1. Chipo Tariro Chung was born on 17 August 1977 and is a Zimbabwean actress and activist based in London.
18 Facts About Chipo Chung
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Chipo Chung's given name Chipo means "gift" in the Shona language.
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Chipo Chung spent her first two years in refugee camps in Mozambique with thousands of young people who were escaping the war in then-Rhodesia.
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Chipo Chung was raised in Harare where she attended Dominican Convent High School and developed her acting with the mixed-race theater company Over the Edge.
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At eighteen, she moved to the United States where her mother, educationist and former minister of education in Zimbabwe Fay Chipo Chung, was working for the United Nations.
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Chipo Chung first studied directing at Yale University and then trained as an actor at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, graduating in 2003.
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Chipo Chung then appeared in Talking to Terrorists, The Overwhelming and Fallujah, as well as classical plays including Phedre, which was the first National Theatre Live recording, and starred Helen Mirren.
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Chipo Chung has appeared twice in Doctor Who, in one episode playing the Master's assistant Chantho in the series 3 episode "Utopia", and a character called the Fortune Teller in series 4's "Turn Left".
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Chipo Chung appeared in the first season of Sky Atlantic series Fortitude as Trish Stoddart, before winning the role of Mary Magdalene in the TV series, AD The Bible Continues.
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Chipo Chung then featured as the Master in AMC's post-apocalyptic kung fu series Into the Badlands.
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In 2017, Chipo Chung played Portia and Octavius in the Sheffield Theatre production of Julius Caesar, before taking on the title role of Dido, Queen of Carthage in the Royal Shakespeare Company's premiere production of Christopher Marlowe's tragedy.
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Chipo Chung reads a number of titles on Audible, most notably the novel Glory by NoViolet Bulawayo, which was a 2022 finalist for the Booker Prize, as well as books by Petina Gappah and Tsitsi Dangarembgwa.
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Chipo Chung was recognized as one of the BBC's 100 women of 2014.
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Chipo Chung was nominated for Best Actress at the Zimbabwe International Women's Awards in 2015 and honoured with a Special Recognition Award for her contribution to Media and the Arts at the Zimbabwe Achievers Awards in London in 2017.
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Chipo Chung co-founded the charity SAFE-Kenya which develops theatre for social change in Kenya, focusing on HIV education and abandoning clitoridectomy.
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Chipo Chung worked closely with the charity Peace Direct to start Envision Zimbabwe, a women's trust that works towards consensus-building and peace in Zimbabwe.
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Chipo Chung sits on the RADA Council and British Equity's International Committee for Artists' Freedom.
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In December 2019, along with 42 other cultural figures, Chipo Chung signed a letter endorsing the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn's leadership in the 2019 general election.