Colman Domingo

Colman Domingo was born in Philadelphia in 1969 and spent his first two decades of professional life in theatre, where he writes as well as performs. Broadway saw him in Well (2005) and Passing Strange (2008) before The Scottsboro Boys (2011), where his Mr. Bones brought a Tony nomination and, when the show moved to the West End, an Olivier nomination. He wrote the book for Summer: The Donna Summer Musical. Screen work started small: episodes of Law and Order, sketch comedy, one-scene parts.

Then came a decade of playing the steady man in films about American history, usually a few feet from the lead. He is Ralph Abernathy in Selma, White House staff in The Butler, Private Harold Green in Lincoln, one of the fathers in If Beale Street Could Talk. What he brings to those parts is patience. He can hold a scene without doing anything visible, which is why directors keep placing him next to actors who are doing a great deal.

Television broke the pattern. Victor Strand carried him through the entire run of Fear the Walking Dead, 2015 to 2023, as a man who lies for a living, and Ali in Euphoria, a recovering addict talking a teenager through a relapse, gave him the two-hander scenes that got everyone's attention. He has a Primetime Emmy, and he has been nominated for both the Academy Award and the Tony. Time named him among the hundred most influential people in the world in 2024.

Leads arrived late. Rustin, The Color Purple, Sing Sing and the Michael Jackson biopic Michael all sit inside a handful of years. He anchors films now rather than steadying them.