# Amandla Stenberg

Amandla Stenberg (born October 23, 1998) is an American actress. She began her career as a child and received recognition for playing Rue in the action film The Hunger Games (2012). As she grew older, she appeared in the supernatural series Sleepy Hollow (2013–2014) and the romance film Everything, Everything (2017). She received praise for her performance as a teenager witnessing a police shooting in the drama film The Hate U Give (2018). She then starred in the comedy horror film Bodies Bodies Bodies (2022) and the Star Wars series The Acolyte (2024).
Outside of acting, Stenberg made her musical debut in 2015, performing as part of the folk rock duo Honeywater, and performed the song "Let My Baby Stay" for Everything, Everything. She is also noted for her activism towards LGBT youth, and was included on Time's lists of most influential teens in 2015 and 2016.

## Early life

Amandla Stenberg, born in Los Angeles, California, is the child of Karen Brailsford, an African-American spiritual counselor and writer, and Tom Stenberg, who is Danish. Stenberg has two older half-sisters on her father's side. She has Greenlandic Inuit ancestry through her paternal grandmother, Ena Stenberg, who was born in Greenland and moved to Denmark during direct colonial rule of Greenland. She was a radio personality and singer in Denmark who performed with a group called Mik that sang at the World’s Fair in New York in 1964. Ena Stenberg was associated with the Danish colonial community in Greenland before moving to Denmark.
Stenberg's first name means "power" or "strength" in the South African languages of IsiXhosa and Zulu. At age four, Stenberg started doing catalog modeling shoots for Disney. She has appeared in commercials for clients such as Boeing and Kmart.
In 2016, Stenberg announced via Instagram that she would be studying filmmaking at New York University Tisch School of the Arts. She ultimately decided against attending the school, as she found herself booking jobs, and instead chose to continue with her acting career.

## Career
### 2011–2017: Early work

In 2011, she appeared in her first feature film, Colombiana, as a younger version of Zoe Saldana's character. Her breakthrough came at the age of 14, when she was cast as Rue in the 2012 film The Hunger Games. The film was a critical and financial success, and Stenberg's performance was praised. She received a number of awards and nominations, including a Black Reel Award nomination. In 2013, she was cast in the short film Mercy playing the daughter of Robin Thicke and Paula Patton; Thicke directed the film. Stenberg had a recurring role on season one of Sleepy Hollow from 2013 to 2014.
In 2013, Stenberg began performing on the violin and singing harmonies at Los Angeles venues with singer-songwriter Zander Hawley. In 2014, Stenberg voiced Bia in the animated film Rio 2, which was a commercial success. She played series regular Halle Foster on the short-lived series Mr. Robinson, which ran in 2015.
In 2016, Stenberg appeared in Beyoncé: Lemonade by Beyoncé, and won the BET YoungStars Award. In the same year, she signed with The Society, a modelling agency. Also in 2016, Stenberg had auditioned for the role of Shuri in the superhero film Black Panther, however, she walked away because she felt that she was not right for the role. She told Variety magazine in 2018: "It was so exhilarating to see it fulfilled by people who should have been a part of it and who deserved it and who were right for it. I just wasn't." The role was instead given to actress Letitia Wright.
In 2017, she starred in the romantic drama Everything, Everything, directed by Stella Meghie, and co-starring Nick Robinson. She received praise for her performance, and earned a Teen Choice Award nomination.

### 2018–present: Mainstream roles

In 2018, she played the lead role of Starr Carter in the contemporary drama The Hate U Give, based on the novel of the same name, which is about the Black Lives Matter movement. The film was received positively, and Stenberg received critical acclaim for her performance. Peter Travers of Rolling Stone wrote: "It is impossible to over-praise Stenberg's incandescent performance, a gathering storm that grows in ferocity and feeling with each scene." The film's director, George Tillman Jr., said that "She has this ability to make you feel like you're seeing the real deal, which comes from a level of dedication to the material that's rare at any age." She earned several accolades for the role, which include winning an African-American Film Critics Association Award, a NAACP Image Award, and being nominated for a Critics' Choice Award and a Washington D.C. Area Film Critics Association Award. In late 2018, Stenberg starred in Amma Asante's World War II drama Where Hands Touch.
In 2019, Stenberg portrayed Elizabeth Eckford, a 15-year-old girl who in 1957 was among a group of nine Black students who were initially prevented from entering a racially segregated high school in Little Rock, Arkansas during a segment on the television show Drunk History (2019). In May 2019, she joined the cast of the Netflix miniseries The Eddy, which was released on May 8, 2020. That same month, she signed on to star in the remake of the 1996 thriller film Fear.
In August 2020, she was cast as Alana Beck in Stephen Chbosky's film adaptation of the Broadway musical Dear Evan Hansen. She also collaborated with the show's composers, Pasek and Paul, on "The Anonymous Ones", a new song written specifically for her character, whose role was expanded upon from the stage version. In 2021, Stenberg was cast in the main role for the Star Wars series The Acolyte. On August 28, 2024, she shared via Instagram Stories that the cancellation of the show was "not a huge shock to [her]" due to the "hyper-conservative bigotry and vitriol, prejudice, hatred and hateful language" it received from Star Wars fans. In May 2023, she was announced as part of the voice cast of Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse as Margo Kess / Spider-Byte.

