Quick Facts
Biography
Pamela Nomvete is an Ethopian-born South African actress.
Life
Pamela Nomvete was born in Ethiopia to South African parents. She studied in the United Kingdom at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama. At one point she lived in Manchester, England, where her sister was a student. After working as an actress in the United Kingom, Nomvete moved to South Africa in 1994.
In the 1990s Nomvete embarked on a television career, achieving fame in the South African soap opera Generations. Her character Ntsiki Lukhele was "TV's ultimate super-bitch: power-hungry, manipulative and deadly". However, Nomvete herself struggled with depression after her husband's infidelity. As her life unraveled, at one point she was living in her car, selling clothes for food and cigarettes.
In Zulu Love Letter (2004), Nomvete played Thandi, a single mother and journalist struggling to commmunicate with her estranged 13-year-old daughter. When Thandi was pregnant with her child, she had been attacked by an apartheid hit squad, leaving the child deaf and dumb. Nomvete's performance won her a FESPACO Best Actress Award in 2005.
In 2012-13 she acted in the British soap opera Coronation Street, playing Mandy Kamara, an ex-girlfirend of the character Lloyd Mullaney (played by Craig Charles).
In 2013 she published an autobiography, Dancing to the Beat of the Drum: In Search of My Spiritual Home.
Nomvete practices Nichiren Buddhism.
Film appearances
- Born Free: A New Adventure, 1996
- Zulu Love Letter, 2004
- Sometimes in April, 2005
Stage appearances
- Now or Later by Christopher Shinn at the Royal Court Theatre, 2008
- Welcome to Thebes by Moira Buffini at the Royal National Theatre, 2010