Nate Parker

Nate Parker (born November 18, 1979) is an American actor, director, producer, writer, and musical performer who has appeared in Beyond the Lights, Red Tails, The Secret Life of Bees, The Great Debaters, Arbitrage, Non-Stop, Felon, and Pride. Parker\'s directorial debut feature film, The Birth of a Nation, in which he also starred, made history at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival when Fox Searchlight Pictures acquired the distribution rights for $17.5 million, breaking the record for the most paid for a Sundance Film Festival production, surpassing Little Miss Sunshine, which had been acquired by Searchlight for $10 million ten years earlier.\n', ' In college, Parker was accused and acquitted of the rape of a fellow student; during the trial for this case, he was accused by another woman of indecently exposing himself to her. These incidents became a prominent media story during the publicity for The Birth of a Nation in 2016.\n', ' Parker was born in Norfolk, Virginia, to Carolyn Whitfield, a 17-year-old single mother. Although Parker\'s mother did not marry his biological father, Parker had a relationship with his father until his father died from cancer when Parker was eleven. Parker\'s mother\'s first husband gave Parker his surname. After a divorce, Parker\'s mother then married her second husband, Walter Whitford, who was in the United States Air Force and was stationed in Bath, Maine. Parker has four younger sisters.\n', '