Hugh Quarshie

For almost 20 years Hugh Quarshie played surgeon Ric Griffin on BBC One's Holby City (2001 to 2020). In cinemas he was Queen Amidala's security chief, Captain Panaka, in the 1999 Star Wars prequel The Phantom Menace.

Accra to Oxford

He was born in Accra and moved to Britain with his family at three. He studied philosophy, politics and economics at Christ Church, Oxford, and thought about journalism before choosing acting. A 2010 episode of Who Do You Think You Are? traced his roots to Ghana's old mixed-race elite, with Dutch officials on the Gold Coast, Pieter Kamerling and Jan ter Meulen, and the British official Louis Waistell Phillips among his ancestors. Through the Kamerling line he is distantly related to the Dutch actor Antonie Kamerling.

Stage and screen

He joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1981 and became an associate artist in 2005. On screen he played Sunda Kastagir in Highlander, Father Gus in The Church (1989), Lieutenant Obutu in Wing Commander and Aaron in the BBC's Titus Andronicus, and appeared in Nightbreed and Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald. In Doctor Who's 2007 Dalek story he played Solomon, leader of Hooverville. He has narrated Small Island (2009) and the BBC series The Great Rift: Africa's Wild Heart (2010). His stage work earned him an Olivier nomination for best actor in 1987.