LaKeith Stanfield has publicly identified himself as a Black man. Born on August 12, 1991, in San Bernardino, California, and raised in Victorville after childhood years spent across Riverside, San Bernardino and Victorville, he made his feature debut in Destin Daniel Cretton’s Short Term 12, a role that brought an Independent Spirit Award nomination and announced a screen presence built on stillness and watchfulness.
His screen credits include Atlanta, where he played the enigmatic Darius across the FX series’s run, and films including Get Out, Sorry to Bother You, Uncut Gems and Knives Out. His turn as the telemarketer Cassius Green in Boots Riley’s Sorry to Bother You earned a Critics Choice Award nomination in 2019. In Selma, he portrayed the civil rights activist Jimmie Lee Jackson, whose killing helped spark the 1965 march from Selma to Montgomery. In Crown Heights, he portrayed Colin Warner, a man wrongfully imprisoned for murder; in Death Note, he played the detective L.
In 2021, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences nominated Stanfield for Actor in a Supporting Role for Judas and the Black Messiah, in which he played William O’Neal, the FBI informant against Fred Hampton. The film earned six Academy Award nominations overall, including Best Picture, with Stanfield and co-star Daniel Kaluuya both nominated in the supporting category. Kaluuya won.
He has continued to work in both film and music, recording under the name Htiekal, his first name spelled backwards, and signing with Def Jam in 2025.
