Mamoudou Athie

Mamoudou Athie is an American-Mauritanian actor who established his name in American theater in productions at such distinguished theaters as Williamstown Theatre Festival, Yale Repertory Theatre, Soho Repertory Theatre, and Broadway’s Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater, and then won roles on TV and the big screen, starting with a supporting role in writer-director Michael Almereyda’s well-reviewed, fact-based drama, Experimenter: The Stanley Milgram Story (2015), starring Peter Sarsgaard, Winona Ryder, Taryn Manning, Anton Yelchin, John Leguizamo, Lori Singer, Dennis Haysbert, and Anthony Edwards, and premiering at the Sundance film festival.

Athie’s second film credit was in Canadian filmmaker Stella Meghie’s Jean of the Joneses (2016), with Taylour Paige, Sherri Shepherd, and Gloria Reuben, and premiering at the South by Southwest film festival. Athie had his first significant film role in writer-director Geremy Jasper’s Patti Cake$ (2017), with Danielle MacDonald and Cathy Moriarty, which was the recipient of a distributor bidding war (won by Fox Searchlight) after its Sundance festival premiere.

Featured in another festival-premiered indie movie, Athie joined the cast of Juno Temple, Julia Garner, and Alessandro Nivola in director-writer-producer Liz W. Garcia’s Tribeca-premiering One Percent More Humid (2017). Athie’s first high-profile movie as an actor was in a supporting turn in co-writer-director James Ponsoldt’s critically-panned movie version of (co-writer) Dave Eggers’ novel, The Circle (2017), with Emma Watson, Tom Hanks, John Boyega, Karen Gillan, Patton Oswalt, Glenne Headly, and Bill Paxton.

Athie played a fictionalized Washington Post journalist opposite Alfred Molina in the Gary Hart drama, The Front Runner (2018), with Hugh Jackman portraying Hart under co-writer Jason Reitman’s direction. Mamoudou Athie played Kristen Stewart, Vincent Cassel, T.J. Miller, and Jessica Henwick in the big-budget sci-fi horror movie, Underwater (2020), which lost tens of millions for producer-distributor 20^th Century Fox.

After Athie had his first starring role in writer-director Prentice Penny’s drama for Netflix, Uncorked (2020), he had another starring role in another streaming (Amazon Prime) movie, made through Jason Blum’s Welcome to the Blumhouse film series, writer-director Emmanuel Osei-Kuffour’s sci-fi horror drama, Black Box (2020). Athie’s first role in a blockbuster franchise series was with a supporting turn in co-writer-director Colin Trevorrow’s $1-billion-grossing sequel, Jurassic World Dominion (2022), with Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Laura Dern, Sam Neill, and BD Wong.

In his first performance as a voice actor, Mamoudou Athie co-starred in Disney/Pixar’s under-performing Elemental (2023), with Leah Lewis and Catherine O’Hara, with box office returns falling far short of its $200 million budget. Athie co-starred opposite Jamie Foxx, Tommy Lee Jones, and Jurnee Smollett in Amazon’s legal drama, The Burial (date to be announced). Working with acclaimed Greek filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos, Athie co-starred in the drama, AND (date to be announced), opposite Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons, Willem Dafoe, Hong Chau, and Margaret Qualley.