Thandie Newton continues to prove herself to be not only one of the most beautiful actresses in the business, but also one of the most talented. She will soon be seen in the highly anticipated movie Crash, the debut feature of Emmy-winning Canadian director Paul Haggis, which is the story of a multi-racial group of characters whose lives interconnect following a car accident in Los Angeles. Newton stars opposite Don Cheadle, Sandra Bullock, Matt Dillon, Jennifer Esposito, Brendan Fraser, Ludacris and Ryan Phillippe.

Newton starred opposite Mark Wahlberg in Jonathan Demme's contemporary romantic thriller The Truth About Charlie, inspired by Stanley Donen's 1963 film Charade. Newton received rave reviews for her astonishingly original and bold performance as the title character in Jonathan Demme's 1998 adaptation of Toni Morrison's novel Beloved, co-starring Oprah Winfrey and Danny Glover.

Born to a Zimbabwean mother and an English father, Newton was raised in Zambia until she was three-years-old. Due to political unrest in the country, her family then relocated to England.

At age 16, while studying modern dance at the London Art Educational School, she won the lead role in John Duigan's critically acclaimed 1990 coming-of-age film, Flirting, playing a Ugandan girl isolated in an Australian ladies academy who begins a romance with a teenage boy from a neighboring boarding school. After completing the film, she returned to England to continue her education, earning a BA with honors in anthropology at Cambridge University, while also acting in feature films for some of Hollywood's most acclaimed directors, including Neil Jordan (Interview With the Vampire) and James Ivory (Jefferson in Paris).

Newton also appeared as a troubled singer opposite Tupac Shakur and Tim Roth in Vondie Curtis-Hall's comedy/drama, Gridlock'd, and won critics' praise as the exiled wife of an African leader in Bernardo Bertolucci's Besieged.