‘Elf’ Actor Faizon Love Arrested in Florida on Contempt of Court Charges
Actor and comedian Faizon Love is behind bars in Florida after being arrested Tuesday on two contempt-of-court charges — the latest in a string of legal troubles for the 58-year-old.
The Arrest
Love, whose real name is Langston Faizon Santisima, was taken into custody June 16 in Hillsborough County, Florida, and booked into the Orient Road Jail in Tampa. He is being held without bond.
The full details behind the contempt finding have not been made public, but the arrest appears to be connected to a paternity case. Court records show that a woman named Tiffany Lee reopened a declaration-of-paternity case involving Love on June 11, though officials have not confirmed a direct link between that filing and his arrest. Love, who lives in Glendale, California, has not publicly addressed the arrest, and no statement from his legal representation had been issued as of publication.
A Felony Case Still Pending in California
The Florida arrest comes while Love is still awaiting trial on a far more serious charge on the other side of the country. In February 2025, Love was accused of ripping a credit card machine off the front desk at a Sheraton hotel in San Diego's Mission Valley neighborhood and throwing it at a clerk who told him the property had no room available despite a third-party booking. A San Diego County judge found enough evidence to send the case to trial, and Love was charged with felony assault with a deadly weapon, enhanced by a great-bodily-injury allegation — a combination that carries up to seven years in prison. He has pleaded not guilty. Trial had been set for January 2026.
In an interview with VladTV around the time of the charge, Love said he had not realized the case had been elevated from a misdemeanor to a felony until he was already in court, and noted he had been in psychiatric treatment ahead of trial.
A Pattern of Legal Troubles
The legal issues are not new for Love. In 2017, he was arrested at John Glenn Columbus International Airport in Ohio after surveillance cameras caught him grabbing a valet by the neck and throwing him to the ground. Love claimed the valet had spit on him. He pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor and received a suspended 180-day sentence.
In 2022, a former personal assistant named Hevekiah Walker sued Love and his company alleging sexual harassment during her time working in his Georgia home. When neither Love nor his company responded to the complaint, a court entered a default judgment against them for roughly $543,000 in damages, interest, and costs. Walker subsequently went after NBCUniversal directly to garnish residuals owed to Love, and when the network missed its own deadlines to respond, a court entered a matching default judgment against NBCUniversal — a ruling the company has since appealed to the Georgia Supreme Court.
Who Is Faizon Love
Born in Santiago de Cuba and raised in San Diego and Newark, New Jersey, Love got his start in stand-up comedy at 15 and made his Off-Broadway debut at 19. He broke through in the 1995 film Friday, playing drug supplier Big Worm alongside Ice Cube. He is also widely recognized for playing Wanda's boyfriend in the 2003 Will Ferrell holiday comedy Elf, and has appeared in Couples Retreat, The Replacements, Idlewild, and Bébé's Kids, among dozens of other film and television credits spanning more than three decades.
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