Career
Born in Islington, London, to Ghanaian parents, Laird trained at the Anna Scher Theatre. Early roles included a 1976 role in a television adaptation of the Peter Prince novel Playthings, directed by Stephen Frears, and several Play Foreign Todays: Victims of Apartheid by Tom Clarke (1978), Barrie Keeffe"s Waterloo Sunset (1979) and The Vanishing Army by Robert Holles (1980). He then had breakthrough roles in the 1979 film Quadrophenia - as Ferdy, a drug supplier for the main character Jimmy - and in Franco Rosso"s 1980 cult classic Babylon as Beefy.
Later appearances include the 1986 Doctor Who serial Mindwarp as the guard commander Frax.
In 2015 Laird appeared as Vince Thuram in the British Broadcasting Corporation television series Death in Paradise episode 4.5.