Michael Strahan
Michael Strahan is an actor, born 1971.
Michael Strahan's first career is the one that matters. Born in Houston in 1971, he played fifteen NFL seasons at defensive end for the New York Giants, set the league's single-season record for quarterback sacks, and helped the Giants win Super Bowl XLII in his final season in 2007. He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2014. Almost nobody walks away from that and builds a genuine second act; he did it immediately, in television.
On screen he is used the way athletes usually are, which is as himself. He appears as Michael Strahan in The Lego Ninjago Movie, Sharknado 2: The Second One and The Underdoggs, and as a version of himself across nearly every talk and game show in this list. The credits here record the actual job plainly enough: anchor on Good Morning America, host on Live with Kelly and Mark, host of The $100,000 Pyramid.
The scripted exceptions are rarer than the volume of titles suggests, which makes them worth pointing out. He carried a lead in the Fox sitcom Brothers as Mike Trainor, and he takes real supporting parts in Magic Mike XXL and the 2019 Charlie's Angels rather than glorified walk-ons. He is a more relaxed and better-timed comic performer than a cameo-heavy filmography implies, and the voice work in Ice Age: Collision Course quietly confirms it.
Movies (9)
- Ice Age: Collision Course (2016)
- The Lego Ninjago Movie (2017)
- Charlie's Angels (2019)
- Magic Mike XXL (2015)
- The Underdoggs (2024)
- Sharknado 2: The Second One (2014)
- The Disney Family Singalong - Volume II (2020)
- Chadwick Boseman: A Tribute for a King (2020)
- 2021 and Done with Snoop Dogg & Kevin Hart (2021)
TV (11)
Where to start with Michael Strahan
If you want an argument for Strahan as an actor rather than a personality, it is Magic Mike XXL. Augustus is a small role in an ensemble of people with far more screen experience, and Strahan is entirely at ease in it, which is not nothing when the film is essentially a series of performances.
Brothers is the historical curiosity worth knowing about, the one time a network built a scripted show around him. Charlie's Angels and Ice Age: Collision Course are the mainstream film and voice credits. After that, the hosting work is the real career: The $100,000 Pyramid is the purest showcase of what he is good at, running a room and keeping strangers comfortable, with LIVE with Kelly and Mark and Good Morning America as the daily version. Sharknado 2: The Second One and The Underdoggs are cameos, and Lip Sync Battle is the one where he is visibly having the most fun.