Paul Sparks

Paul Sparks is an American actor born on October 16, 1971, in Lawton, Oklahoma, who grew up in the nearby town of Marlow. At Marlow High School, where his father coached football, Sparks graduated in 1990 and participated in the Marlow Outlaw Speech Team under the coaching of Paula and Gary McConnell. He initially received a scholarship to Oklahoma State University to study chemistry before transferring to New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, where he earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in drama in 1995.

Sparks made his Broadway debut in 2003 and has returned to the stage multiple times over two decades, with credits including Take Me Out, Hedda Gabler, and Grey House, his most recent Broadway appearance in 2023. His stage work has run alongside a substantial screen career spanning television and film.

On television, Sparks is recognized for a range of recurring and series regular roles. Beginning in 2010, he portrayed Mickey Doyle, a gangster, on the HBO period drama Boardwalk Empire, created by Terence Winter and executive produced by Martin Scorsese and Mark Wahlberg; the series ran for five seasons, concluding in 2014. He subsequently played writer Thomas Yates in the Netflix political drama House of Cards, attorney David Tellis in the Starz anthology series The Girlfriend Experience, mall owner John Breem in the Apple TV+ comedy-drama Physical, and held a recurring role in the limited series The Night Of.

His film credits include Deception, Afterschool, and The Missing Person, all released in 2008, followed by Mud in 2012, Parkland in 2013, Stealing Cars in 2015, and both Thoroughbreds and The Greatest Showman in 2017. Sparks has collaborated repeatedly with actor Michael Shannon across several projects, among them The Missing Person, Mud, Boardwalk Empire, Waco, Midnight Special, and The Bikeriders.

Sparks married actress Annie Parisse in 2005, and the couple have two children, a son named Emmett, born in 2009, and a daughter named Lydia, born in 2014. He has type 1 diabetes and is involved with the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.