Delroy Lindo was born in 1952 in Lewisham,[2] the son of Jamaican parents. His mother had immigrated to the UK in 1951 to work as a nurse,[3] and his father worked in various jobs.[4] Lindo grew up in nearby Eltham and attended Woolwich Polytechnic School for Boys. He became interested in acting as a child when he appeared in a nativity play at school.
When he was a teenager, Lindo moved with his mother to Toronto. When he was 16, they moved to San Francisco.[5] At the age of 24, Lindo began his studies in acting at the American Conservatory Theater, graduating in 1979.[6]
For a decade from the early 1980s, Lindo's career was more focused on theatre acting than film, although he has said this was not a conscious decision.[7] In 1982 he debuted on Broadway in "Master Harold"...and the Boys, directed by the play's South African author Athol Fugard. By 1988, Lindo had earned a Tony nomination for his portrayal of Herald Loomis in August Wilson's Joe Turner's Come and Gone.[8][9]
Lindo returned to film in the science fiction film Salute of the Jugger (1990), which has become a cult classic. Although he had turned down Spike Lee for a role in Do the Right Thing, Lee cast him as Woody Carmichael in the drama Crooklyn (1994), which brought Lindo notice. His other roles with Lee include West Indian Archie, a psychotic gangster, in Malcolm X, and a starring role as a neighborhood drug dealer in Clockers.
In 1998 Lindo co-starred as African-American explorer Matthew Henson, in the TV film Glory & Honor, directed by Kevin Hooks. It portrayed Henson's nearly 20-year partnership with Commander Robert Peary in Arctic exploration, and their effort to find the Geographic North Pole in 1909. Lindo received a Satellite Award for best actor for his portrayal of Henson. Lindo has continued to work in television, and in 2006 was seen on the short-lived NBC drama Kidnapped.[10]
Lindo had a small role in the 1995 film Congo, playing the corrupt Captain Wanta.[11] Lindo was not credited for the role. He played an angel in the comedy film A Life Less Ordinary (1997).
In the British film Wondrous Oblivion (2003), directed by Paul Morrison, Lindo starred as Dennis Samuels, the father of a Jamaican immigrant family in London in the 1950s. Lindo said he made the film in honor of his parents, who had similarly moved to London in those years.[5]
In 2007, Lindo began an association with Berkeley Repertory Theatre in Berkeley, California, when he directed Tanya Barfield's play The Blue Door. In the autumn of 2008, Lindo revisited August Wilson's play Joe Turner's Come and Gone, directing a production at the Berkeley Rep.[12] In 2010, he played the role of elderly seer Bynum in David Lan's production of Joe Turner at the Young Vic Theatre in London.[13]
Lindo was in the main cast of the Fox crime drama The Chicago Code (2011), the NBC fantasy series Believe, and the ABC soap Blood & Oil (2015). In 2017, Lindo began playing Adrian Boseman in the CBS legal drama The Good Fight, a role he would star in for the series' first four seasons and reprise as a guest star in its fifth season.[14][15] Lindo was cast as the lead in an ABC drama pilot Harlem's Kitchen in March 2020.[16]
In 2015, Lindo was expected to play Marcus Garvey in a biopic of the black nationalist historical figure that had been in pre-production for several years.[17][18][19] In recent years Lindo has appeared in the action film Point Break (2015), the drama Battlecreek (2017), the horror film Malicious (2018), and The Harder They Fall (2021) as Bass Reeves. Lindo appeared in Da 5 Bloods (2020) in another collaboration with Spike Lee. For his role in Da 5 Bloods, Lindo received critical acclaim and a number of accolades.[20][21]
Entertainment Weekly said of Hulu's comedy series Unprisoned (2023), "Delroy Lindo is so good it should be illegal."[22]
Upon learning more about the Windrush generation, both through his mother's account and his own role as a Jamaican immigrant in Wondrous Oblivion, Lindo became inspired to study the subject and history further. In 2014, he completed a master's thesis from New York University's Gallatin School.[25]
