Colman Domingo movies: 10 best films, ranked
Back in the 1950s and ’60s, actors were regularly introduced as “star of stage, screen, and television,” but these days there are precious few film or TV stars willing to take that scary leap to the stage. One who has and has been amply awarded in all three venues is Colman Domingo, who began his stage career at Joseph Papp‘s New York Shakespeare Festival and moved eventually to Broadway, where he has earned two Tony Award nominations, for acting and producing.
Domingo then turned to television, guesting on multiple Law and Order episodes — a must for any New York actor’s résumé. Domingo then landed a successful series gig, with a seven-season stint on Fear the Walking Dead, which led to HBO’s hit Euphoria, for which he earned a 2022 Primetime Emmy Award as a guest actor.
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But it is in film that Domingo has left his greatest mark. After years of playing loving, respectable characters, his genteel image exploded with 2021’s Zola, in which his garishly-dressed pimp, X, chewed up every possible scene. In 2023’s The Color Purple, he brought his bad-guy swagger to a prestige musical and garnered some of the film’s best notices. But it was his partnership with director George C. Wolfe that brought Colman two of his greatest roles — as a complex trombone man in 2020’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom and in 2023’s Rustin, as gay and civil rights icon Bayard Rustin, a performance that brought Domingo his first Academy Award nomination, along with recognition from virtually every major awards group. Domingo’s roll continued in 2024, with his lead performance in the prison drama Sing Sing, which has brought the actor some career-best reviews.
As Domingo’s star continues to rise, let’s raise a glass and toast this great actor by ranking and counting down his 10 best performances on screen.
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