Nikki Amuka-Bird

Amuka-Bird was born in Delta State, Nigeria, where her father still lives. She left there as a young child with her mother and was brought up in England, Lagos and in Antigua. Attending boarding school at Hurtwood House in England, Amuka-Bird originally hoped to be a dancer. That ambition was thwarted by injury:

I hurt my back and at that point was deciding what to do university-wise and I thought I would try for drama college because I knew you could do some dancing there but it didn’t have to take over everything. It was only really when I went to drama college that that world [acting] opened up to me and I fell in love with it and became obsessed like everybody else.

She attended the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA). She started her stage career with the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC). Amuka-Bird's theatrical credits include Welcome to Thebes (National Theatre); Twelfth Night (Bristol Old Vic, for which she won an Ian Charleson Award nomination in 2004 for playing Viola); World Music (Crucible Theatre, Sheffield, and Donmar Warehouse); Top Girls (Oxford Stage Company); A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Tempest and The Servant of Two Masters (RSC); Doubt: A Parable (Tricycle Theatre).

Her film credits include The Omen (2006 remake), Cargo, Almost Heaven as well as the screen adaptation of Alexander McCall Smith's novel The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency. On television, Amuka-Bird has appeared in Spooks, The Line of Beauty, The Last Enemy, Robin Hood, an episode of Torchwood, and a recurring role in the reimagined BBC apocalyptic series Survivors. In 2010 she appeared as Detective Superintendent Gaynor Jenkins in the BBC's Silent Witness.

She appeared in Small Island, the BBC adaptation of Andrea Levy's award-winning novel, broadcast in December 2009. In June 2016 it was announced that she and Phoebe Fox would star in the production of Zadie Smith's novel NW. It was broadcast on BBC Two on 14 November 2016 and Amuka-Bird received a BAFTA nomination for Best Actress.

On Christmas Day 2017, she was heard as the voice of the Glass Woman in the Doctor Who Christmas Special "Twice Upon a Time" broadcast on BBC One.

She is currently playing the role of Rav Mulclair, Head of Judd Mission Control, in HBO's Avenue 5. She had a few film roles in 2019 for The Personal History of David Copperfield as Miss Steerforth and 2021 for Old as Patricia, a psychologist with epilepsy.