Franklyn Vincent Ellison Seales was born on July 15, 1952, the fifth eldest of eight siblings, in Calliaqua to Francis Seales, a merchant seaman and government employee, and Olive Seales (née Allen), a homemaker. Seales was of English, Scottish, African, Portuguese and Native Caribbean descent. He and his family left the West Indies in 1960 and settled in New York City. He attended Lincoln High School in Brooklyn.

Seales made his breakthrough in 1978 with the PBS drama, Trial of the Moke, portraying Lt. Henry O. Flipper, the first African-American graduate of West Point. He went on to appear in The Onion Field (1979), in which he portrayed real-life convicted cop killer Jimmy Lee (Youngblood) Smith. That same year, he also had a minor role in Star Trek: The Motion Picture. He appeared in the 1981 film, Southern Comfort, in which he portrayed Rifleman Cleotis Simms.

Despite his talent some of the roles he most wanted sometimes eluded him. “Either I’m not black enough or I look too Hispanic or Cuban”, he said in one of his last interviews in 1988. “I have to be hired by someone who knows my work.” His last major triumph was at the Mark Taper Forum in October 1988, in Nothing Sacred, an adaptation of Ivan Turgenev’s novel Fathers and Sons. Along with acting, Seales was a painter.

On May 14, 1990, Seales died at the age of 37 from complications of AIDS at his family’s home in Brooklyn. He was cremated and his ashes were scattered in the Caribbean Sea.