GSA alumnus and Advisory Board member Kobna Holdbrook-Smith has been awarded an MBE for his Services to Drama in the Queen’s Birthday Honours 2020. Kobna is an Olivier Award winner for Best Actor in a Musical 2019 for his role as Ike Turner in Tina the Musical. Kobna Holdbrook-Smith graduated from GSA in 2000.  With a starring role in the new greenlit Larry Levan film, Untitled Garage Paradise, and a short called Broken Shelter in post-production, Kobna's most recent film was Mary Poppins Returns. On TV he has recently appeared in Dark Heart as DS Dave Pulford and in Motherland as Nick. Before that he played Vicar Glen Peters in The Split on BBC1. Kobna was last on stage playing Laertes in Hamlet at the Barbican alongside Benedict Cumberbatch. His previous theatre credits include NT50: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Edward II, Antigone and Death and the King’s Horseman for the National Theatre, The Low Road for the Royal Court, Feast, Joe Turner’s Come and Gone and The Changeling for the Young Vic, Love’s Labour’s Lost for Shakespeare’s Globe and Detaining Justice, Seize the Day, Fabulation, and The Gem of the Ocean for the Tricycle Theatre. Other television credits include Class, Capital, Crackanory, Worricker Trilogy, and The Last Panthers. Holdbrook-Smith’s other film work includes Paddington 2, The Commuter, Justice League, Doctor Strange, The Double, Ghost Stories, and The Dark Outside.