Legion in 2007, then the title role in the football-hooligan biopic Cass, Ezra in Happy-Go-Lucky and Tank in RocknRolla in 2008. Four very different registers inside twenty-four months.
Casting then did the obvious thing with a large man and hired him to loom. He is Artus in Conan the Barbarian, Jackson Burke in The Grey, Sergeant Dap in Ender's Game, the Captain in Cinderella, Bishop in Pan, Butler in Artemis Fowl, Idi Amin in 7 Days in Entebbe, Xaro Xhoan Daxos in Game of Thrones and Renfield in the Sky version of Dracula. Reliable work, rarely the whole of what he can do.
Sweet Tooth changed the terms. As Tommy Jepperd from 2021 to 2024 he plays an enormous violent man being asked to be gentle with a child, and the performance keeps the effort visible instead of sentimental, which is why it worked. He won a Children's and Family Emmy for it and was nominated for a BAFTA.
He had already run a long-form version of the same idea as Abraham Kenyatta in Zoo from 2015 to 2017. Next he is Moonface in The Magic Faraway Tree in 2026.
Movies (24)
- Cinderella (2015)
- Atonement (2007)
- The Magic Faraway Tree (2026)
- Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit (2014)
- Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang (2010)
- Ender's Game (2013)
- Pan (2015)
- The Grey (2012)
- Conan the Barbarian (2011)
- RocknRolla (2008)
- The Last Legion (2007)
- The Laundromat (2019)
- Artemis Fowl (2020)
- 7 Days in Entebbe (2018)
- Son of God (2014)
- Dragon Rider (2020)
- Happy-Go-Lucky (2008)
- Doctor Who: The Husbands of River Song (2015)
- Guava Island (2019)
- All Is True (2018)
- Brighton Rock (2010)
- Get Santa (2014)
- Cass (2008)
- Gundam
TV (5)
Where to start with Nonso Anozie
Sweet Tooth first, and it is not close. Jepperd is the role that finally asked him for tenderness alongside the size, and the run of it produced the best work on his record.
For the earlier version, Cass gives him a lead: a real man's life, played without the swagger the genre usually demands. Atonement places him in the Dunkirk stretch, where he is the warmest presence in a film mostly about cruelty, and The Grey puts him in an ensemble being picked apart, where he is the most sympathetic person on screen.
Dracula is the guilty pleasure, a Renfield with far more agency than the novel allows. Cinderella and Ender's Game are the family-friendly end, both of them him doing more with a uniform than the script asked for.