The Most Famous
ACTORS from Kenya
This page contains a list of the greatest Kenyan Actors. The pantheon dataset contains 13,578 Actors, 4 of which were born in Kenya. This makes Kenya the birth place of the 83rd most number of Actors behind Bangladesh, and Trinidad and Tobago.
Top 4
The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the most legendary Kenyan Actors of all time. This list of famous Kenyan Actors is sorted by HPI (Historical Popularity Index), a metric that aggregates information on a biography's online popularity.
1. Deep Roy (b. 1949)
With an HPI of 58.77, Deep Roy is the most famous Kenyan Actor. His biography has been translated into 21 different languages on wikipedia.
Gurdeep "Deep" Roy (born Mohinder Purba; 1 December 1957) is a Kenyan-British actor, stuntman and puppeteer. At 132 centimetres (4 ft 4 in) tall, he has often been cast as diminutive characters, such as Teeny Weeny in The NeverEnding Story, the Oompa-Loompas in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Keenser in Star Trek and its sequels, and in television series such as The X-Files, Doctor Who and Eastbound & Down.
2. Edi Gathegi (b. 1979)
With an HPI of 57.19, Edi Gathegi is the 2nd most famous Kenyan Actor. His biography has been translated into 31 different languages.
Edi Mūe Gathegi (; born March 10, 1979) is a Kenyan-American actor. He had his breakthrough playing Dr. Jeffrey "Big Love" Cole on the fourth season of the television series House (2007), followed by his roles as Cheese in the 2007 film Gone Baby Gone, vampire Laurent in the films Twilight and its sequel The Twilight Saga: New Moon, and as Darwin in X-Men: First Class. He played cover operative Matias Solomon on The Blacklist, which he reprised for the spinoff series The Blacklist: Redemption. Gathegi is also featured in the AMC series Into the Badlands as Baron Jacobee. He has also played a leading role in Startup, a television drama series on Crackle. Since 2022, Gathegi has played engineer and entrepreneur Dev Ayesa in the Apple TV+ original science fiction space drama series For All Mankind, and played Mister Terrific in the DC Universe film Superman (2025).
3. Zena Marshall (1926 - 2009)
With an HPI of 52.95, Zena Marshall is the 3rd most famous Kenyan Actor. Her biography has been translated into 21 different languages.
Zena Moyra Marshall (1 January 1926 – 10 July 2009) was a British actress of film and television, best known for her appearances as Miss Taro in Dr. No (1962) and as Countess Ponticelli in Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines (1965).
4. Mary Oyaya (b. 0)
With an HPI of 24.13, Mary Oyaya is the 4th most famous Kenyan Actor. Her biography has been translated into 15 different languages.
Mary Oyaya is a Kenyan actress and model. She is best known for the role of Jedi Master Luminara Unduli in the American blockbuster film, Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones.
People
Pantheon has 4 people classified as Kenyan actors born between 1926 and 1979. Of these 4, 3 (75.00%) of them are still alive today. The most famous living Kenyan actors include Deep Roy, Edi Gathegi, and Mary Oyaya. The most famous deceased Kenyan actors include Zena Marshall. As of April 2024, 1 new Kenyan actors have been added to Pantheon including Mary Oyaya.
