Johnny Sekka

Johnny Sekka (July 21, 1934 – September 14, 2006) was a British film and television actor. Born Lamine Sekka in Dakar, Senegal, the youngest of five siblings, his Gambian father died shortly after his birth. When he was still young, his Senegalese mother sent him to live with an aunt in Georgetown (now Janjanbureh) in The Gambia, but he ran away to live on the streets in the capital, then known as Bathurst (now Banjul). In the Second World War, h... more

Johnny Sekka (July 21, 1934 – September 14, 2006) was a British film and television actor. Born Lamine Sekka in Dakar, Senegal, the youngest of five siblings, his Gambian father died shortly after his birth. When he was still young, his Senegalese mother sent him to live with an aunt in Georgetown (now Janjanbureh) in The Gambia, but he ran away to live on the streets in the capital, then known as Bathurst (now Banjul). In the Second World War, he worked as an interpreter at an American air base in Dakar. He then worked on the docks. When he was 20, he stowed away on a ship to Marseilles, and lived for three years in Paris. He arrived in the UK in 1952, and served in the RAF for two years, but then West Indian actor Earl Cameron persuaded him to become an actor, and he attended RADA. He became a stagehand at the Royal Court Theatre, and appeared on stage in various plays from 1958. He had a small part in the 1958 film version of Look Back in Anger, directed by Tony Richardson, who had... less