Who is Line of Duty series four star Thandie Newton?
The British actress has starred in Mission Impossible II and Crash but has also done her fair share of TV too – here's everything you need to know
Line of Duty, Jed Mercurio’s hit police corruption drama, returns with a fourth series later this month and a whole new story. Thandie Newton stars as the “antagonist” DCI Roz Huntley, who finds herself investigated by the AC-12 officers portrayed by Martin Compston, Vicky McClure and Adrian Dunbar.
Who is Thandie Newton?
Melanie Thandiwe "Thandie" Newton, 44, is the London-born daughter of her Zimbabwean mother Nyasha and English father Nick Newton. She was brought up in London and Cornwall and has a social anthropology degree from Cambridge University.
Her first major acting role came when she was just 18, starring in Australian coming-of-age movie Flirting.
Where have I seen Thandie Newton before?
A Hollywood regular, she played Nyah Nordoff-Hall opposite Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible II (below) in 2000 and Christine in Paul Haggis’s hit 2004 film Crash. She won a Bafta best supporting actress role for her work on Crash.
Fans of HBO sci-fi Westworld will recognise her as the sentient android Maeve Millay (below).
Her breakthrough role came in the BBC film In Your Dreams in 1997. She played date-rape victim Clare in the film which was written by Ol Parker, her screenwriter husband. She has also played Makemba "Kem" Likasu in ER between 2003 and 2009.
Who does Thandie Newton play in Line of Duty series 4?
Roz Huntley is a senior investigator on a career-defining case codenamed Operation Trapdoor. The drama begins with Huntley and her team in the heat of the action, but we also learn that she is a mother of two and wife to husband Nick, played be Lee Ingleby (The A Word, Our Zoo).
"Roz will do anything to stop her life unravelling," according to the production team; such is her determination, she is under scrutiny for possibly tampering with evidence to nail the chief Operation Trapdoor suspect, a man with learning difficulties who is alleged to have abducted various women.
Under intense pressure to catch the culprit and prove herself to her superiors, her first opponent is her colleague, Forensic Coordinator Tim Ifield, played by Jason Watkins (Love Nina, The Lost Honour Of Christopher Jefferies) who brings her methods to the attention of AC-12.
The key antagonist role was played in previous series by Lennie James, Keeley Hawes and Daniel Mays, though Huntley will prove AC-12’s “most devious opponent yet", according to the BBC.
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What’s Thandie Newton up to next?
Next year will see the release of two big budget films. She will star in an as-yet-undisclosed role alongside Games of Thrones’ Kit Harrington, Natalie Portman and Susan Sarandon in The Death and Life of John F Donovan. The film is about a rising young actor whose career is threatened when a gossip column exposes the fact that he corresponds with an 11-year-old boy.
Newton is also expected to feature in the second series of Westworld, which starts shooting later this year.
This article was originally published in March 2017
