With his imposing presence and remarkable acting prowess, Mike Colter has become a recognizable face in the entertainment industry. He’s known for his dynamic range and captivating performances, and his journey is an inspiring narrative of resilience and dedication.

Colter, born in Columbia, South Carolina in 1976, initially embarked on a career path where he simultaneously pursued acting and juggled part time jobs for support. His dedication to his craft soon caught the attention of industry insiders, leading him to land significant roles that would pave the way for his rise to fame.

Before his breakthrough as the iconic Luke Cage in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Colter demonstrated his versatility in various supporting roles, like Lemond Bishop in The Good Fight and Tommy Shine in Breakthrough, showcasing his acting finesse and leaving a lasting impression on critics and audiences alike. Beyond his on-screen performances, Colter’s advocacy for diversity and representation in the entertainment industry has solidified his status as not just an actor, but also a prominent voice for positive change. 

I sat down with Colter to ask him about the development of his career and how he got to where he is today.

Where did your passion for acting come from/start? 

I grew up in a small town in South Carolina, and basically I spent a lot of time alone as a kid. You know, I had older brothers and sisters. My oldest sibling was eight years ahead of me. I think what happens when you’re in a small town is that this is not unusual, you use your imagination. I grew up in a small town on a dirt road with nothing but farm animals nearby. There was not really access to a lot of entertainment, and I spent a lot of time by myself and a lot of time outside. 

I remember getting HBO, which is home box office; they changed the name to Max, but that’s been around since 1980. I basically just started consuming so many movies that I couldn’t otherwise watch, and I always wanted just to figure out how they were doing what they were doing. It was entertaining, but I was looking at it like, okay, well, how are they doing it? This is great. I’m into it. I’m into this whole world they’ve created, but I don’t know how they’re doing it. And so I was really curious about the analyzing, the approach. I didn’t know anything about it, but I was really curious about the actual mechanism and the actual process, and so that was my first thing, and I just thought to myself, it would be such a cool thing to have a job where you just pretend all day long at a very intense mean. It was kind of like, you never grow up like Peter Pan, right? You just never grow up.

Did you ever feel discouraged to pursue a career in acting?

Oh, yeah, many times. I mean, you’re talking about a business that doesn’t always lead to financial success or fulfillment if you don’t get a chance to work. The idea that you want to be an actor is great, but then there’s just not enough work for all those who aspire to be performers. A lot of us spend time doing things like waiting tables and doing things like working in restaurants and having odd jobs. The majority of my twenties I spent with side jobs and day jobs, things that I wasn’t passionate about, but they were means to an end. I spent most of that time discouraged in terms of how long it would take, would it ever happen, and does it make sense and what does it mean? Where do I want to be in 20 years? I think I was always, like, giving myself a target. Like, if I’m not here by a certain age, I need to start thinking about my future, because I didn’t want to be a certain age relying on tips. 

In the entertainment industry, networking and connections are crucial. How did you build your initial network and make contacts that eventually helped you in your acting career?

That’s a really good question. I’m not a good networker, actually. I’m really what you define as an introverted extrovert. I’m not very good with just making friends or making connections and networking to sort of build for something. My buddy, I have known him for a long time, he is a good example of a networker. He’s a person that persevered. He created opportunities. He uses relationships to get an agent. He uses relationships to get auditions. He uses relationships to get a lot of things. 

I’m not like that. I spent most of my time just saying, hey, look, I got to have representation. That gets me in the room. I can audition, and if I can do that well, they will give me a call back or they will be interested in me. I can’t spend my days going to parties and going to things to try to create a space for myself. My first agent asked me about that. He’s like, well, you could be farther along if you network more. I’m like, that’s not my job. That’s what your job is for. Your job is to sell me to casting directors and to sell me to people. That was a problem, and I split away from him soon, but I think you impress people. If you impress people, people will remember you, and they will remember you in his time. 

Can you describe the early stages of your career and what motivated you to pursue acting during that time?

Well, at the early stage of my career, I was basically trying to impress casting directors. I got into rooms, and I basically was starting over because I came out of graduate school and in graduate school you study, you train for three years, then you go out, and you try to apply what you learn. You’ve done some plays, but you haven’t done anything on camera. I went to Rutgers, which was a very good acting school at the time, but it wasn’t in the top five, so I knew nothing about rankings. I knew that I was prepared for the real world, but I didn’t have, I guess, an accelerated path, because I didn’t have this sort of perception that, oh, you’re not from Juilliard, you’re not from, like, Carnegie Mellon. You don’t have an entry into everyone’s store, so you still have to sort of prove yourself. I spent most of my time getting out of school, going to cast directors offices, and just trying to audition very well so that they would then eventually take my little headshot and move it to the top of the pile. 

