Background and career
Colman Jason Domingo (born November 28, 1969) is an American actor, playwright and director. Prominent on both screen and stage since the 2010s, Domingo has received various accolades, including a Primetime Emmy Award, and nominations for two Academy Awards and two Tony Awards. Time magazine named him among the 100 most influential people in the world in 2024. Domingo started his career in regional theater productions before transitioning to Broadway acting in Well (2005), Passing Strange (2008), and Chicago (2010–2011). For his role in the original Broadway and West End productions of The Scottsboro Boys, he earned nominations for the Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Musical in 2011 and the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Performance in a Supporting Role in a Musical in 2014. He also wrote the book for Summer: The Donna Summer Musical (2018) and co-produced Fat Ham (2023), a modern-day adaptation of William Shakespeare's Hamlet nominated for the Tony Award for Best Play. On television he portrayed Victor Strand in the AMC series Fear the Walking Dead (2015–2023) and played the recovering drug addict Ali Muhammad on the HBO series Euphoria (2019–2026), for which he won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series in 2022. He also earned two nominations for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series for his role as an interior decorator in the Netflix series The Four Seasons (2025). In film, Domingo received consecutive nominations for the Academy Award for Best Actor for his portrayals of civil rights activist Bayard Rustin in the biopic Rustin (2023) and a prison inmate in the drama Sing Sing (2024). His other film credits include Lincoln (2012), The Butler (2013), Selma (2014), If Beale Street Could Talk (2018), Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (2020), Zola (2021), The Color Purple (2023), and Michael (2026).
Domingo was born and raised as the third of four children in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in a working class household. His mother, Edith Bowles, was a homemaker of African American heritage who also worked at a bank, while his stepfather, Clarence, sanded floors for a living. Domingo's biological father was from Belize, with relatives from Guatemala and Honduras. He left the family when Domingo was nine years old. Domingo had a speech impediment, a lisp, as a child and was sent to speech therapy classes by his mother. Domingo is a 1987 Overbrook High School graduate, and later attended Temple University, where he majored in journalism. Soon thereafter, he moved to San Francisco, California, where he started acting, mainly in theater productions. His mother died in 2006, the day after Domingo's successful audition for the theater musical Passing Strange. His stepfather had died a few months earlier. From 2009 to 2017, Domingo lived in the federally subsidized artists' building Manhattan Plaza.
Domingo's first on-screen acting credit was in a 1995 direct-to-video feature film called Timepiece. Domingo continued to act sporadically through the 1990s, making his television debut in the police procedural Nash Bridges in 1997. He took a small role in Clint Eastwood's True Crime (1999) and acted in the independent films Desi's Looking for a New Girl (2000), Kung Phooey (2003), and the crime drama Freedomland (2006). He also took minor roles in Law & Order, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, and Law & Order: Trial by Jury.
On stage, Domingo starred as Mr. Franklin Jones, Joop, and Mr. Venus in the critically acclaimed rock musical Passing Strange, which, after a successful 2007 run at The Public Theater, opened on Broadway on February 28, 2008. He received an Obie Award in spring 2008 as part of the ensemble of Passing Strange Off-Broadway, and reprised his role in the film version of Passing Strange, directed by Spike Lee, which made its premiere at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival. Domingo went on to immediately collaborate with Lee again for a small role in the film Miracle at St. Anna (2008). He then acted in the sketch series The Big Gay Sketch Show from 2008 to 2010. In 2010, Domingo's one-man autobiographical play A Boy and His Soul premiered Off-Broadway at the Vineyard Theatre, for which he won a Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Solo Show. He was also nominated for a Drama Desk Award and a Drama League Award. For his work in The Scottsboro Boys on Broadway in 2010, he was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Musical in May 2011. When The Scottsboro Boys opened in London, Domingo was nominated for the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Performance in a Supporting Role in a Musical in April 2014. He was also nominated for the Fred Astaire Award for Best Principal Dancer on Broadway in 2011. In 2012, Domingo starred in the premiere of his play Wild With Happy at The Public Theater. Domingo collaborated with Spike Lee again for a supporting role in the film Red Hook Summer (2012). Around this time, he booked a small part as Private Harold Green in the opening scenes of Steven Spielberg's historical epic Lincoln (2012) which was critically acclaimed and a box office hit; Spielberg cast him after having previously cast him in a small part in a cancelled George Gershwin biopic. Domingo then appeared in minor supporting roles in similarly successful films 42 (2013), The Butler (2013), and Selma (2014). From June 14 to July 18, 2014, Domingo returned to theater to play Billy Flynn in the Broadway revival of Chicago. According to The New York Times, Domingo considered "quitting the acting business over the rejection" in 2014 due to missing out on many film and television auditions, including one for a small role on Boardwalk Empire because casting directors allegedly said that his skin was too dark. Domingo described having an emotional breakdown after being rejected for a role he and others felt was perfect for him. He subsequently decided his talents weren't best used in acting, and to instead pursue a business in headshot photography. Around this time, a friend introduced him to a manager who helped Domingo change his auditioning style and put him forward for different types of roles. These changes helped Domingo to get booked for his breakout role in AMC's The Walking Dead spinoff television series, Fear the Walking Dead, which Domingo has said "gave me a new footing back in the industry, believing I had something to give".
On Fear the Walking Dead, Domingo portrayed the character of Victor Strand; his first appearance was in the fifth episode of the first season, titled "Cobalt". In December of that year, it was announced that Domingo was promoted to series regular for the second season of the series. IndieWire called him "easily the most vivid character in the sometimes gray apocalypse" of the series. The 2015 Humana Festival of New American Plays premiered Domingo's play Dot, directed by Meredith McDonough. Dot was produced at the off-Broadway Vineyard Theatre in 2016. Lights Out: Nat "King" Cole, co-written by Domingo and Patricia McGregor, premiered at People's Light outside Philadelphia in 2017, where he directed a production of Dot in 2019. In 2016, Domingo appeared in various television series, with roles such as Dr. Russell Daniels in The Knick, Father Frank in Lucifer, and Dr. Evers in Louis C.K.'s Horace and Pete. That year, he also starred as Hark Turner in Nate Parker's The Birth of a Nation, which was based on the story of Nat Turner, an enslaved man who led a slave rebellion in Southampton County, Virginia in 1831. Of his experience shooting The Birth of a Nation, Domingo said:
I've played a Union soldier in Lincoln, head of the White House butler staff in The Butler, and even marched with Selma, but the idea of playing a slave who was going to be a part of this rebellion... I was living in so much darkness for the first couple weeks and I had to really work it out. We were shooting on plantations, and you feel that emotional trauma. It's in the soil; it's in the air.In 2017, Domingo joined the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences as a member of the Actors' Branch, and played a dragonfly in an episode of the fourth season of the Netflix animated series BoJack Horseman.
Sources
Net-worth figure: Celebrity Net Worth (October 2026), in USD. Biography and career facts: the person's Wikipedia article and linked reporting. Snapshot date for all StarWorth figures: 28 October 2026.
