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Akosua Busia

Akosua Busia’s career has never stayed in a single lane. Born in Accra, Ghana, in 1966, the Ghanaian-born British actress has also worked as a screenwriter, novelist, songwriter and director, building a body of work that moves between performance and storytelling in several forms. Her early stage experience included playing Juliet in a production of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet at Oxford University. She made her film debut in the 1979 adventure Ashanti, then moved to Los Angeles in the early 1980s. Among her first American projects was Andrew Davis’s slasher film The Final Terror, which reached audiences in 1983. Busia played Nettie, the younger sister of Whoopi Goldberg’s Celie, in Steven Spielberg’s 1985 adaptation of The Color Purple. The role remains a central part of her screen career, placing her within a story shaped by separation, endurance and family bonds. She followed it with performances as Bessie in the 1986 adaptation of Richard Wright’s Native Son and opposite Denzel Washington and Lynn Whitfield in Hard Lessons. Later film roles included Jewel in John Singleton’s Rosewood and Patience in Antoine Fuqua’s Tears of the Sun, while her television work included an appearance on ER. Her work away from acting is just as varied. Busia published The Seasons of Beento Blackbird in 1997 and was one of three writers who adapted Toni Morrison’s Beloved for Jonathan Demme’s 1998 film. She co-wrote the song “Moon Blue” with Stevie Wonder and directed the 2008 film The Prof, about her father, former Ghanaian prime minister Kofi Abrefa Busia. After an 18-year break from acting to raise her daughter, Busia returned in 2016 for the off-Broadway and Broadway productions of Danai Gurira’s Eclipsed alongside Lupita Nyong’o. Her off-Broadway performance as Rita received an Obie Award for Distinguished Performance. In 2024, she released the drama In Search of a Blessed Life: He Who Hath and the documentary Stevie Wonder in Ghana: In Search of a Blessed Life.