Chiwetel Ejiofor is having a hell of a year for a guy whose name is Chiwetel Ejiofor. I mean, back in the day he would have changed his monicker to something like Chuck Eiger. But in 2005 he was able to keep his name and still be one of the leads in Woody Allen’s Melinda and Melinda, be the best character in Joss Whedon’s Serenity and be the star in the now out in England and coming soon to the US Kinky Boots.
Chiwetel (or Chewy, as Woody Allen told me he calls him) has two more films lined up, making sure that Ejiofor is a name that will someday have serious marquee, if not pronunciation, value. He’s just finished up Spike Lee’s The Inside Man with Denzel Washington, and next he’s teaming with Harry Potter’s ex-director Alfonse Cuaron for The Children of Men, where he will play a radical looking to control mankind’s future. He stars alongside Clive Owen in this adaptation of a PD James novel.
After that he’ll be doing what all the great thesps must do at one point in their career – work with Rutger Hauer. The film is Tonight at Noon, which just sounds like something Ringo Starr would say, but I bet it’s got some artistic meaning. Ejiofor will play two characters in that film.
Chiwetel Ejiofor: Following in the brave footsteps of N!Xau from The Gods Must be Crazy.