Colman Domingo

Colman Jason Domingo, born November 28, 1969, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, is an American actor, playwright, and book writer whose career spans stage, television, and film. The third of four children, he grew up in a working-class household with his mother, Edith Bowles, who worked as a homemaker and at a bank, and his stepfather, Clarence, who sanded floors for a living. His biological father, who had roots in Belize and Guatemala, left the family when Domingo was nine. As a child, Domingo had a lisp and attended speech therapy. He graduated from Overbrook High School in 1987 and went on to study journalism at Temple University before relocating to San Francisco, California, where he began building his acting career through local theater productions.

Domingo's Broadway career spans from 1996 to 2010 and includes credits in Mid-Summer, Well, Passing Strange, The Scottsboro Boys, and Chicago. He originated roles in Passing Strange, playing Mr. Franklin Jones, Joop, and Mr. Venus in the rock musical, which ran at The Public Theater in 2007 before opening on Broadway on February 28, 2008. As part of the Off-Broadway ensemble of that production, he received an Obie Award in spring 2008. Spike Lee directed a film version of Passing Strange, which premiered at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival, with Domingo reprising his stage role. From June 14 to July 18, 2014, he played Billy Flynn in the Broadway revival of Chicago. His performance in The Scottsboro Boys on Broadway earned him a Tony Award nomination for Best Performance by an Actor in a Featured Role in a Musical in 2011, as well as a Fred Astaire Award nomination for Best Principal Dancer on Broadway that same year. When The Scottsboro Boys transferred to London, he received a Laurence Olivier Award nomination for Best Performance in a Supporting Role in a Musical in April 2014.

Beyond performing, Domingo has contributed to Broadway and the broader theatrical world as a writer and producer. He wrote the book for Summer: The Donna Summer Musical and produced the play Fat Ham, earning a Tony Award nomination for Best Play in 2023. His one-man autobiographical play A Boy and His Soul premiered Off-Broadway at the Vineyard Theatre in 2010, winning him a Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Solo Show and generating nominations for the Drama Desk Award and the Drama League Award. He also wrote the play Wild With Happy, which had its premiere at The Public Theater in 2012, and co-wrote Lights Out: Nat "King" Cole with Patricia McGregor, which premiered at People's Light outside Philadelphia in 2017. His play Dot, which premiered at the 2015 Humana Festival of New American Plays, was subsequently produced at the Vineyard Theatre in 2016, and Domingo directed a production of it in 2019.

Domingo made his first on-screen appearance in the 1995 direct-to-video film Timepiece and his television debut in the police procedural Nash Bridges in 1997. He went on to take small roles in Clint Eastwood's True Crime (1999) and in episodes of Law & Order, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, and Law & Order: Trial by Jury, as well as the sketch series The Big Gay Sketch Show from 2008 to 2010. His breakthrough in television came with the AMC series Fear the Walking Dead, where he portrayed Victor Strand beginning in the fifth episode of the first season. He was promoted to series regular for the second season and remained with the show through 2023. He later gained further recognition for his recurring role as Ali, a recovering drug addict, on the HBO series Euphoria, for which he won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series. He received a second Emmy nomination for his work in the Netflix comedy series The Four Seasons in 2025. From 2009 to 2017, Domingo lived in the federally subsidized artists' building Manhattan Plaza in New York.

His film work includes supporting roles as Private Harold Green in Steven Spielberg's Lincoln (2012), Lawson Bowman in 42 (2013), Freddie Fallows in The Butler (2013), and Ralph Abernathy in Selma (2014), as well as appearances in Spike Lee's Miracle at St. Anna (2008) and Red Hook Summer (2012). He also appeared in If Beale Street Could Talk (2018), Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (2020), Zola (2021), and The Color Purple (2023). Domingo received consecutive Academy Award nominations for Best Actor for his portrayal of civil rights activist Bayard Rustin in the biopic Rustin (2023) and for his performance as a prison inmate in the drama Sing Sing (2024). In 2024, Time magazine named him among the 100 most influential people in the world. Domingo joined the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences as a member of the Actors' Branch in 2017.