Words matter. These are the best Nelsan Ellis Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
There are homophobic people in my family. They’re deeply religious.
Let gay people get married.
I was quiet, and I was artistic. I liked writing poetry, and that was very strange, so I was bullied a lot.
Boot camp was the first time I got a heavy dose of discipline. It was the best thing that ever happened to me.
You have to learn to not hate who you have to live with.
My idea of horses is from when I grew up on a farm. They were big, and they were dumb.
I don’t look anything like my mother, except when I’m Lafayette. I look like my father.
Fiona Shaw is a goddess to me.
I went from unknown to having no anonymity.
I love working with Alexander Skarsgard. He brings such gravity to a scene.
The beautiful thing about this country is that I can be a Christian and feel free to do so. Or somebody cannot be a Christian and do whatever that entails. Or somebody can be a Christian and still be gay, and I support it.
I had no intention of being an actor.
I empty myself out and fill myself with the character. I would play a devil worshipper, and I would fill myself up with whatever devil worshippers believe. Then, as myself, I empty that out and become Nelsan.
Although I can be a leading man, you wouldn’t look at me and go, ‘He’s a leading man.’
I was raised by women.
If you want to get married to a man, then get married to a man. If two women want to get married, they should get married. It’s not hurting me.
The arts are suffering amongst public schools, but also, minority theater companies are struggling, and I firmly believe in freedom of expression through the arts.
You have to be a tough gay person in the South.
I rejected being a lot of things that I grew up in, and yet I didn’t. I got all my tactics from where I grew up… I can talk about all the people in those environments more than I can talk about the teachers at Juilliard or anyone else.
I am a vampire/werewolf and sci-fi fanatic. God is so good! I get to play in a series that has all that!
Anna Paquin is marvelous, and she brings so much experience to the table.
Being different gives the world color.
When you act with phenomenal actors, it makes your job much easier because all you have to do is react.
I think, in this country, anybody can do whatever they want to do as long as it’s not hurting anybody else or violating the laws of society.
I see a project, and I say I want to audition for it, and people let me audition for it. There’s a lot to be grateful for.
When you deal with Alan Ball, you’re dealing with a person who is a genius in terms of how art imitates life.
With ‘True Blood,’ you don’t know what to expect. You don’t know how wild it’s gonna get.
I was quiet. If I really wanted to say something, I would. I just wasn’t interested in saying anything.
‘Interview with a Vampire’ is my all-time favorite. I also loved ‘An American Werewolf in London.’
I’d always dabbled in acting.
The sci-fi fans in America… they are die-hard. They will follow you to the ends of the Earth. Once they attach themselves to a show and believe in the show and love the characters, they’re there forever, and they’re unshakeable.
When I wanted to become a serious actor, this girl told me, ‘You should go to Juilliard.’ And I said, ‘Okay.’
But no one told me that when you’re in the military, they own you.
Being different makes you beautiful.
Alan Ball, he’s good at challenging his actors, I’ll say that.
When I moved to Chicago, I was coming from a school that didn’t have any arts in Alabama. I essentially came from a town where the arts didn’t exist and the desire for education didn’t exist and wasn’t valued.
I’m not an emotional person; I keep it in, and I wouldn’t know how to get it out if it weren’t for acting and writing.
There were not many black students at Juilliard, unfortunately. So when you get there, you become very good friends, in particular, with the other black students.
The ultimate part that I want to play in my life is Jimi Hendrix, so I guess I’m drawn to music even though I can’t sing or dance very well.
My years at Thornridge probably changed the course of my life.
Whenever you have a character in which one of his defining qualities is his sexuality, it’s always challenging, because you don’t want to bring in someone who’s going to play that in a phony way.
I can’t approach a character with judgment.
At some point in my life, I wanted to be in a vampire movie.
You go back to my town, it’s like going back to the 1960s… just not a great place to grow up.
It’s hard to get an education when teachers spend 70 percent of their time trying to discipline students.