Thandie Newton is a BAFTA award winning actress and sometime writer best known for her appearance in Mission: Impossible II.

Thandiwe Newton was born on November the sixth, 1972, in Zambia. Her father was the artist Nick Newton, her mother Nyasha, a Shona princess working as a nurse. She has a younger brother, James. When she was five years old her family moved to Penzance in Cornwall to escape the increasingly unstable political climate in her homeland. There she immediately began to explore her passion for dance. Later she moved on London to study modern dance at the Art Educational School. When a back injury put her out of action for several weeks she took a course in acting to fill her time, and it was through this that she ended up auditioning for what was to be her first film role, as the teenaged heroine of John Duigan's Flirting. There she became firm friends with co-star Nicole Kidman and decided that acting was the career for her. 

Despite this early success and the temptation to stay in Los Angeles, Newton went on with her studies and progressed to Downing College at the University of Cambridge, where she earned a degree in anthropology. She continued with film work throughout her university career, appearing in Loaded, alongside Oliver Milburn and Catherine McCormack, and getting her big break in Neil Jordan's adaptation of Anne Rice's cult novel Interview with the Vampire with Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, Kirsten Dunst, Antonio Banderas and Christian Slater. It was a small role, but it got her noticed, and led to a major role as the President's mistress in Jefferson in Paris, opposite Nick Nolte. In The Leading Man she played another mistress, this time anxious to improve her status, opposite Lambert Wilson and Jon Bon Jovi; and in 1997's Gridlock'd she finally got to play a more independent character, the jazz singer shooting up with Tupac Shakur and Tim Roth's addicts.

By now firmly established in her craft, Newton felt ready to take some risks. Her complex performance in Bernado Bertolucci's Beseiged won critical acclaim and led to a role opposite Oprah Winfrey in Johnathan Demme's adaptation of Toni Morrison's Beloved. With the help of her friend Nicole Kidman she then successfully won the part of the jewel thief heroine in John Woo's Mission: Impossible II, her biggest film to date. She was offered the chance to return in the sequel but turned it down to concentrate on her writing, interested in developing her skills as a scriptwriter and also making contributions to projects such as  We Wish: Hopes and Dreams of Cornwall's Children, an anthology of memoirs created to raise money for the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. 

Newton's later film work has included appearances in The Chronicles of Riddick with Vin Diesel and Judi Dench; Crash with Matt Dillon and Sandra Bullock; and The Pursuit of Happyness with Will Smith and Jaden Smith. She has also enjoyed a recurring role as Noah Wyle's love interest in ER.

Newton is married to writer and director Oliver Parker, whom she met when starring in his 1997 film In Your Dreams. The couple have two daughters: Ripley (named after Sigourney Weaver's character in the Alien films) and Nico.