Acting Parker, who was working as a computer programmer, was discovered by Los Angeles talent manager Jon Simmons while attending an event in Dallas with a model friend. Simmons had Parker audition and make a tape, and urged him to go to Los Angeles. Parker moved a week later, had Simmons as his agent, and three months later was acting in his first movie. In 2006, Parker played the male lead in
Rome & Jewel, a
hip-hop take on
Romeo and Juliet that got cancelled and then re-released in 2008. Parker's title character, a modern day
Romeo, was a
Compton youth. Parker's
rap performance in the film earned comparisons to
Will Smith from Nathan Lee of
The New York Times. In 2007, he had a small role in
Pride, about an African American swim team. In 2007, Parker played the role of Henry Lowe in the
Denzel Washington-directed film
The Great Debaters. The character was based on the real-life debater Henry Heights, from
Wiley College. Parker attended a debate boot camp to make his performance more authentic. He portrayed a multifaceted character.
Stephen Holden of
The New York Times described Parker's portrayal as having depicted a "handsome, clean-cut youth with a lurking bad-boy streak", while John Clark of the
New York Daily News described the role as that of a "silver-tongued orator and ladies' man". Parker also performed on the
soundtrack. Parker and co-stars
Forest Whitaker and
Denzel Washington were all nominated for the 2008
NAACP Image Awards in the best
supporting actor category, which Denzel Washington won. Parker would develop a continuing relationship with Wiley College. in 2008, Parker performed in a pair of low-budget movies:
Felon and
Tunnel Rats. Despite these early light roles, Parker's onscreen charisma and general je ne sais quoi showed, earning Parker comparisons to
Paul Newman. In
Felon, Parker played a rookie guard dealing with inner turmoil. Parker appeared as Private Jim Lidford in
Tunnel Rats, a 2008 German-Canadian war film about
tunnel rat soldiers during the
Vietnam War. The film stars
Michael Paré,
Brandon Fobbs, and
Wilson Bethel, and was written and directed by
Uwe Boll. In 2008's
The Secret Life of Bees, Parker played the good-hearted love interest of
Alicia Keys' character. Parker's character has to deal with the challenges of spurned love. The movie was written and directed by
Gina Prince-Bythewood, and based on the
book of the same name by
Sue Monk Kidd. In the 2010 film
Blood Done Sign My Name, based on a true story of small-town racial turmoil set against a backdrop of segregation in 1970, Parker plays a 22-year-old
Benjamin Chavis. Parker's Chavis was a teacher who had been born into an affluent African-American family and would later become the Executive Director of the
N.A.A.C.P. A. O. Scott of
The New York Times described Parker as "diffident" and his portrayal as "thoughtful, morally serious". Parker's character was upstaged according to Scott and Ebert. In 2012, Parker appeared as a
World War II squadron commander in
Red Tails, a film portraying
Tuskegee Airmen. Parker's character drinks to cope with the stress of the
fighter pilot lifestyle. In the movie, Parker plays Marty "Easy" Julian who commanded the escorts for the World War II
bombers in the face of
Nazi fighter planes. While
Peter Travers of
Rolling Stone noted that Parker shone in his role,
Wesley Morris of
The Boston Globe felt Oyelowo stood out.
Bilge Ebiri of
New York and Holden note that the relationship between the two is the story's central one. Holden compared Parker's presence to that of
Denzel Washington's. Nonetheless,
Ty Burr of
The Boston Globe notes that Parker's portrayal of the
Harlem native is the only sympathetic character of the film. Travers notes the role provides
Richard Gere's elitist character with his only interactions with a diverse character in the film. Parker's third and final film of 2012 was
Spike Lee's
Red Hook Summer. Parker played a gang member named Box, whose role was not central to the film progression according to Phillips. In 2013, he had a supporting role in ''
Ain't Them Bodies Saints that Richard Brody of The New Yorker'' described as being a bar owner who is among an "enticing array of characters". The role was minor according to Scott. In a 2014 interview with
BET during publicity for the film
Beyond the Lights that included Parker and director
Gina Prince-Bythewood, Parker stated that in order to "preserve the black man" he would not be willing to act in certain character roles. The video was later taken down and is no longer available. In 2014, Parker also stated he would not take roles, such as gay characters, that he considered to be "emasculating".
Kate Taylor of
The Globe and Mail described Parker's performance as a novelist with writer's block in the 2014 film
About Alex as one of the more real performances in the film despite the "wrote" feel to the emotional developments.
Mike D'Angelo of
The A.V. Club also found the crises and conflicts that Parker's character was involved in to be petty. Parker's independent short film #AmeriCan was nominated in the Outstanding Independent Short category at the
Black Reel Awards of 2015 and won. That same year, Parker reunited with Prince-Blythewood, playing the male lead in her film
Beyond the Lights. He was nominated for a 2015 Black Reel Award for Best Actor and an
Image Award for Outstanding Actor in a Motion Picture. In Parker's role as a police officer moonlighting as a bodyguard, his onscreen chemistry with co-star
Gugu Mbatha-Raw was praised by
Dana Stevens of
Slate. Stevens noted Parker was destined for more substantive performances. earning an 82% approval rating at
Rotten Tomatoes. In the airplane terrorism mystery film
Non-Stop, Parker plays a computer programmer.
