Aunjanue Ellis

Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor is an American actress born on February 21, 1969, in San Francisco, California, who was raised on her grandmother's farm in Magnolia, Mississippi. She attended Tougaloo College before transferring to Brown University, where she earned a Bachelor of Arts in African-American studies and studied acting with Jim Barnhill and John Emigh. Her first stage experience came during her time at Brown, where she appeared in a student production. She subsequently trained in the Graduate Acting Program at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts and is a member of Delta Sigma Theta sorority.

Ellis-Taylor launched her professional career on Broadway in 1995, playing Ariel opposite Patrick Stewart's Prospero in a revival of William Shakespeare's The Tempest. She returned to Broadway in January 2004, performing in Regina Taylor's play Drowning Crow at the Manhattan Theatre Club, and her Broadway work also includes a production of Joe Turner's Come and Gone. Her screen debut followed her initial stage work, with an appearance in an episode of the Fox police drama New York Undercover. In 1996, she took a co-leading role in the independent film Girls Town alongside Lili Taylor, and that same year began starring as Officer Leslie Joyner in the ABC police drama High Incident, a Steven Spielberg-created series that ran for two seasons through 1997. Supporting film roles in Ed's Next Move, Desert Blue, In Too Deep, and A Map of the World also came during this period, as did a recurring role as Sharon Young on the ABC legal drama The Practice in 1999.

Her film work expanded considerably in the 2000s. In 2000, she starred opposite Cuba Gooding Jr. in George Tillman Jr.'s Men of Honor, and the following year appeared in The Caveman's Valentine, directed by Kasi Lemmons and based on George Dawes Green's 1994 novel, playing the daughter of Samuel L. Jackson's character. She also had a supporting part in Lovely & Amazing in 2001. In 2002, she took a main role alongside Eddie Griffin in the action comedy Undercover Brother, and in 2004 played Mary Ann Fisher in the Academy Award-nominated biographical film Ray, about the life of musician Ray Charles. Additional film credits from this decade include Freedomland (2006), The Taking of Pelham 123 (2009), in which she played Denzel Washington's wife, and The Express (2008) and Notorious (2009). On television, she had a regular role on the short-lived ABC medical drama MDs in 2002, co-starred alongside Benjamin Bratt in NBC's E-Ring from 2005 to 2006, and held recurring roles on Third Watch, 100 Centre Street, Jonny Zero, Justice, and True Blood. In 2009, she co-starred with Cuba Gooding Jr. and Kimberly Elise in the television film Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story.

The 2010s brought Ellis-Taylor some of her most prominent screen work. In 2011, she appeared in the period drama The Help, directed by Tate Taylor, as Eula Mae Davis, earning recognition as part of the ensemble cast, including a National Board of Review Award for Best Cast. From 2010 to 2013, she held a recurring role as Madeleine Hightower on the CBS series The Mentalist. In 2014, she played Vicki Anderson in the biographical film Get On Up, about the life of James Brown, also directed by Tate Taylor. She starred in the 2015 miniseries The Book of Negroes, an international co-production based on Lawrence Hill's 2007 novel, for which she received a Critics' Choice Television Award nomination for Best Actress in a Movie or Miniseries and won the Canadian Screen Award for Best Lead Actress in a Television Film or Miniseries. Beginning in February 2015, she was cast in the ABC thriller series Quantico, remaining with the show for two seasons through 2017. In 2016, she appeared in the historical drama The Birth of a Nation, playing Nancy Turner, the mother of Nat Turner, in a film also starring Nate Parker, Aja Naomi King, Armie Hammer, and Gabrielle Union. She appeared in Barry Jenkins's If Beale Street Could Talk in 2018, and in 2019 starred in Ava DuVernay's Netflix miniseries When They See Us, earning a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited Series or Movie.

In 2020, Ellis-Taylor portrayed Mattie Moss Clark in the Lifetime television film The Clark Sisters: First Ladies of Gospel, which premiered on April 11, 2020, and became the highest-rated original movie for Lifetime since 2016. She received an NAACP Image Award nomination for her performance. Her most celebrated screen role to date came in 2021, when she played Oracene Price in the sports drama King Richard, earning a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. That same year, her work in the series Lovecraft Country brought her a second Primetime Emmy Award nomination. She has since appeared in The Color Purple (2023), Origin (2023), and Nickel Boys (2024). In the spring 2012 semester at Hampton University, Ellis-Taylor taught entertainment industry courses and was featured in a Hampton Players and Company production titled Through the Crack.