Born: December 16, 1993
Birthplace: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Zodiac Sign: Sagittarius
Stephan James is a Canadian actor. Best known 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. For his lead role as Walter Cruz in Homecoming, James was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Television Series Drama.
James got his start in television with a reoccurring role for two seasons on the long-running Canadian teen series Degrassi. 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.
James landed his first significant feature film role playing opposite Tatyana Ali and Fefe Dobson in the Canadian film Home Again (2012), where 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:
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 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 as African-American track and field sprinter Jesse Owens in the biopic Race (2016) opposite Jason Sudeikis, replacing Star Wars star John Boyega. James won the Canadian Screen Award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role for his role in Race.
2017 James played DOJ prosecutor Preston Terry in the FOX limited series Shots Fired. That same year, it was announced that James would star in Barry Jenkins' film adaptation of the James Baldwin novel If Beale Street Could Talk.