Occupation Actor Upcoming movie Race Role Actor | Name Stephan James Years active 2010–present | |
 | ||
Born December 16, 1993 (age 22) Toronto, Ontario, Canada Nominations Canadian Screen Award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role Movies Selma, Race, Home Again, When the Game Stands Tall, Lost After Dark Similar People Stephen Hopkins, Sudz Sutherland, Jennifer Holness, Ian Kessner, Thomas Carter Profiles | ||
Actor stephan james discusses his latest film selma
Stephan James (born December 16, 1993) is a Canadian actor. For his role in the 2016 film Race, in which he played track and field sprinter Jesse Owens, James won the Canadian Screen Award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role.
Contents
- Actor stephan james discusses his latest film selma
- Stephan James on Oprah Beale Street Degrassi
- Early work
- Breakthrough
- References
Stephan James on Oprah, Beale Street & Degrassi
Early work
James got his start in television starring for two seasons in the long-running Canadian teen series Degrassi: The Next Generation.
After leaving Degrassi, James played various supporting roles on television, including in How To Be Indie, Clue, and My Babysitter's a Vampire in 2011, and The Listener and The LA Complex in 2012. Also in 2011, he played a supporting role in the ABC Family made-for-TV movie 12 Dates of Christmas.
Breakthrough
James landed his first major feature film role playing opposite Tatyana Ali and Fefe Dobson in the Canadian film Home Again (2012), in which he played a Jamaican deportee. Although the film received mixed reviews, The Globe and Mail gave James' performance a positive review, calling it "heartbreaking." James garnered a Canadian Screen Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor at the 1st Canadian Screen Awards for his performance, though he ultimately lost to Serge Kanyinda.
In 2013, James was cast as civil rights activist John Lewis in Ava Duvernay's Martin Luther King, Jr. film Selma (2014), which went on to be nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars. When asked about the proposed "snubs" the film received from the Academy, James said:
To me, I’ve always seen this film as a victory really, even before I saw the finished version. No award can amount to the way I feel about what we’ve done with this film. We’ve done something so relevant to our youth.
In 2015, James guest starred in the CBC television mini-series The Book of Negroes, based on the award-winning novel of the same name by Lawrence Hill. At the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival, James was named as one of TIFF's Rising Stars. In celebration of Black History Month, James was named by CBC as one of their '6 Black Canadian Culture-Makers,' citing Oprah Winfrey as one of his biggest influences.
In 2016, James starred in the lead role of African-American track and field sprinter Jesse Owens in the biopic Race (2016) opposite Jason Sudeikis, replacing Star Wars star John Boyega. For his role in Race, James won the Canadian Screen Award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role.
In 2017, James plays DOJ prosecutor, Preston Terry in the critically acclaimed FOX limited series, Shots Fired.