Joey Ansah

• 1. Introduction

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  Joey Ansah was born on the 24th of November 1982 in Hackney, London, the second son of Kofi Ansah, a Ghanaian fashion designer, and his Devon-born wife Nicola. That mix of backgrounds would prove fitting for a career spent moving between worlds: film and television, acting and stunts, Hollywood blockbusters and passion projects built on a love of video games.

  By the time he was thirty, Ansah had fought Matt Damon on screen in one of the most discussed action sequences of the 2000s, earned an MTV Movie Award nomination, and quietly begun constructing a franchise that would change how fans thought a beloved fighting game could be adapted. The questions worth asking are not just how he got there, but how a childhood in Ghana and a watching a single performer in a Star Wars prequel pointed the way.

• 2. Growing Up Between Worlds

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  Between the ages of ten and fifteen, Ansah lived in Ghana, where he studied Tae Kwon Do for four years. That martial arts foundation, laid far from London, would become the technical bedrock of his later screen work.

  Back in England, he began auditioning for stunt roles in films. The spark, by his own account, came from watching Ray Park play Darth Maul in the 1999 film. Park's physicality showed a young Ansah what a trained martial artist could accomplish on a major screen, and it set him on a path that would eventually put him opposite some of the biggest action stars in the world.

  His professional screen work began modestly. His first important acting role came in the UK indie film Love Struck in 2005. That same year, notable television appearances followed in BBC productions Spooks and Batman Begins, the latter casting him as a member of the League of Shadows.

• 3. The Bourne Fight

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  In 2007, Ansah appeared in The Bourne Ultimatum as Desh Bouksani, an assassin sent to track down Jason Bourne. The role is a minor one by screen time, but the fight scene it anchored became something else entirely.

  The extended set-piece between Ansah and Matt Damon drew notice from critics, with at least one reviewer calling it among the best fight sequences ever filmed. Ansah performed all of his own stunts in the sequence, a fact that gave the encounter a physical credibility rare in studio action films.

  The recognition was formal as well. In 2008, the fight earned Ansah a nomination for Best Fight at the 17th MTV Movie Awards. For a British actor still building his resume, it was a moment that announced his particular combination of skills to a global audience.

• 4. Street Fighter and Fan-Driven Filmmaking

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  Ansah describes himself as a self-proclaimed fan of the Street Fighter video game series. That fandom had a direct creative consequence: in 2010 he choreographed, co-wrote, and directed a short film called Street Fighter: Legacy, playing the character Akuma himself.

  The motivation behind the project was specific. Ansah wanted Legacy to be the most accurate screen depiction of the series, deliberately different from the two theatrically released films that had come before it. Working with collaborator Christian Howard, who had appeared in the short alongside him, Ansah turned that proof-of-concept into a full live-action series.

  Street Fighter: Assassin's Fist arrived in 2014, again with Ansah co-writing, co-directing, and playing Akuma. The collaboration with Howard continued into Street Fighter: Resurrection in 2016, and the pair have been developing a further instalment titled Street Fighter: World Warrior.

• 5. A Working Career in British Film

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  Outside the Bourne and Street Fighter chapters, Ansah built a steady presence across British independent cinema and television. Roles in Left for Dead and Underground in 2007 kept him rooted in the martial arts film space. Appearances in Attack the Block, Snow White and the Huntsman, and The Numbers Station followed in the early 2010s.

  His television work ranged from the BBC's Gideon's Daughter in 2006 to the Apple TV series Slow Horses in 2022, where he played Agent Pierce. In 2023 he appeared as Alec Fenwick in Who Is Erin Carter? on Netflix.

  By 2020 he appeared in The Old Guard as Keane, sharing the screen with a major international cast. Later credits include Hounds of War in 2024 and The Running Man in 2025, where he plays Captain Holloway, suggesting a career still actively expanding into larger productions.