Sterling K. Brown

Sterling Kelby Brown is an American actor born on April 5, 1976. He has received numerous accolades throughout his career, including three Primetime Emmy Awards and a Golden Globe Award, along with a nomination for an Academy Award. In 2018, he was included on Time's list of the 100 most influential people in the world. He is widely recognized for his television roles as Christopher Darden in the FX limited series The People v. O. J. Simpson: American Crime Story and Randall Pearson in the NBC drama series This Is Us.

Brown was born in St. Louis, Missouri, to Sterling Brown and Aralean (née Banks) Brown, and grew up in the suburb of Olivette. He has two brothers and two sisters. His father died when Brown was 10 years old. As a child, he went by his middle name, Kelby, before adopting the name Sterling at age 16. Brown attended the private Mary Institute and St. Louis Country Day School. He later attended Stanford University, where he initially studied economics with plans to pursue investment banking. After an internship at the Federal Reserve, he shifted his trajectory to acting and graduated in 1998. He subsequently earned a Master of Fine Arts degree from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts.

Following his education, Brown began performing in regional theater, landing stage roles in productions such as The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui and Twelfth Night in 2002, Macbeth in 2006, The Brother/Sister Plays in 2009, and Father Comes Home From the Wars (Parts 1, 2, & 3) in 2014. During this period, he appeared in films including Brown Sugar, Stay, and Trust the Man, while taking guest and recurring roles on television series such as ER, NYPD Blue, JAG, Supernatural, Starved, Army Wives, and Person of Interest.

Brown achieved widespread recognition in 2016 for portraying Christopher Darden in The People v. O. J. Simpson: American Crime Story, winning a Primetime Emmy Award. From 2016 to 2022, he starred as Randall Pearson in This Is Us, earning the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series in 2017. For his performance, he became the first African-American actor to win a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Television Drama and a Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Drama Series.

Alongside his television work, Brown appeared in feature films including Marshall, Black Panther, Hotel Artemis, Waves, Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul., and Biosphere, and provided voice roles for animated projects such as Frozen 2, The Angry Birds Movie 2, and Big Mouth. His performance in the 2023 film American Fiction earned him a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. His subsequent projects include the science-fiction drama Atlas, joining the film Double Booked, and starring in the 2025 Hulu thriller series Paradise.

In his personal life, Brown met actress Ryan Michelle Bathe while attending Stanford University. They eloped in March 2006, held a formal ceremony in June 2007, and have two sons named Andrew and Amaré.