Artist Information
TIM BLAKE NELSON is a celebrated actor, writer, director, and producer.
As a filmmaker, he is now in post-production on his latest film as writer-director, The Life and Deaths of Wilson Shedd, which will star Amanda Seyfried, Scoot McNairy, Wunmi Mosaku, Missi Pyle, and Nelson himself. The film follows a teacher (Seyfried) in an abusive marriage who takes a job at a maximum security prison, where she falls for a charismatic inmate.
As an author, he just published his second novel, Superhero, released on December 2, 2025, a biting and provocative look into the making of a mega-commercial Hollywood comic book movie, which Publisher’s Weekly hailed as “vivid and entertaining." His debut novel, City of Blows, another exacting look at Hollywood productions and personalities, was published in 2023 by Unnamed Press and in paperback within the year.
Onscreen, he most recently co-starred in FX’s new drama series The Lowdown starring Ethan Hawke and created by Sterlin Harjo, set in Nelson’s native Tulsa, Oklahoma. The series has been honored as one of AFI’s Television Programs of the Year for 2025. For film, he next co-stars alongside Amanda Seyfried in Mona Fastvold’s musical drama feature film, The Testament of Ann Lee, starring Amanda Seyfried, centered on the famed real-life religious leader. This fall, he starred in the independent feature, Bang Bang, portraying an aging boxer whose glory days are long past.
As a playwright, he world-premiered his new play, And Then We Were No More, in an Off-Broadway engagement at La MaMa this past September. In it, a lawyer is forced to represent a prisoner deemed ‘beyond rehabilitation’ and destined to perish in a newly developed machine designed to execute ‘without pain.’
A veteran actor, Nelson has amassed over 100 screen credits, including Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln and Minority Report, Joel & Ethan Coen’s O Brother, Where Art Thou? and The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, Terrence Malick’s The Thin Red Line, Guillermo del Toro’s Nightmare Alley and Pinocchio, Colossal, Old Henry, Syriana, Fantastic Four, Holes, The Bricklayer, Donnie Brasco, Just Mercy, The Incredible Hulk, The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying, Meet the Fockers, and Captain America: Brave New World. For television, Nelson received a Critics’ Choice nomination for his role as “Looking Glass” in HBO’s Emmy- and Peabody Award-winning Watchmen. His other recent TV credits include Peacock’s Poker Face, Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities, and Netflix’s animated series Lost Ollie.
For the theater, Nelson has worked extensively in New York theatre as both a playwright and an actor. His most recent play, Socrates, an intimate portrait of the ancient Greek philosopher, premiered at The Public and starred Michael Stuhlbarg. He made his NYC playwriting debut in 1996 with the Obie Award-winning The Grey Zone, a Holocaust drama that he later adapted into an award-winning film starring David Arquette, Steve Buscemi, Mira Sorvino, and Harvey Keitel. MCC also premiered his 1998 play Anadarko. His debut play, Eye of God, was also adapted for film by Nelson and was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize for Dramatic Feature at Sundance and an Independent Spirit Award. As a stage actor, Nelson has starred Off-Broadway in Shakespeare in the Park’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Richard III, and Troilus and Cressida. Additional off-Broadway credits include Mad Forest, The Beard of Avon, Oedipus, Innocents' Crusade, An Imaginary Life, and Mac Wellman's Dracula, among others.
Nelson has directed five features, four of which he also wrote, including Leaves of Grass, starring Edward Norton, Keri Russell, Richard Dreyfuss, and Susan Sarandon; the IFC-released Anesthesia starring Sam Waterston, Kristen Stewart, Glenn Close, Gretchen Mol, and Corey Stoll; and O, a modern adaptation of Othello starring Mekhi Phifer, Josh Hartnett, and Julia Stiles.
Nelson was born and raised in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He is a graduate of Brown University and the Juilliard Theater Center’s four-year actor training program. Nelson currently resides in New York City with his wife. They have three sons.
