Nate Parker

Nate Parker (born November 18, 1979) is an American actor, director, producer, and screenwriter.

He has appeared in Beyond the Lights, Red Tails, The Secret Life of Bees, The Great Debaters, Arbitrage, Non-Stop, Felon, and Pride.

He was a member of the 1997–98 state champion Great Bridge wrestling team and was a state champion 135 lb wrestler who placed third in the High School National Wrestling Championships, while becoming a high school All-American.

Parker earned a full scholarship to wrestle at Penn State University.

At Penn State, Parker was nationally ranked as a freshman.

After transferring to the University of Oklahoma, Parker continued to be ranked as a redshirt junior 141 lb wrestler.

He then attended Churchland High School and continued on their wrestling team, before moving to Great Bridge High School before attending Penn State University on a wrestling scholarship in 1999.

Parker placed third in the Virginia High School League state wrestling championships as a junior while attending Churchland High School.

Parker's mother moved to the Great Bridge High School district so Parker could participate in its wrestling program.

In 2002, Parker placed fifth at the National Collegiate Athletic Association wrestling championships and became an All-American at Oklahoma.

Following his fifth-place finish, he was ranked second nationally as a redshirt senior.

Parker, who was working as a computer programmer, was discovered by Los Angeles talent manager Jon Simmons while attending an event in Dallas with a model friend.

Simmons had Parker audition and put himself on tape, and then encouraged Parker to move to Los Angeles where he gradually found work as an actor.

In 2006, Parker played the male lead in Rome & Jewel, a hip-hop take on Romeo and Juliet that got cancelled and then re-released in 2008.

Parker's title character, a modern day Romeo, was a Compton youth.

Parker's rap performance in the film earned comparisons to Will Smith from Nathan Lee of The New York Times.

In 2007, he had a small role in Pride, about an African American swim team.

In 2007, Parker played the role of Henry Lowe in the Denzel Washington-directed film The Great Debaters.

The character was based on the real-life debater Henry Heights, from Wiley College.

Parker attended a debate boot camp to make his performance more authentic.

He portrayed a multifaceted character.

Stephen Holden of The New York Times described Parker's portrayal as having depicted a "handsome, clean-cut youth with a lurking bad-boy streak", while John Clark of the New York Daily News described the role as that of a "silver-tongued orator and ladies' man".

Other reviewers also noted the nuances of the character.

Parker also performed on the soundtrack.

Parker and co-stars Forest Whitaker and Denzel Washington were all nominated for the 2008 NAACP Image Awards in the best supporting actor category, which Denzel Washington won.

Parker would develop a continuing relationship with Wiley College.

in 2008, Parker performed in a pair of low-budget movies: Felon and Tunnel Rats.

Despite these early light roles, Parker's onscreen charisma and general je ne sais quoi showed, earning Parker comparisons to Paul Newman.

In Felon, Parker played a rookie guard dealing with inner turmoil.

Parker appeared as Private Jim Lidford in Tunnel Rats, a 2008 German-Canadian war suspense film which was based on the factual duties of tunnel rat soldiers during the Vietnam War.

The film stars Michael Paré, Brandon Fobbs and Wilson Bethel, and was written and directed by Uwe Boll.

Parker's directorial debut feature film, The Birth of a Nation, in which he also starred, made history at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival when Fox Searchlight Pictures acquired the distribution rights for $17.5 million, breaking the record for the most paid for a Sundance Film Festival production, surpassing Little Miss Sunshine, which had been acquired by Searchlight for $10 million ten years earlier.

The film was ultimately unsuccessful in wide release and did not receive acclaim, after rape allegations against Parker resurfaced.

Parker was born in Norfolk, Virginia, to Carolyn Whitfield, a 17-year-old single mother.

Although Parker's mother did not marry his biological father, Parker had a relationship with his father until his father died from cancer when Parker was 11.

Parker's mother's first husband gave Parker his surname.

After a divorce, Parker's mother then married her second husband, Walter Whitford, who was in the United States Air Force and was stationed in Bath, Maine.

Parker has four younger sisters.

At the age of 14, after problems at home with his stepfather, Parker moved to Virginia Beach, Virginia to live with his maternal uncle, Jay Combs.

Combs, a former wrestler, encouraged Parker to join the wrestling team at Princess Anne High School.