Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor

CTL-E-6099 · Person · other · 1969–present

VERIFIED evidence grade — build store (JSON graph)

Combined Graph record U-07320 · provenance: build store (JSON graph), record CTL-E-6099.

Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor is an American actress born on February 21, 1969, in San Francisco, California, and raised on her grandmother's farm in Magnolia, Mississippi. She attended Tougaloo College before transferring to Brown University, where she completed a B.A. in African American studies, and she studied acting in the Graduate Acting Program at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. She made her professional acting debut in 1995 opposite Patrick Stewart in a Broadway revival of The Tempest. Her screen work includes Men of Honor, Ray, The Help, The Birth of a Nation, and If Beale Street Could Talk, and acclaimed television roles in When They See Us and Lovecraft Country, each bringing Primetime Emmy Award nominations. For her portrayal of Oracene Price in King Richard in 2021 she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. She has since starred in Origin in 2023 as Isabel Wilkerson and in Nickel Boys in 2024. In 2023 she began using the double-barrelled professional name Ellis-Taylor in honor of her mother.

The record

• Also known as: Aunjanue Ellis, Aunjanue L. Ellis

Notes

Staged 2026-10-16 under CTL-GOV-006 (Scan Tail Wave 4 — 747 Program, Wave 11; fourth Scan Tail packet at the founder's 40-record size). Gate A (2026-10-16): no Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor entity in the live graph at 3,763 entities (exact / normalized / alias match + token containment; CLEAR). ID CTL-E-6099 free. Supply: 747 Supply Ledger, Tier 4 — Scan Tail Wave 3 packet ordered reserve, position 14 of 35 (corpus-gap-candidates-2026-10-15.json ranked clean survivor #1591). The scan supplied the NAME STRING ONLY; no fact in this record is sourced to it (CTL-GOV-004). SCOPE GATE: PASS — Black America canon — a San Francisco-born, Mississippi-raised national screen actress; no Chicago birth/residence claim is made for this PPL-001 record. Vital status: Living — verified. The opened Wikipedia page carries a 2025 photograph caption and film work released in December 2024 (Nickel Boys), with a Parade interview about that film accessed 2026-10-16; no death report was found. STATISTICS — STATISTICS (sourced, dated): Born February 21, 1969, San Francisco (Wikipedia, accessed 2026-10-16); years active 1995–present (Wikipedia); Academy Award, Golden Globe, and two Primetime Emmy nominations are the accolade counts stated on the opened Wikipedia page (accessed 2026-10-16); name change dated 2023 (Wikipedia; Variety 2023). CONFLICT SHOWN, NOT BLENDED: Honor attribution — Wikipedia and Variety frame the Taylor addition as in honor of her mother; Parade's Nickel Boys interview states it was in honor of her maternal grandmother Myrtis Taylor as well as her mother Jacqueline Taylor. The description follows the Variety/Wikipedia mother framing and records Parade's broader attribution here. MEDIA: photo HELD (Photograph captioned 'Ellis-Taylor in 2025' used as the infobox image on her Wikipedia page — specific image for a later PHOTO-001 pass to verify; no license claimed. — named candidate only; file-level rights verification per CTL-PHOTO-001 still required; no license claimed); chart FILLED (charts/chart-ctl-e-6099-aunjanue-ellis-taylor.svg); video HELD (no matching-entity CTL Short or verified-rights archival video staged); audio HELD (no rights-cleared matching-entity audio staged); map N/A (person record). MEDIA LAYER (staged 2026-10-16; full per-asset PHOTO-001 records + embed specs in the packet's staged JSON, Drive packet folder): map = N/A (Persons carry no map in the packet standard.) | visual_assets = HELD: | chart = FILLED (CTL-created chart (black / deep red / gold) built only from this record's sourced statistics and timeline fact) | video = HELD (No matching-entity CTL Short or verified-rights archival video staged.) | audio = HELD (No rights-cleared matching-entity audio staged.)

Sources

• Wikipedia, "Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor" (accessed 2026-10-16) — born February 21, 1969 in San Francisco; other name Aunjanue Ellis; raised in Magnolia, Mississippi; Tougaloo, Brown B.A., NYU; debut 1995 in The Tempest; King Richard Academy Award nomination; Origin (2023) and Nickel Boys (2024); in 2023 started going by Ellis-Taylor in honor of her mother — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aunjanue_Ellis-Taylor (build store)
• Variety via syndicated republication, Clayton Davis, "Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor on Playing 'Literary Indiana Jones' in 'Origin' and Why She Changed Her Professional Name" (2023, accessed via search 2026-10-16) — earlier credits under Aunjanue Ellis including When They See Us, Lovecraft Country and Oscar-nominated King Richard; added Taylor to honor her mother posthumously and to carry her every day; credited as Ellis-Taylor in future projects — https://media.dream13.com/aunjanue-ellis-taylor-on-playing-literary-indiana-jones/ (primary source · build store)
• Parade, "Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor Is Teaching the Next Generation to Stop Apologizing" (accessed 2026-10-16) — Nickel Boys interview; states the Taylor addition honored both her maternal grandmother Myrtis Taylor and her mother Jacqueline Taylor, quoting her 2023 Variety remarks — http://parade.com/movies/aunjanue-ellis-taylor-nickel-boys-interview-exclusive (build store)

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Record CTL-E-6099 · Combined Graph record U-07320 · CultureTechLens Knowledge Graph · 3 sources.
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