Sharlto Copley (born November 27, 1973) is a South African producer, actor, and director who has produced and co-directed short films which have appeared at the Cannes Film Festival, as well as commercials and music videos. He co-founded a media production company, visual effects company and a talent agency. He is perhaps best known for playing the roles of Wikus van der Merwe in the Oscar-nominated science fiction film District 9 and H. M. Murdock in the 2010 adaptation of The A-Team.
A year after leaving high school, Copley first met director Neill Blomkamp; Copley was 22 and Blomkamp was 16, and Copley provided Blomkamp with use of computers at his production company to assist the company with pitches for various projects and allow Blomkamp to further pursue his passion and talent for 3D animation and design. Copley starred in Peter Jackson and Neill Blomkamp's District 9 where he plays the leading role of Wikus van der Merwe, an Afrikaner bureaucrat assigned to relocate a race of extraterrestrial creatures unexpectedly stranded on Earth, referred to as "prawns", from District 9, a military-guarded slum in Johannesburg, South Africa, to an internment camp outside the city. He improvised all of his dialogue in the film. In 2009, Copley won the Favorite Hero award at the IGN Summer Movie awards and Best Performance of 2009 for his role in District 9. In 2010, Copley produced, wrote and directed an insert for the South African Music Awards called "Wikus and Charlize", featuring fellow South African star Charlize Theron. The clip features Copley as Wikus attempting to track down Charlize in Hollywood to help him present the Award for Best Afrikaans Pop album. Copley then starred alongside Liam Neeson, Bradley Cooper and Quinton "Rampage" Jackson in the feature film adaptation of The A-Team, which was produced by Ridley Scott and Tony Scott. Copley starred as H. M. Murdock (originally played by Dwight Schultz in the TV series) and adopted a Southern American accent for the role. He also imitated other accents, including Scottish, English, Australian, and his native South African. Schultz praised Copley's performance and stated that Copley was the only actor true to his character. Copley guest co-hosted WWE Raw on 7 June 2010, along with his A-Team co-stars Bradley Cooper and Quinton Jackson. Copley will star in Elysium, along with Matt Damon and Jodie Foster an upcoming science-fiction film written and directed by Neill Blomkamp. Despite similarities with District 9, Blomkamp has confirmed it will not be a sequel. Copley was cast in Men in Black 3 as "a fast-talking Yoda type alien". He later left the project. Copley appears in The Europa Report - the story of a crew of international astronauts who are sent on a private mission to Jupiter's fourth moon. It was recently announced that Copley will star as villain, Adrian Pryce, in Spike Lee's remake of 2003 South Korean film Oldboy. He was also cast as the male lead opposite Angelina Jolie in Maleficent. Maleficent is Disney's $200million Sleeping Beauty origin story, that tells the story from the perspective of Maleficent - the queen who casts the spell on sleeping beauty.
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