Face2face Africa will be honoring Haitian-born actor Jimmy Jean-Louis with the Impact in Entertainment Award at the FACE List Awards gala during the 2019 Pan-African Weekend in NYC July 18-21.
Jimmy, who grew up in the slums of Petion-Ville until age 12, became a Hollywood celebrity and a global cultural ambassador for Haiti . His deep love for his homeland caused him to shift his focus from his acting career to help rebuild Haiti, which was ravaged by the 7.0 earthquake on January 12th, 2010.
Earlier in his career, Jimmy worked as a dancer and a model in France, Spain, Italy, South Africa and England. He moved to Los Angeles in 1998 to pursue acting. His credits include “Tears of the sun” (Bruce Willis), “Phat Girlz” (Mo’Nique), NBC Hit show “Heroes“, CW show “Arrow“, CBS “Extant” with Oscar winner Halle Berry and produced by Steven Spielberg.
More recently, he was part of the cast of David O. Russell directed movie “Joy” with Jennifer Lawrence, Bradley Cooper and Robert DeNiro. Jimmy is also a regular on the TV show “CLAWS” for TNT and is the Producer/Star of the movie “Rattlesnakes”, coming on Hulu in August.
His most important role to date is playing the title character in “Toussaint Louverture” which won him BEST ACTOR at the Pan African Film Festival. He was also nominated BEST ACTOR at the Africa Movie Academy Awards in 2012. With an international appeal, Jimmy has been working in many parts of the world including France, England, Indonesia, Nigeria, Ghana, Mexico – making full use of his fluency in 5 languages: English, French, Spanish, Italian and Creole.
In response to the disaster and to provide immediate relief to the victims of the earthquake, Jimmy joined forces with the Pan American Development Foundation and the Organization of American States. HUFH-PADF-OAS and its partners provided support to more than 300,000 people and delivered in excess of 200 tons of supplies during the first 8 weeks of the disaster.
Named Pan American Development Foundation’s Ambassador for Haitian Children, he testified to Congress on their behalf in June 2010. Mr Jean-Louis has taken part in a series of campaigns for Haitian aid. He was an invited singer on the Quincy Jones project “We Are The World” to benefit humanitarian relief efforts in Haiti. Continue reading