Date of Birth : May 11th 1964
He is a graduate of Holland Hall School and Brown University and a classicist. Nelson is Jewish; his maternal grandparents escaped the Nazis shortly before World War II, fleeing to the UK in 1938 and emigrating to the U.S.A. in 1940.
Nelson has appeared as an actor in Holes, Heavyweights, Minority Report, Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed, Meet the Fockers, The Good Girl, Syriana, Hoot, and the critically-acclaimed HBO film, Warm Springs. Nelson also had a featured role as Delmar in the film O Brother, Where Art Thou?. According to directors Joel and Ethan Coen, he was the only one in the cast or crew who had read Homer’s Odyssey, the work upon which the film is based. He sings “In the Jailhouse Now” on the soundtrack.
Films he has written and directed include The Grey Zone, based on his play of the same name, and Eye of God. He is also the director of O, based on William Shakespeare’s play Othello but set in a modern-day high school. Recently, he has been cast as Samuel Sterns in The Incredible Hulk.