Nelsan Ellis

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Nelsan Ellis (born c. 1979 in Harvey, Illinois) is a playwright and actor, best known for portraying the character "Lafayette" on the HBO series True Blood.

Born in Illinois, Ellis and his mother moved to Bessemer after her divorce six years later. He attended Jess Lanier High School for a year, then transfered to McAdory High School. He left Alabama at 15 to move back to Illinois. He graduated from Thornridge High School in Dolton in 1997.

Ellis went on to attend the prestigious Juilliard School in New York City. There the staging of his semi-autobiographical play Ugly won the Lincoln Center's Martin E. Segal Award. He h played the part of "Hoffa" in a 2002 short film entitled Lost. His first television role came in 2005 with a part in the telefilm Warm Springs which starred Kenneth Branagh as Franklin D. Roosevelt.

He was cast as a flamboyent cross-dressing short-order cook and gigolo "Lafayette Reynolds" True Blood, a television series based on the Sookie Stackhouse books by Charlaine Harris. He won a 2008 International Press Academy Satellite Award as "best supporting actor in a television series" for his performance.

References

  • Sharp, Dave (August 9, 2009) "'True Blood's' Lafayette a glamorously shady character." Birmingham News
  • "Nelsan Ellis." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 9 Aug 2009, 15:55 UTC. 9 Aug 2009 [1].

External links

Retrieved from "http://bhamwiki.com/w/index.php?title=Nelsan_Ellis&oldid=49545"