Nine things we've learnt about Daniel Kaluuya

Black Panther star Daniel Kaluuya won this year's BAFTA Rising Star Award and now he's been nominated for the highest prize in the profession: a Best Actor Oscar for his performance in Hollywood horror film Get Out.

In 'Profile', Mark Coles talks to those who recognised the young Kaluuya's talents early on, including his A level drama teacher Jo Fenton, co-creator of Skins Bryan Elsley, playwright Roy Williams and the director Steve McQueen.

Here are 9 things we learnt about the up-and-coming actor...

The actor started writing at a very young age and wrote his first play, about two men working in McDonalds, when he was just nine years old. The work was a competition winner and was performed at London's Hampstead Theatre.

Roy Williams recalls how Daniel was "very loud and boisterous" as a child. To help keep him out of trouble, his mum put him down for an after school drama group – and he eventually got a place in an improvisation class.

Williams says, "it was the best thing that he could do for the energy and the passion that was inside of him." Daniel acknowledged the part this played in his success in his BAFTA acceptance speech: "I am a product of arts funding within the United Kingdom."

The actor is passionate about the genre. Holly Hughes, the former Literary and Education assistant at Hampstead theatre and talent spotter for Skins who got a mention in Daniel's recent acceptance speech, recalls how "he gave Iris, when she was born, my first daughter, a grime music compilation mix-tape."

Daniel got the job as a runner when he was 16. Roy Williams recalls how, even though Daniel's job was "basically to get coffee for everybody, he shows up in suits." He says that was the actor "to a tee... I'm gonna stand out, I'm gonna do my best."

Bryan Elsley says the actor, "has created for himself a very great work ethic; a very great application and focus. Daniel knows how to put in a day's work."

Daniel was recruited as a contributor writer for the Channel 4 drama when he was still at school, and it wasn't long before he had a part in the show too. Bryan Elsley recalls how he was "instantly at home" playing Posh Kenneth.

Before long, and while still in his teens, he was writing full hour-long episodes for the show. Elsley believes the "talented writer" is "one of the youngest people ever to write an episode of primetime drama anywhere in the world."

Daniel received rave reviews for his performance in Sucker Punch at the Royal Court Theatre.

He was required to lose three stone to play a young, talented boxer. This meant spurning his mother’s home-cooked food, much to her dismay!

Daniel's parents were both Ugandan immigrants. The actor's father returned to his home country but his mother stayed in London and raised Daniel and his older sister. As Bryan Elsley points out, "he comes from a very ordinary background."

The family lived in hostels for two years, and then on a council estate in Camden.

12 Years a Slave director Steve McQueen was "mesmerised" by Daniel’s performance in Sucker Punch, and the actor is now set to star in his new movie, Widows. McQueen praises Daniel, saying, "What he brought to the screen was a truth."

In 2013, Daniel was pulled off a London bus and pinned to the ground by police officers, simply because he looked like someone who had been acting suspiciously.

Bryan Elsley thinks the actor is driven by a sense of fairness: "Daniel has views about the way the world works and he is not afraid to express them: about society... how people of colour, perhaps, have been excluded" from the media and from mainstream culture.

At the awards ceremony, Daniel rounded off his speech saying, "Mum, you're the reason why I started; you're the reason why I'm here and you're the reason why I keep going... thank you for everything."