Boris Frederic Cecil Tay-Natey Ofuatey-Kodjoe, better known as Boris Kodjoe, is a German actor known for his roles as Jason in the 2000 film Love & Basketball (2000), and the sports-courier agent Damon Carter on the Showtime drama series Soul Food (2000).Kodjoe was born in Vienna, Austria, the son of Ursula, a German psychologist of partially Jewish descent, and Eric Kodjoe, a Ghanaian physician who is of the Nzema people. He was named after Russian poet and writer Boris Pasternak. Kodjoe’s great-grandmother was Jewish and died in the Holocaust; his maternal grandmother survived the war in hiding. Kodjoe’s parents divorced when he was six years old. Kodjoe is fluent in German, English, and French, and speaks some Spanish. He has a brother named Patrick and two sisters named Nadja and Lara.
Boris Kodjoe
Movies
Nurse
By day Abby Russell is a dedicated nurse, someone you wouldn’t hesitate to trust your life with. But by night, her real work begins…using her smoldering sexuality she lures cheating men to their brutal deaths and exposes them for who they really are. When a younger nurse starts to suspect…
Fun Facts
Grew up in Freiburg, Germany.
Has a brother, Patrick, and a sister, Nadja
His mother, Ursula Kodjoe, is a psychologist from Germany, and his father, Eric Kodjoe, is a physician from Ghana, West Africa.
Fluent in English, French and German. He can also speak some Spanish.
Named one of the "50 Most Beautiful People in the World 2002.""
He once aspired to play professional tennis until a back injury ended his career aspirations.
20 June 2004: Engaged to Soul Food (1997) co-star
Quotes
[on his family history] My grandmother's part Jewish, which makes my mother and myself Jewish, by blood. But we weren't raised in the Jewish faith... on my mother's side, my maternal great-grandmother [was Jewish]. It was ironic in a way, because my grandmother wasn't pure-blooded Aryan, and therefore she wasn't considered a member of the master race. But she got pregnant by my grandfather who was 200% German. So, it was quite a tumultuous time for her, because they had to hide her for her to survive the Second World War.