Zawe Ashton

Literary Agent: Eugenie Furniss

Zawe Ashton is an acclaimed actor, writer and director whose multidisciplinary career has seen her working alongside some of the industry's most respected talent.

Most recently, Ashton played the villain DarBenn in Marvel Studios and Disney’s ‘The Marvels’. Her numerous screen credits include ‘Mr Malcolm’s List’; ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’; ‘Velvet Buzzsaw’; ‘Nocturnal Animals’; ‘Wanderlust’; and notably, ‘Fresh Meat’. On stage, Ashton most recently starred in the Tony nominated revival of Harold Pinter’s ‘Betrayal’ both in the West End and on Broadway.

Her recent writing credits for stage include, ‘For All The Women Who Thought They Were Mad’ which opened simultaneously in New York with Soho Rep and in London with Hackney Showroom in 2019. Her first play ‘Harm's Way’ was shortlisted for the 2007 Verity Bargate Award and produced with the National Youth Theatre at The Lowry Theatre.

Her writer/director credits for screen include ‘The Place We Go to Hide’; and ‘Happy Toys’, which was nominated for Best British Short at the Raindance Film Festival in 2014. Her short documentary on the artist Lorraine O'Grady, premiered at The Tate Britain and The Brooklyn Museum as part of their groundbreaking Soul of a Nation exhibition. Zawe started her writing career as a poet, she was the youngest winner of the London Poetry Slam Championship in 2000.
Her debut novel, ‘Character Breakdown’ was published by Vintage in 2019 with Booker Prize winning author Bernardine Evaristo calling it ‘Funny, revealing, shocking and inventively structured’.

Ashton is a leading light in Penguin’s diversity scheme, Lit in Colour.

(Photo credit - Conor Clinch)