Michael Genet
Michael Genet is an actor, born 1958.
Michael Genet, born in Washington in 1958, has had the sort of career that only makes sense once you know he writes as well as acts. On screen he has been a fixture of New York-shot television, guest starring across the Law and Order shows, The Equalizer, New York Undercover, Ugly Betty and the daytime soaps As the World Turns and One Life to Live. His film parts run in the same register: Agent Cunningham in Spike Lee's 25th Hour, a court clerk in Presumed Innocent, a mayor's press secretary in One Fine Day. Small, official, credible.
The writing is where he has the bigger say. He co-wrote She Hate Me with Spike Lee and also appears in it as Jamal Armstrong, which is an unusual double to pull off on a Lee set. He went on to co-write Talk to Me, and has worked on Broadway as well, which is audible in how he handles dialogue that other actors would rush.
More recently he turned up as Maurice Jackson in Terrifier 3, a film with a very different audience from anything else on his resume, and the sort of late-career left turn that character actors either enjoy or pretend did not happen.
Movies (5)
Where to start with Michael Genet
25th Hour is the place to start, and not only for him. It is one of Lee's best films, and Genet's federal agent is part of the machinery closing in around the lead, played with none of the swagger that role usually attracts.
Then She Hate Me, where his name is on the screenplay as well as the cast list. The film is messy and heavily argued about, but it is the clearest statement of what he wanted to write. Presumed Innocent and One Fine Day are the studio jobs, both of them small parts done cleanly. Terrifier 3 is the outlier, an aggressively nasty horror sequel that hired a serious actor to give its violence some weight.