John Earl Jelks

John Earl Jelks, born July 16, 1959, is an American actor whose career spans stage, film, and television. Raised partly in California and Illinois, including Chicago, his family had roots in Mississippi. He began acting at age 18 while enrolled at the City College of San Francisco, a public community college, and made his stage debut in 1979 in Pinocchio Jones, performed at Balboa High School, which also featured Cindy Herron. He worked for seven years before acquiring an agent, building his foundation entirely through stage performance.

Jelks sustained a decade-long run in the independent production The Diary of Black Men from 1989 to 1999. In 2002, he performed The Piano Lesson at the Lorraine Hansberry Theatre, followed by Joe Turner's Come and Gone, directed by Marion McClinton, at both the Kansas City Repertory Theatre and the Penumbra Theatre, where he later became a company member. That same year, Jelks suffered a personal loss when his wife of 14 years, Naomi, died in a traffic accident, leaving him to raise their three children — sons Jamal and Jabari and daughter Jamila. The loss prompted him to consider leaving acting, but he ultimately chose to continue for his children's sake.

Jelks made his Broadway debut in 2004 in August Wilson's Gem of the Ocean, directed by Kenny Leon at the Walter Kerr Theatre. The production, which starred Phylicia Rashad and received five Tony Award nominations, is the first installment of Wilson's Pittsburgh Cycle, a ten-play chronicle of the African-American experience across the twentieth century. Jelks dedicated his performance in that production to his late wife Naomi.

He returned to Broadway in 2007 for the premiere of Radio Golf at the Cort Theatre, the final installment of the Pittsburgh Cycle. His portrayal of Sterling Johnson in that production earned him a Tony Award nomination for Best Featured Actor in a Play. The production received three Tony Award nominations in total, including Best Play and Best Featured Actor nominations for both Jelks and Anthony Chisholm.

In 2010, Jelks appeared in the world premiere of a stage adaptation of The Shawshank Redemption at the Gaiety Theatre in Dublin, Ireland. Adapted from Stephen King's source novel by Owen O'Neil and Dave Johns, and directed by Peter Sheridan, the production cast Jelks in the role of Red. That same year, he won a double Obie Award for his work in Fetch Clay, Make Man and Sunset Baby. He also received the AUDELCO Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play for First Breeze of Summer.

Among his additional stage credits are Magnolia, The Break of Noon, Two Trains Running, Holler If Ya Hear Me, ToasT, The Piano Lesson, and Head of Passes. From 2016 to 2018, Jelks appeared in three separate productions of Lynn Nottage's Pulitzer Prize-winning play Sweat, playing Brucie, a middle-aged man who has been unemployed for two years after losing his factory job. The productions were staged at the Public Theater's Martinson Hall in 2016, Studio 54 in 2017, and the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles in 2018. In 2014, he conducted acting workshops and performed in The Meeting at the Terra Sancta Theater in Amman, Jordan. His Broadway work continued through 2022, with an appearance in Birthday Candles.

On screen, Jelks first starred in the 1999 film Compensation, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. The film depicts two Chicago love stories set in different eras, with Jelks playing the dual roles of Arthur Jones and Nico Jones. He subsequently appeared in Spike Lee's 2008 World War II film Miracle at St. Anna and in Enter the Dangerous Mind in 2013. His 2018 film Night Comes On, directed by Jordana Spiro, also premiered at Sundance. In 2019, Jelks appeared across three television productions simultaneously: season three of HBO's True Detective, Netflix's science-fiction miniseries The I-Land, and the Showtime comedy series On Becoming a God in Central Florida, in which he held a recurring role.