Chris Ellis (actor)

Christopher Ellis (born April 14, 1956) is an American character actor. Early life Ellis was born in Dallas, Texas. He grew up in Frayser, a suburb of Memphis, in a middle class/working class area. He always wanted to be an actor because of what he saw on television. It took him seven years to finish college however, because "I have always been shiftless". During those years Chris became involved in community theatre in Memphis, Tennessee, where "I did and do still think the quality of the work has always been quite good". By the time he moved to New York, he had worked with many excellent actors in about two dozen plays, classical and contemporary. "I cannot imagine what might have supplanted that background for a newcomer in New York." Career His first part in either television or film came in 1979, where he played a truck driver in the television movie The Suicide's Wife, which starred Angie Dickinson. The role resulted in little further work. After working in regional theater for a year or so, Ellis did not work for about ten years. During that time he lived in "bone-grinding poverty" in Manhattan's Hell's Kitchen. In one nine-month period of 1987, Ellis accepted 102 dinner invitations. "I don't know why they kept arriving, nor why I counted them, though I do know why I accepted them."