Lester was born in Birmingham, the son of Jamaican immigrants, Monica, a medical secretary, and Reginald, a manager for a contract cleaning company.

[3][4][5] From the age of nine, Lester sang as a boy treble in the choir of St Chad's Cathedral, Birmingham.

[6][7] After leaving Archbishop Masterson RC School,[8] Lester attended Joseph Chamberlain Sixth Form College for one year,[9] before winning a place at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) in 1986,[8] and completing three years of training at RADA in London,[7] graduating in 1989.

In 1993, he played Anthony Hope in the National Theatre's production of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.

He is known for playing a big-time con artist named Michael "Mickey Bricks" Stone on the BBC television series Hustle between 2004 and 2012.

[21] Lester played campaign manager Henry Burton in Mike Nichols' film Primary Colors (1998), based on the novel by Anonymous (Joe Klein).

He appeared in Kenneth Branagh's Love's Labour's Lost, a musical adaptation of the William Shakespeare play, set in the 1930s.

In The Day After Tomorrow, Lester had a small but important role as Simon, one of the three researchers who drink a toast of "twelve-year-old Scotch" shortly before freezing to death.

He filmed scenes for Spider-Man 3 (2007), as a research scientist who is sought after by the Sandman (Thomas Haden Church) to find a cure for his ailing daughter.

[24][25][26] In 2007, Lester took part in Empire's Children, a Channel 4 documentary exploring the journey taken by the "Windrush Generation" to the United Kingdom.