John Boyega

John Boyega is a British actor. He is best known for playing Finn in the Star Wars franchise.

Boyega was born in Peckham, London, to Nigerian parents. His first role was that of a leopard in a play at his primary school at age five. He later took part in various school productions and attended classes at Theatre Peckham. He was a performing arts student at South Thames College and was active in theatre productions there, including the lead in Othello in 2010.

Boyega trained at the Identity Drama School in Hackney, and appeared in the plays Six Parties at the National Theatre and Category B at the Tricycle Theatre prior to being offered a role in the 2011 film "Attack the Block." In September 2011, HBO announced that Boyega had been cast in the boxing drama pilot "Da Brick," loosely based on Mike Tyson's life. Boyega was expected to play Donnie, who is released from a juvenile detention centre on his 18th birthday and begins to examine what it means to be a man. The pilot was written by John Ridley, but was not picked up by HBO.

Also in 2011, he played in the film "Junkhearts" in which he portrayed a drug dealer who found some guns and tried to sell them. In March 2012, Boyega was cast in the film version of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's book "Half of a Yellow Sun."

Boyega played Finn in the 2015 film "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" and its 2017 sequel "Star Wars: The Last Jedi." In 2018, he had a leading role in "Pacific Rim: Uprising."

In 2020, Boyega partnered with Netflix through his UpperRoom Productions shingle to develop non-English language films centered on West and East Africa. In February 2021, Boyega won the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor – Series, Miniseries or Television Film and the Critics' Choice Television Award for Best Actor in a Movie/Miniseries for portraying Leroy Logan in the anthology "Small Axe."