I think they’re in a mode of like, I want to see somebody special. I want something to pop. I want something to be great. But for the most part, you’re not going to see great. I mean, the numbers are just against you. You want to be that person that when you open your mouth or when you start your audition, they pop up and they go, wow, okay, that person has a clue what’s going on here. Because even if you don’t get the job, the point is that they remember you now. They take your headshot. They look at it when you walk out the door. They have a discussion with your system. You may get a callback with producers, who knows? Every time you go to audition, you’re like, okay, I’m trying to see what my feedback is. Like, I may not get it, but I’m getting called back. Even if you get called back and it’s 15 or 20 people, eventually the number goes down, and you’re like, ten people left. When you get the job, it’s between you and one other person, usually three at most. That’s after they looked at so many people, maybe weeks of auditioning. Every time you go to the next level, you’re like, okay, I’m building off of that. There’s steps to getting to the point where you actually see the person that’s going to hire you. They don’t call you in for the person that’s going to hire you unless they know you’re going to be really good, you’re going to deliver, and you’re going to impress that person. Otherwise, they look stupid, so they’re not going to call you into the producers or directors unless they know when you walk in that room, the producers will say ‘all right, this guy is good, I know I’m not going to worry about him.’ That’s where you want to be.  I got to knock it out of the park to make sure that now they take my headshot and they put on the other stack of callbacks. Now I have a reputation. When I go to that office again, they trust me, so they’re calling me straight into producer sessions. They understand, like, hey, this person, this is his type. I know what he’s good at. I know what he can do. I can trust him to do almost anything. They now have a good feel for you. So they’re calling you in, and you’re just going right into the cast director’s office, going right to the director, right to a producer. Before you know it, you’re getting that much closer to getting a job. Every audition makes a difference. You have to hit it.

In 2020 you did a Facebook post with DoorDash talking about how working in the restaurant business helped you out in a time of need; how did it help you?

It helped having a solid day job where you knew that you had the job and you could pay your bills, but you also had enough flexibility that you could leave and come back if something like another job opportunity came about. As an actor, I spent most of my time in L.A. I had to move back to New York, but I only stayed a year in L.A. The hardest thing in L.A. was finding a day job that I could actually multitask, and have the opportunity to audition and have a day job. 

So out of the day jobs I had, I probably had three or four different day jobs, and I kept switching day jobs. I would either lose them because I couldn’t get there on time, and also I couldn’t get my audition material back the day before. This was a long time ago. We wouldn’t have PDFs. They wouldn’t e-mail you stuff. You had to go pick up the physical script from the office. So that meant I had to drive across town, grab the script, and grab the size. If I had time to read the entire script, great. If not, I had to concentrate on just the size that they gave me, just the things that I needed to do the audition. I had to prepare, so I needed a good system where I knew that I could go to this job.

I had to work these days. If I needed to, I could give my shift away. They understood, if I need to go away for a month, I cover my shifts, come back, and I still have a job. They didn’t give me a hard time. You felt like you were supported by the place you worked to pursue the dream that you wanted, because this wasn’t my dream, to be in the restaurant for the rest of my life. I needed to have some place that I could just work and just not worry about my day-to-day needs in terms of just paying my bills. And that’s what it provided. That’s why I stayed there so long. I stayed, I think, seven or eight years, because it was great. During that time, I worked a lot and I booked a lot of jobs, and I would come and go, but I had a sense of comfort and relaxation knowing that I could focus on my work, because this was something that was just what it was supposed to be, a day job.

Were there any specific moments or experiences that inspired you to take the leap into acting as a full-time career?

Well, I think the first time, what I was waiting on as an actor was what they call having a stable job that generated enough money. For me, that stable job was most times television.  I had a job where I finally booked a series, a regular role on a T.V. series, that would allow me to make a substantial amount of money in a short window of time and consistency. And I could count on that and go, okay, this is how much I’m going to make this year, and I’m also going to be so busy doing this job, I can’t work at a restaurant unless I quit the job or put my chips on hold for at least six months. 

Now, I could have done that, but at this time, I had already had enough. I felt like I was doing well enough, and I’d been consistent enough, and I sort of started with a new agent. I was doing pretty well, so I felt, you know what? Take the leap. It’s time to walk away from the restaurant, and move to L.A. where this job was filming. I could have probably tried to hold on to my day job and say, hey, you know what? I may be back in a couple months, let me just put it on hold. But I said, you know what? I wanted to change the scenery, so I moved. 

The job didn’t last that long. I was kind of annoyed because the job got canceled after a season, but it gave me the financial means to move out to L.A., and I was able to not have to worry about money for a while. I just started auditioning with my agency out there, and I just kept going. I kept the momentum up, so I just used that momentum for me. I was waiting on that. I was in New York for almost ten years after I moved back from L.A., and I was waiting for the entire time to have some job that would take me there back to L.A. 

