Pamela Nomvete


Pamela Nomvete is an Ethiopian-born South African actress.

Life

Pamela Nomvete was born in Ethiopia to South African parents. She spent her childhood in many different countries, and attended boarding school in the United Kingdom, later studying at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama. At one point she lived in Manchester, where her sister was a student. After working as an actress in the United Kingom, Nomvete moved to Johannesburg, South Africa in 1994, after the election of Nelson Mandela as President and the fall of apartheid.
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 unravelled, at one point she was living in her car, selling clothes for food and cigarettes.
In Zulu Love Letter, Nomvete played Thandi, a single mother and journalist struggling to commmunicate with her estranged thirteen-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 appeared in the British soap opera Coronation Street, playing Mandy Kamara, an ex-girlfriend of the character Lloyd Mullaney.
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