Tim Blake Nelson
Timothy Blake Nelson (born May 11, 1964) is an American actor and playwright. Described as a "modern character actor",[1] his roles include Delmar O'Donnell in O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000), Gideon in Minority Report (2002), Dr. Pendanski in Holes (2003), Danny Dalton Jr. in Syriana (2005), Samuel Sterns in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Richard Schell in Lincoln (2012), the title character in The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018), and Henry McCarty in Old Henry (2021). He portrayed Wade Tillman / Looking Glass in the HBO limited series Watchmen (2019), for which he received a Critics' Choice Television Awards nomination for Best Supporting Actor in a Drama Series in 2020.
Tim Blake Nelson
- Actor
- director
- writer
1989–present
3
Nelson's directorial credits include Eye of God (1997), which was nominated for the Sundance Grand Jury Prize and an Independent Spirit Award; O (2001), a modern-day adaptation of Othello; and the Holocaust drama The Grey Zone (2001). Eye of God and The Grey Zone were both adapted from Nelson's own plays. Nelson has also co-directed music videos for billy woods and Kenny Segal including "Babylon by Bus" and "Soft Landing". He also co-directed the music video for Armand Hammer feat. Pink Siifu's "Trauma Mic".
Nelson recently published his debut novel, City of Blows (2023), an epic group portrait of four men grappling for control of a script in a radically changing Hollywood.
Early life[edit]
Nelson was born to a Jewish family[2][3] in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the son of Ruth Nelson (née Kaiser),[4][5] a noted Tulsa social activist and philanthropist, and Don Nelson, a geologist and wildcatter.[6][7] His maternal uncle is businessman George Kaiser.[8]
His maternal grandparents Herman Geo. Kaiser and Kate Kaiser, daughter of businessman Max Samuel, were from Germany, and escaped the Nazis shortly before World War II. They moved to Britain in 1938,[9]: 96seq. where Nelson's mother was born,[9]: 87seq. [10] and immigrated to the United States in 1941.[11][12][13] His father's family were Russian-Jewish emigrants.[14]
Nelson attended the Oklahoma Summer Arts Institute at Quartz Mountain Resort Arts and Conference Center in Lone Wolf, Oklahoma.[15]
Nelson is a 1982 graduate of Holland Hall School in Tulsa,[4] and a graduate of Brown University, where he was a classics major as well as senior orator for his class of 1986. At Brown, he studied under philosopher Martha Nussbaum.[16] He is a member of the Phi Beta Kappa Society. He won the Workman/Driskoll award for excellence in classical studies.[17] He graduated from Juilliard in 1990, a member of Group 19.[18]
Personal life[edit]
Nelson resides in New York City with his wife, Lisa Benavides, and their three sons.[4] On May 8, 2009, he was inducted as an honorary member of the University of Tulsa's Beta of Oklahoma chapter of the Phi Beta Kappa national collegiate honor society.[31]