Sharlto Copley
- Actor
- Producer
- Director
Sharlto Copley was born in Johannesburg, South Africa, to Linda Stocks
and Bruce Copley, a former university professor. His childhood dreams
of acting were put on hold for many years when his television
production company was one of few in his native South Africa granted
licensing to create content for broadcast. Rather than acting in front
of the camera, Copley found himself the businessman running the
production behind the scenes, becoming South Africa's youngest
television producer at age 25. It was during this time that he met a
then-teen-aged Neill Blomkamp, who worked
at Copley's company in exchange for use of the computers to pursue his
talent for design. Blomkamp would many years later go on to direct
Copley in his star-making debut as nervous bureaucrat Wikus van de
Merwe in the Oscar nominated science fiction hit District 9 (2009).
Copley followed this by fulfilling another childhood dream, landing the
role of H.M. "Howling Mad" Murdock in the big screen adaption of the
1980's TV hit The A-Team (2010) and was also directed by Blomkamp
once again in the movie Elysium (2013). He now continues to split his
time between his native South Africa and Hollywood, pursuing more
opportunities in front of and behind the camera.