A lot of actors in New York just went out to L.A., looking for a job that they could have and that would give them sustainability. I didn’t want to move back to L.A., and struggle. I was struggling in New York. But New York, at least when you struggle in New York, you have a different life. It’s like everybody in L.A. feels like they could be an actor. With everybody in L.A.’s, it’s the same dream. It’s just a different kind of feeling when you’re in that small little element or know, California is big, but L.A., it feels like everyone’s an actor. And I was like, well, I didn’t want to be surrounded by actors. I wanted to sort of have a life where I knew a lot of different people and people I hung out with were from different walks of life. So I just like my environment better. I like my community of people here better. So I wanted to wait because psychologically, I knew being out in L.A. With no work, waiting on the phone to ring, auditioning every day would feel different than it felt in L.A. So I wanted to have work when I went out to L.A. And that’s what I did. I got the work. And then once I got the work, it sustained me and I kept the ball rolling.

Looking back on your journey, is there anything you wish you had known or done differently in the early stages of your acting career?

I probably wish I hadn’t stayed at my first agent so long. I stayed with my first agency longer than I should have because I had outgrown them, or at least longer than I should have, because I had outgrown them, or at least I needed someone who felt motivated and understood me and believed in me to get me in places I need to be. I think I stayed with them too long. I think the relationship soured, and I was the only person. I liked the other agent who was in L.A, but I was living in New York now with this other agent whom I didn’t really like that much. 

I regret giving them that much time of my career. And then the other agent that I went to after that, I really loved them. I really thought it was a great agency, and they did a great job for me and really sustained my career and got into the moment where I was consistently working. And I wish I had stayed there longer, and I left too soon. I think I left a couple of years too soon. In hindsight, I think sometimes you stay too long, or you leave prematurely. Those two moments, I think, ‘check’ and think about it differently. 

Now that you’ve achieved success as a movie star, what advice would you offer to aspiring actors who are just starting their journey from unconventional career paths?

Well, we’re in a very different time. We are in a very social media heavy time. Everything is fast, and now, everybody wants everything to succeed fast. Now I would say as actors growing up now trying to come up in the business, everything is different. What they want to talk about like, oh, social media followers and whatever, your social appearance, and all of this stuff. I think it’s all so superficial nowadays, and they’re forgetting what the artistry of acting is. 

We’re here fighting about AIs in our Union strike right now about technology. People want to get rid of artists because when you’re an artist, you’re born that way. It’s like a gene. It’s something that you have. Somebody can teach you what it is. You just have it or you don’t. And there’s something you can’t put in a bottle, you can’t copy it, and you can’t generate it. It’s just there. And when people don’t have it, sometimes they really don’t understand how to take care of it, how to promote it, or how to nurture it. And so we are at a time right now where art and good acting and good artistry and actually putting in the work; it doesn’t change. You have to put in the work. 

And I think the new generation, a lot of times it’s like the speed in which they want things to happen, success, they are not willing to put in the work. I always tell people the main thing that happened for me, which probably propelled me more than anything, is that you got to work harder than most people. You have to put in the work. You have to outwork people. And then even if you outwork people, it doesn’t mean you’re successful, but you’re going to have a chance. You can’t just do less and expect more. If there’s a question in your mind, are you prepared? Then you’re probably not prepared. Because when you really, really put in the work, there’s no doubt in your mind you walk into certain confidence, you walk into a certain feeling that I can execute, that I’m ready for anything. 

And that is something that you can’t replicate. That’s the artistry of acting, when it’s done really well. You forget they’re acting. The work they put into it all those years to get to the point where they can fool you and pretend in such a way that you are completely fooled, that is work that they put into it. Everybody’s always asking me, Hey, man, how can I do this? I tell them, I say, Hey, go take classes. Go study for three years. Just focus. Go take three years of your life and put it into your craft and just go underground. Prioritize your goals before anything else and watch what happens when you come out of your tunnel in three years. 

Finally, what kind of advice would you give to a high school student?

High school is just a stepping stone. Don’t take it too seriously. A lot of people I think in high school, they’re really fighting with their identity, trying to figure out the next step. Who am I? What’s important? I would tell people, the people that you’re hanging around with, these aren’t your friends. Most of them are just people you won’t even remember in ten years. They’re not that important. Don’t take high school too seriously. It should not be the peak of your life. It is really just the beginning. I think people really hold on to high school like, Oh, man, if I am not popular, my hair is not great. I have ugly clothes, or I’m not cool, I’m not the track team, I’m not the football team. There’s nothing they can hang their hats on. But those people that are really, really popular in high school, they usually peak. A lot of them peak in high school. They usually go downhill from there because the real world, they come out of the real world. Most of them don’t know how to adjust. Nobody thinks you’re cool. Nobody knows you. Nobody is like, Oh, yeah, you’re like, No, you’re not the big man on campus anymore. Go to college. Start over. Just keep that in mind. This is not that big of a deal.

“That’s the artistry of acting, when it’s done really well. You forget they’re acting,” said Mike Colter.