Kenneth Turan of the
Los Angeles Times notes that Parker's talents are well-employed in his supporting role. In
Every Secret Thing,
Richard Roeper of the
Chicago Sun-Times found Parker and his detective partner
Elizabeth Banks to have been overwhelmed in their roles. Travers also found the detectivework to be uncompelling.
Frank Scheck of
The Hollywood Reporter found Parker's performance to have had its moments. Parker played the role of Slim in the 2015 survival film,
Eden. The film was directed by Shyam Madiraju, co-produced by Parker,
Jaume Collet-Serra and Shyam Madiraju, and stars
Ethan Peck,
Jessica Lowndes,
Diego Boneta,
James Remar and
Sung Kang.
Directing In 2012, Parker directed a short film called
#AmeriCAN, which featured
La La Anthony and is a thought piece about growing up as a young black person in a racially divided America. For over seven years, Parker worked on making a film based on the life of
Nat Turner. In 2014, he announced that he had funding and was working on assembling his team, and that the film would be called
The Birth of a Nation, in an ironic
reappropriation of the infamously racist
1915 film of the same name.
The Birth of a Nation attracted increased scrutiny due to rumored
Oscar nominations, and because the film itself depicts a brutal rape, the 1999 rape allegations against Parker received significant press coverage.
Fox Searchlight Pictures, the studio releasing the film, went into damage control mode. Union, a rape victim and one of the main stars of
The Birth of a Nation, wrote in the
Los Angeles Times, "As important and ground-breaking as this film is, I cannot take these allegations lightly." Parker chose to deflect questions about his past legal problems while doing press for
The Birth of a Nation at the Toronto Film Festival. Shortly thereafter, Parker and his handlers chose to cut press interviews short when questions came up about his involvement with the alleged rape and its impact on the marketing of the film. The sister of Parker's alleged victim said the invention of a rape scene and Parker playing the avenging hero caused her and her family immense pain. To try to defuse the public backlash,
Bron Studios hired
The Glover Park Group and
Don McPherson to give Parker media training and public relations advice. In August 2016, Parker was honored with the
Sundance Institute's Vanguard Award. In evaluating the impact of the public's reaction to Parker's alleged 1999 rape of a fellow Penn State student, a film producer told
The Hollywood Reporter about Parker's directing career, "His inability to act like he cared that people invested a whole lot of money in him — sorry. You go into the 'life is too short' category." Noting that the first half of the
New York Times review of
The Birth of a Nation is taken up with the controversy, this person adds, "No matter what Nate Parker makes, ... this will always be the first paragraph." Other industry insiders note that, "unlike [Mel] Gibson — or Roman Polanski or Woody Allen, both accused of sexual assault (Polanski pled guilty to unlawful sexual intercourse) — Parker is just beginning his directing career and has not built up an acclaimed body of work that might encourage some to say they are willing to separate the artist from the art." Following its release,
American Skin has received $4 million over a fortnight and finished in the top 10 on
FandangoNow,
Google Play, and
Spectrum's PVOD rental charts. Becoming one of the highest grossing titles for its distributor,
Vertical Entertainment on PVOD. The Venice Film Festival’s Sconfini Section awarded the prize of "Best Film" to American Skin on September 7, 2019, the first film addressing the racial injustice theme to have won in the category. Parker directed 10 episodes of
Baselines, a web series about a family based in Los Angeles intent on protecting their son, Jamiel Chambers, and his basketball dreams from the dangers of inner-city American life. Parker's next film
Newborn, will be released on April 10, 2026 and distributed by
AMC Theatres. Filmed in 2020, the film is a
drama written, directed, and produced by Parker and stars
David Oyelowo,
Barry Pepper and
Jimmie Fails.
Public charity Parker sponsors scholarships for youth at East Texas
Wiley College through the 100 Men of Excellence Initiative. Wiley opened a film school named The Nate Parker School of Film and Drama. The Nate Parker Foundation was founded in 2015 and is based in Brooklyn, New York. In 2016, the foundation established the Nate Parker Summer Film Institute at Wiley College which was held yearly to use film as a medium of social transformation with 31 students who are either from Africa or of
African descent. The foundation received the first grant to make the
HBCU Storytellers Project by the Kellogg Foundation’s Racial Healing and Reconciliation Fund in 2017. The grant covered four short documentaries which address racial issues and stereotypes. The first film series funded by the grant,
Just Mercy, received four
NAACP Image awards, Outstanding Ensemble Cast, Outstanding Supporting Actor, Outstanding Actor in a Motion Picture, and Outstanding Motion Picture. In 2018, the foundation received funding from the
Ford Foundation and private stakeholders. ==Personal life==