Akosua Busia

Akosua Busia played Nettie, the beloved younger sister of Whoopi Goldberg's Celie, in Steven Spielberg's The Color Purple (1985). She is the daughter of Kofi Abrefa Busia, Ghana's Prime Minister from 1969 to 1972.

Roots

Akosua Gyamama Busia was born in Accra on 30 December 1966 into the royal family of Wenchi. Her sister, Abena Busia, is a poet and scholar who became Ghana's ambassador to Brazil. Akosua won a scholarship to London's Central School of Speech and Drama at 16, and her first stage role was Juliet in an Oxford production of Romeo and Juliet.

Film and writing

Her first film was Ashanti (1979), with Michael Caine. In Los Angeles she appeared in The Final Terror (1983), Badge of the Assassin (1985), Native Son (1986), Hard Lessons (1986) with Denzel Washington, John Singleton's Rosewood (1997) and Antoine Fuqua's Tears of the Sun (2003), as well as the TV series ER. She published a novel, The Seasons of Beento Blackbird (1997), co-wrote the screenplay of Jonathan Demme's Beloved (1998) and co-wrote "Moon Blue" with Stevie Wonder for his 2005 album A Time 2 Love. In 2008 she directed a documentary about her father, The Prof.