Sterling Kelby Brown is an American actor. He made his breakthrough in 2016 for portraying prosecutor Christopher Darden in the first season of the FX anthology series American Crime Story, subtitled The People v. O. J. Simpson, for which he won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Limited Series or Movie. In the same year he began starring as Randall Pearson in the NBC drama series This Is Us, a role which earned Brown his second Emmy in 2017 for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series as well as his first Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Television Series Drama and his first Screen Actors Guild Awards for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Drama Series and Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series.

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Brown was born in 1976 in St. Louis, Missouri, to Sterling Brown and Aralean Banks Brown. Brown is one of five children; he has two sisters and two brothers. His father died when Brown was 10 years old.

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Brown grew up in Olivette, Missouri and attended Mary Institute and St. Louis Country Day School.

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Brown graduated from Stanford University in 1998 with an acting degree. He initially wanted to major in economics so he could work in business, but he fell in love with acting as a college freshman. Brown then attended New York University's Tisch School of the Arts where he graduated with a Master of Fine Arts degree.

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After graduation from college, Brown performed in a series of roles in regional theater. Brown has also since appeared in numerous television shows including ER, NYPD Blue, JAG, Boston Legal, Alias, Without A Trace, Supernatural, and Third Watch. Brown was a regular in the comedy Starved, and he has also appeared in movies, including Stay with Ewan McGregor, Brown Sugar with Taye Diggs, and Trust the Man with David Duchovny and Julianne Moore.

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In the theater, Brown was cast in the 2002 production of Bertolt Brecht's The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui starring Al Pacino, Paul Giamatti, Steve Buscemi, John Goodman and Jacqueline McKenzie. In 2014, he starred as Hero in Suzan-Lori Parks' Odyssey-inspired play Father Comes Home From the Wars at New York's Public Theater. Brown also starred in the 2014 movie The Suspect with Mekhi Phifer.

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Since 2016, Brown has starred in the television series This Is Us. In 2018, he became the first African-American actor to win a Golden Globe in the best actor in a television drama category, which he won for This Is Us. That same year he also became the first African-American actor to win a Screen Actors Guild Award in the Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Drama Series category, also for This Is Us and appeared in the Marvel Cinematic Universe film Black Panther as N'Jobu. He also was part of that year's Screen Actors Guild Award win for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series, again for This Is Us. Source.