Profile Text
Jenner (right) with former wife Melissa Benoist, 2015, credit: / PRPhotos.com
Birth Name: Blake Alexander Jenner
Place of Birth: Miami, Florida, U.S.
Date of Birth: August 27, 1992
Ethnicity: * father – English, German, other * mother – Cuban
Blake Jenner is an American actor and singer. He has starred in the films Everybody Wants Some!! , The Edge of Seventeen , The Vanishing of Sidney Hall , Billy Boy , which he also wrote; American Animals , and Paradise City ; and on the show What/If .
He is the son of Mitzy and Richard Jenner. His mother is of Cuban descent, from a family from Santiago de Cuba.
Blake’s paternal grandmother is Helen Marie Thompson (the daughter of George Basil Thompson and Stacy Marie Nixon). Helen was born in Virginia. George was the son of T. W. Thompson and Gertrude. Stacy was the daughter of Nathan Jackson “Jack” Nixon and Stacy Grace Spainhower/Spainhour.
About his Cuban heritage, Blake has said :
It probably shaped me more than I realize… I’ll fall back into little bits and pieces of Cuban Spanish slang that I picked up from my mom over the years. I really didn’t speak it too much, but I understood it perfectly and still do… The food is amazing… I don’t know where I’d be without my Cuban family. Growing up with them, that definitely took a part in what I know today, the kind of music I like today, who I am as a person. My mom especially. She’s proud of it and we’re proud of it too. I’m very grateful for it… One more thing-my mom will kill me if I don’t say this-but she taught us to be very family-oriented. I think that’s why we’re so close.
It probably shaped me more than I realize… I’ll fall back into little bits and pieces of Cuban Spanish slang that I picked up from my mom over the years. I really didn’t speak it too much, but I understood it perfectly and still do… The food is amazing… I don’t know where I’d be without my Cuban family. Growing up with them, that definitely took a part in what I know today, the kind of music I like today, who I am as a person. My mom especially. She’s proud of it and we’re proud of it too. I’m very grateful for it… One more thing-my mom will kill me if I don’t say this-but she taught us to be very family-oriented. I think that’s why we’re so close.
Source: Blake’s paternal great-grandmother, Stacy Marie Nixon, on the 1920 U.S. Census – https://www.familysearch.org