Lizz Njagah is an international stage, TV and film actress and model. She has just finished working on The Return of Lazarus, a feature film shot in Thessaloniki, Greece, that is due for release May 2012 and is currently filming in Lagos, Nigeria continuing work on Season 4 of MNET Africa’s long-running Soap Opera Tinsel where she plays series regular Tare Duke.
Born and bred in Nairobi, Kenya, her professional acting career began after she joined the Kenya National Theatre in 2000. Here she participated in the staging of various plays, including the Planet Theatre’s adaptation of Margaret Ogola’s novel The River and the Source, in which she played the lead role of Nyabera. The production later went on a nation-wide tour.
Lizz also worked with a number of other established theatre groups in Nairobi such as the Visions Theatre Group, the Heartstrings Ensemble and the Mbalamwezi Players. In mid 2000 she was discovered by James Falkland, then director of Phoenix Players, the only repertory theatre company of its kind in East Africa.
Phoenix Players awarded her the prestigious two-year KWAL scholarship, an intensive internship program whose graduates include established actress Lorna Irungu, NTV’s Janet Kanini Ikua and Capital FM’s Charles Kiarie. During her time at Phoenix Players, she appeared in many plays including the musical Once on This Island, Othello, Merchant of Venice, Servant of Two Masters, Kidnap Game and Lion and the Jewel to name but a few. Lizz then ventured into TV and film, playing the lead character Nancy, in the TV series Makutano Junction which aired all across Africa on MNET’s Africa Magic Channel and the lead character Dr. Salma in Kenya’s first medical drama Saints.
Starring in her first feature, she played the role of a lawyer in the critically acclaimed film Behind Closed Doors. Lizz then went on tour through South Africa, Mozambique and Kenya with Seok Ho Lee’s play Sara Bartmaan and the four Karmas. She featured in the German film Die Winterreise and in the Finnish short film Burungo.
In 2008, Lizz was held up as a role model by Unilever East Africa’s Charity campaign ‘Professionals make Professionals’ that encouraged young girls to stay in school and work hard. She recently appeared in the feature Me, My Wife And Her Guru which premiered in March 2011.
I’m ready for my closeup!
Accounts of my first of five days on ‘The Return of Lazarus’ Feature being filmed on location in North Greece… So anyway, we were to be on the road by 7.30am, only thing was about 6am, it started to drizzle.. Production weren’t very amused cause all the scenes that were planned for today were exteriors, and we couldn’t shoot in the rain. We decided to make our way to the location anyway, hoping the...
Greece bound for ‘Return of Lazarus’ shoot
I landed in Thessaloniki, Greece at 12 noon on Saturday the 15th October, after flying in from Lagos via Rome. I must say great flight, great legroom though Alitalia felt like a low cost airline.. Juice and biscuits on a flight longer than an hour? Emirates gives at least a cold meal. Anyhu, I’m in Greece to work on a film. It’s called Return of Lazarus and I play the part of an immigrant that falls in love with a...
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