Named for the Zulu and Xhosa word for "power," Amandla is a force to be reckoned with.
She was born in Los Angeles, California, to Karen Brailsford and Tom Stenberg. Her mother is African-American and her father is Danish (and of part Inuit-Greenlandic ancestry). Amandla landed the first of her Disney catalog modeling shoots when she was four years old and has shot numerous national commercials, most notably for McDonald's with Ronald McDonald, for Walmart with DJ Tony, Anthony Okungbowa from Ellen DeGeneres (LeVar Burton directed), and for Build The Dream. This moving, Boeing- sponsored PSA, which raised funds for a national memorial in Washington, D.C., honoring Martin Luther King, Jr., premiered during the weekend of President Obama's inauguration in January 2009 on Meet the Press (1947).
In the summer and fall of 2010, the actress shot her first feature, Colombiana (2011), an action-thriller starring Zoe Saldana whose character, Cataleya Restrepo, Amandla plays as a child. She opens the movie, setting the stage for Saldana's avenging assassin. The Luc Besson vehicle is quintessential Besson, featuring lots of daring stunts, some of which Amandla performed herself. On set to help Amandla hone her natural athletic abilities was David Belle, the French-born creator of Parkour.
In March 2011, Amandla filmed the Hallmark Channel movie Un goût de romance (2012). In April 2011, Lionsgate announced that Amandla had landed the role of Rue in the screen adaptation of Suzanne Collins' popular young adult series, Hunger Games (2012). For her heart-breaking performance, Amandla earned an NAACP Image Award nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture. She also won (with Jennifer Lawrence) a Teen Choice Award for Choice Movie Chemistry.
In the short film Mercy (2013) Amandla starred as the daughter of Paula Patton and singer Robin Thicke, who wrote and directed. She played herself, poking fun at how frequently her name is mispronounced, in a skit with friend Kiernan Shipka from Mad Men (2007) for Funny or Die's Child Star Psychologist 3 with Kiernan Shipka (2013). Amandla landed the recurring role of Macey, the daughter of Captain Frank Irving (Orlando Jones), on season one of Fox's Sleepy Hollow (2013). In the summer of 2015, Amandla played series regular Halle Foster on Mr. Robinson (2015) opposite Craig Robinson.
In addition to on-camera jobs, Amandla has put her sensitive ear to work in voice-over gigs for both film and television. She lent her voice to Rio 2 (2014) in the role of Bia, a high-flying feathery spawn of Blu (Jesse Eisenberg) and Jewel (Anne Hathaway). A gifted musician, she plays the violin, drums and guitar. In 2009, Amandla performed the violin with Los Angeles Unified School District's Honors Orchestra at the Luckman Fine Arts Complex. Her involvement with the RockSTAR Music Education program landed her gigs on the guitar and drums at the House of Blues and the Hard Rock Café, as well as a studio session with producer/ engineer Gerry Brown, after her band won RockSTAR's Battle of the Bands. In 2013 Amandla began performing on the violin and singing harmonies at LA venues with singer/songwriter Zander Hawley. The folk-rock duo, known as Honeywater, released their first EP in August 2015.
When she's not making music, Amandla is making noise on social media. Declared "one of the most incendiary voices of her generation" by Dazed magazine, which featured Amandla on the cover of its Autumn 2015 issue, the social activist helped catapult the topic of cultural appropriation into public discourse when she posted her school project video, "Don't Cash Crop My Cornrows," onto her Tumblr in 2014. She is the co-author, with Stranger Comics' Sebastian Jones, of the comic book "Niobe: She is Life" published November 4, 2015.
Amandla is a youth ambassador for No Kid Hungry (Jeff Bridges serves as spokesperson for the charity's umbrella organization, Share Our Strength), and supports the Ubuntu Education Fund, which nurtures children "from cradle to career" in Port Elizabeth, South Africa.
