Biography
Nelsan Ellis was an American actor and playwright. He trained at the Juilliard School after earlier studies at Illinois State University.
Ellis was best known for playing Lafayette Reynolds in the HBO series True Blood (2008–2014). He received a Satellite Award for the role. His film credits include The Express (2008), The Soloist (2009), Secretariat (2010), The Help (2011), The Butler (2013) as Martin Luther King Jr., Get On Up (2014) as Bobby Byrd, and The Stanford Prison Experiment (2015). He also appeared in Elementary (2012) as Shinwell Johnson. Ellis died on 8 July 2017.
