David Harewood

Sitter in 1 portrait
Born in Birmingham to Barbadian parents, actor David Harewood trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and began his acting career in 1990. He is best known for his role as David Estes, Director of the CIA's Counter-terrorism Centre in the highly successful television series Homeland (2011-2). He has also acted in films including Blood Diamond (2006) and The Merchant of Venice (2004), and portrayed Nelson Mandela on television and Martin Luther King on stage. In 2007, as part of a BBC programme, he visited Viscount David Lascelles, son of the Earl of Harewood, at Harewood House, built in the eighteenth century upon the proceeds of slavery. Harewood’s own ancestors worked on the Caribbean sugar plantations owned by the Lascelles in the eighteenth century, and were re-surnamed Harewood after the project their work financed. In 2016, he presented a BBC documentary called Will Britain Ever Have a Black Prime Minister?, in which he reflected on his own experience of being black and British. Harewood is also an ambassador for mental health awareness, recently revealing his own struggles with manic depression and psychosis; in 2018, he appeared in the documentary David Harewood: My Psychosis and Me. He currently has a lead role in the popular American superhero TV series Supergirl. Harewood was awarded an MBE in 2012 for his services to drama.