King Mustafa Obafemi

Ewell's father fought in Vietnam and served six years in the United States military while Dwight's mother took care of Dwight and his younger sister. Unhappy in her marriage, at 21 years old, Dwight's mother took the children up North where she felt that she could begin pursuing her career as a singer. The three moved several times before ending up in the Stella Wright Housing Projects on Prince Street, in Newark, New Jersey.

Ewell and his sister attended the Louise A. Spencer Elementary School in Newark in the mid-1970s. In later years, he was enrolled in The Gifted and Talented Program in the same school. At the age of nine, he began writing plays that the teachers would allow him to direct and the students to perform.

At the age of 13, Ewell auditioned for and was accepted into Arts High School in Newark, New Jersey. In 1986, he graduated, and in the fall of that year he attended the State University of New York's Theater Arts and Film Divisions Acting Program for four years.^[3]

Ewell has worked extensively in independent and art house films. Ewell is perhaps best known for his performance in Kevin Smith's Chasing Amy, in which he plays the role of "Hooper X", an African American writer of black militant comic books, who is secretly gay but employs the public persona of a violent militant who denounces the Star Wars trilogy as racist.^[4][5][6]

Ewell has collaborated with director Hal Hartley on short and feature-length films; including Amateur^[7] and Flirt.^[8][9][10]

He has also worked with director Daisy von Scherler Mayer twice, in the films Party Girl^[11] and The Guru.^[1]

Ewell has worked with film producer Christine Vachon twice, on the films Stonewall^[12] and Kiss Me, Guido.^[13]

Ewell starred in writer-director Patrik-Ian Polk's 2000 film Punks.^[14]

Following his last film role in 2011, he was performing as a stage actor in the Los Angeles area prior to suffering an unspecified injury in 2013.^[15]

He made a comeback to acting in films with his role as Tom in Hal Hartley's Where To Land in 2025, and has made many public appearances since then, most notably with Kevin Smith at Smodcastle Cinemas in 2024 for a screening of Chasing Amy with a Q&A after the film.^[16][17]