## Other ventures
### Activism

Stenberg is an intersectional feminist. She is outspoken about her political views in interviews and on social media and was named "Feminist of the Year" in 2015 by the Ms. Foundation for Women. She has spoken publicly on social media about cultural appropriation. Her video "Don't Cash Crop My Cornrows" admonished Kylie Jenner for adopting the traditionally African-American hairstyle. In April 2016, Stenberg gave a speech at WE Day California, a WE Charity event.
In October 2023, Stenberg signed the Artists4Ceasefire open letter to Joe Biden, President of the United States, calling for a ceasefire of the Israeli bombardment of Gaza.

### Music

In 2015, Stenberg released her first EP in August 2015 as the folk rock duo Honeywater. Also in 2015, she released the video "Don't Cash Crop My Cornrows", which admonished Kylie Jenner for adopting the traditionally African-American hairstyle. In 2017, she performed "Let My Baby Stay" for the soundtrack for Everything, Everything.
On June 19, 2024, Stenberg released "Discourse", a song that was created to address the racial prejudice she has endured. The track references a viral 2018 interview she had with The Daily Show's Trevor Noah, in which Stenberg raps "white people crying actually was the goal" of The Hate U Give, a film she stars in about the aftermath of a Black teenager's murder by a police officer.

### Writing

Stenberg co-wrote the comic book Niobe: She is Life with Sebastian Jones, which was illustrated by Ashley A. Woods, and published in November 2015. It is the first nationally distributed comic that has a black woman as its protagonist, author, and another as the artist. In 2017, Stenberg and Sebastian Jones released Niobe: She is Death, the second part of the trilogy.

## Media image

Dazed magazine named Stenberg "one of the most incendiary voices of her generation" when it featured her on its Autumn 2015 cover. She was included in Time's list of Most Influential Teens in 2015 and again in 2016. In 2016, she was included in the SuperSoul 100 list of visionaries and influential leaders by Oprah Winfrey.

## Personal life

In January 2016, Stenberg came out as bisexual though she subsequently stated that pansexual was an accurate term as well. That March, Stenberg came out as non-binary, and uses both she/her and they/them pronouns. In June 2018, in an interview with Wonderland magazine, she came out as gay.
On October 6, 2018, Teen Vogue published an op-ed Stenberg had written for the magazine, in which she shared that she experienced two separate counts of sexual assault.
From early 2018 to late 2018, Stenberg dated singer Mikaela Mullaney Straus, better known by her stage name King Princess. In a July 2017 interview, Stenberg said she had stopped using a smartphone, believing that such devices and social media can have a negative effect on mental health. From 2018 to 2020, she was in a relationship with singer-songwriter Lindsey Jordan.
During 2020, Stenberg lived in Copenhagen for three months in order to retain her Danish citizenship.

## Filmography

Key :
| † | Denotes works that have not yet been released |

### Film

| Year | Title | Role | Notes |
| 2011 | Colombiana | Young Cataleya Restrepo | |
| 2012 | The Hunger Games | Rue | |
| 2013 | Mercy | Sarah | Short film |
| 2014 | Rio 2 | Bia | Voice |
| 2016 | As You Are | Sarah | |
| 2017 | Everything, Everything | Maddy Whittier | |
| 2018 | The Darkest Minds | Ruby Daly | |
| 2018 | The Hate U Give | Starr Carter | |
| 2018 | Where Hands Touch | Leyna | |
| 2021 | Dear Evan Hansen | Alana Beck | |
| 2022 | Bodies Bodies Bodies | Sophie | Also executive producer |
| 2023 | My Animal | Jonny | Also executive producer |
| 2023 | Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse | Margo Kess / Spider-Byte | Voice |
| 2023 | Ozi: Voice of the Forest | Ozi | Voice |
| 2025 | Wildwood † | | Voice; In production |
| 2027 | Children of Blood and Bone † | Princess Amari | Filming |

### Television

| Year | Title | Role | Notes |
| 2012 | A Taste of Romance | Taylor | Television film |
| 2013–2014 | Sleepy Hollow | Macey Irving | Recurring role; 4 episodes |
| 2015 | Mr. Robinson | Halle Foster | Main role |
| 2017 | Neo Yokio | Helenist | Episode: "O, the Helenists..." |
| 2019 | Drunk History | Elizabeth Eckford | Episode: "Trailblazers" |
| 2019 | Gaslight | Sarah | Voice role; 9 episodes |
| 2020 | The Eddy | Julie | Main role |
| 2022 | Ziwe | Penny | Episode: "Critical Race Theory" |
| 2023 | RuPaul's Drag Race | Herself/Guest Judge | Episode: "Supersized Snatch Game" |
| 2023 | RuPaul's Drag Race: Untucked | Herself | Episode: "Untucked - Supersized Snatch Game" |
| 2024 | The Acolyte | Osha and Mae | Main dual roles |

### Music videos

| Year | Title | Artist(s) | Role | Ref. |
| 2016 | "Lemonade" | Beyoncé | Herself | |

## Awards and nominations

Stenberg is most acclaimed for her performance in The Hate U Give (2018). For The Hate U Give, she earned numerous accolades in the Best Actress and Best Breakthrough Performance categories, winning an African-American Film Critics Association Award, a Hollywood Film Award, a NAACP Image Award, and earning nominations for a Critics' Choice Award, a MTV Movie & TV Award, a Teen Choice Award, and a Washington D.C. Area Film Critics Association Award.
Stenberg's first nominations were for The Hunger Games (2012), and her first win was the BET YoungStars Award at the age of 17. She received nominations for her performance as an ill teenager in the drama film Everything, Everything (2017).