Danai Gurira is an American actress and playwright, best known for her role as Michonne on The Walking Dead and as Okoye — the head of the king’s all-female special forces unit, the Dora Milaje — in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
In addition to her career as an actress, Gurira is the writer of the Tony Award-winning play Eclipsed.
While Gurira was raised in Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe, she was actually born in Iowa, of all place. Born in Grinnell, Iowa, Gurira is the youngest of four siblings. Her family lived in Iowa until 1983, when her family moved back to Zimbabwe after the country gained independence.
She attended high school at Dominican Convent High School before returning to the United States to study at Macalester College, in Saint Paul, Minnesota. She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in psychology and also earned a Master of Fine Arts in acting, from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.
In 2009, Gurira made her acting debut on Broadway in August Wilson’s play Joe Turner’s Come and Gone playing Martha Pentecost. However, her big break came in 2012 when she joined the cast of AMC’s mega-hit The Walking Dead.
