11/03/2024
Chipo Chung is a Zimbabwean actress based in London. Chung was born as a refugee in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Her given name Chipo means "gift" in the Shona language. She spent her first two years in refugee camps in Mozambique with thousands of young people who were escaping the war in then-Rhodesia.
Chung was raised in Harare where she attended Dominican Convent High School and developed her acting with the mixed-race theater company Over the Edge. At eighteen, she moved to the United States where her mother, educationist and former minister of education in Zimbabwe Fay Chung, was working for the United Nations.
Chung first studied directing at Yale University and then trained as an actor at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) in London, graduating in 2003.
In 2021, Chung joined the cast of HBO/ BBC co-production His Dark Materials playing the angel Xaphania. She features in a number of Apple TV+ series including Foundation and Silo. In 2022, it was announced that she would be playing Eleanor Bennett in the Hulu series Black Cake, based on the best-selling novel by Charmaine Wilkerson. The series is produced by Oprah Winfrey’s Harpo Films and Aaron Kaplan’s Kapital Entertainment.
Chung reads a number of titles on Audible, most notably Glory by NoViolet Bulawayo, which was a 2022 finalist for the Booker Prize, as well as books by Petina Gappah and Tsitsi Dangarembgwa.
She was recognized as one of the BBC's 100 women of 2014. She was nominated for Best Actress at the Zimbabwe International Women’s Awards (ZIWA) in 2015 and honoured with a Special Recognition Award for her contribution to Media and the Arts at the Zimbabwe Achievers Awards in London in 2017.
Chung co-founded the charity SAFE-Kenya which develops theatre for social change in Kenya, focusing on HIV education and abandoning clitoridectomy. She worked closely with the charity Peace Direct to start Envision Zimbabwe, a women's trust that works towards consensus-building and peace in Zimbabwe. She also sits on the RADA Council and British Equity's International Committee for Artists' Freedom (ICAF).
This women's month we celebrate .chung