THE LOOK: mr david oyelowo

Looking and sounding rather too debonair to be chowing his lunch down in a small trailer on location in London's Victoria at 10am, a sharply tailored Mr Oyelowo stands out in life as he does on the screen. There's a quiet force behind the LA-based actor's dark, fixed gaze and crisp, thespian accent: character traits he's put to good use in his latest role as the corporate tycoon Mr Steven Jacobs in director Mr Rupert Wyatt's Rise of the Planet of the Apes, in which he stars alongside Mr James Franco.

Raised by a royal Nigerian family in south London, Mr Oyelowo's varied upbringing has undoubtedly played a part in preparing him for the diverse roles he has enjoyed over the past few years, from kings and soldiers to doctors and romantic leads. Noted, at the age of 24, for being the first black actor to play a monarch for the Royal Shakespeare Company as Henry VI, he has since worked alongside Mr James McAvoy as a sympathetic doctor in the Oscar-winning The Last King of Scotland, played a slick London MI5 agent in the BBC series Spooks, and has recently finished filming for George Lucas' film Red Tails in which he plays a WWII American fighter pilot.