Nelson was born to a Jewish family in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the son of Ruth (née Kaiser) Nelson, who is a noted social activist and philanthropist in Tulsa, and Don Nelson, a geologist and wildcatter. His maternal uncle is businessman George Kaiser.
His maternal grandparents Herman Geo. Kaiser and Kate Kaiser, daughter of businessman Max Samuel, who were from Germany, escaped the Nazis shortly before World War II, moving to Britain in 1938, where Nelson's mother was born, and immigrating to the United States in 1941. His father's family were Russian Jewish emigrants.
Nelson attended the Oklahoma Summer Arts Institute at Quartz Mountain Resort Arts and Conference Center in Lone Wolf, Oklahoma.
Nelson is a 1982 graduate of Holland Hall School in Tulsa,and a graduate of Brown University, where he was a Classics major as well as Senior Orator for his class of 1986. At Brown, he studied under the philosopher Martha Nussbaum. He is a member of the Phi Beta Kappa Society. Nelson won the Workman/Driskoll award for excellence in Classical Studies. He graduated from Juilliard in 1990, a member of Group 19.
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