Mike Colter
I hate the gym, so I try to diversify my workouts with swimming and basketball. Indoors, it's less boring than running. I do find that diet is key. I eat lots of lean protein, no soda, no fast food or fried foods, and a lot of water. But I love food and often cook.Collection: Diet
As for facial hair, I think I decided it was a good look after graduate school. I always shave it myself and trim my own beard. I change the look depending on the role. For 'Million Dollar Baby,' I had no facial hair. For 'Men in Black 3,' I had no facial hair but did wear a wig.
Cops and criminals aren't that different. They just play by different sets of rules. And the lines get blurred. There's no such thing as 'right' and 'wrong.' There's always a grey area. There are always hypocrisies.
Ridley Scott was part of the production team on 'The Good Wife.' I auditioned on my iPhone, and it moved very quickly after that, as they thought I was right for the role, and pretty soon I was filming in Iceland for two months.
There's no book to figure out how not to become a victim of police brutality.
The big budget films have money to do things that are not necessarily essential but sure are comforting. The catering is usually much better. And you have way more of anything you could possibly need. You definitely get a trailer. My shirt and suit for 'Million Dollar Baby' were tailor made.
As an actor, you just want to continue to work on things that you like. You can be in this business a long time and consistently working and just be totally artistically unfulfilled.
I've always wanted to be on a show that's well respected and had critical acclaim and that people like to watch, and at the same time find something that, for me, as an actor, is interesting and challenging.
Having worked on 'Halo: Nightfall' and gotten a taste for what 'Halo' has to offer, it definitely has me interested in picking up the games and getting familiarized more with the 'Halo' universe.
As artists, we are so not in control most of the time of the content or the narrative of our characters, and sometimes writing takes a turn and it's not something we necessarily have control over. It's just a lot of random dumb luck, so when things click, you've just got to enjoy it.
When you're acting, it's all about you and the person in front of you, and I think in life we forget to apply the same technique, and we get caught up in the panic of what we're trying to do - how overwhelmingly daunting the task of trying to become an actor is.
I'm always game for creating a new character, and I liked the idea of putting something new into the 'Halo' universe.
As an actor, you're trying to capture the nuances of real life, but voice work is almost over-acting.
Marvel does a fantastic job about bringing human stories - because you're telling big stories with a heart at the centre of it - and that's what connects all of the characters to our audience members.
I'm one of those people who is colour blind to a certain degree. And that doesn't mean I'm not acutely aware of race in our country and abroad and in the world. I know what's going on, and I'm very aware of it.
I have a wonderful wife I met at Rutgers while we were both there. She was in the Ph.D. program. She is not an actress. She definitely brings balance to my life. We actors can tend to bore anyone with shop talk.
I did want to play a superhero. I mean, who doesn't when you're a kid? I would have loved to be a superhero. But as I'd gotten older, I wasn't ready to jump into tights and put the cape on. I was hoping to play something a little more grounded and realistic.
It's always fun to play a character that bends the rules.
What makes Luke Cage unique isn't him being black. Yes, he is black, but he has other things.
You can have all the intentions you want and try and guide the narrative, but the narrative is irrelevant because it's how the public digests it that will be indicative of what the series will ultimately be.
I always say if you put someone from a small town into a big city for ten years, then when they go back, they'll act differently. Are they the same person? Sure, but do they act different? Yeah.
Some people in America don't ever interact with black people outside of television, so we should give them real, believable characters.
I pretty much spend most of my time in the gym bulking up and staying fit and putting muscle on so I can play the part of Luke Cage, but I've never been a gym rat.
Harlem is really a melting pot for a lot of different people. When you look at Harlem - and I lived there almost five years - most of the people who live in Harlem are transplants. They migrate to Harlem from another place.
I see fans all the time. They're always very complimentary, and they're always very eager to talk and to share their experiences or get a selfie. They're really, really loyal. And intense.
Comic book heroes are an important part of our culture, so I think we're actually utilizing comic book heroes in a much more in-depth way than before. They have such potential, and I think we're maximizing the potential.
My family, they're not really that involved in what I do. Career-wise, they're very supportive. They're involved after the fact. I don't tell them anything, usually, until I'm finished filming it or mid-way through filming it. It's just a job, and I approach it that way.
We all act differently in certain places. We don't want to admit it, but we're different where we grew up than we are with our family and than we are with the guys that we went to college with or our fraternity brothers. People just exist differently. It's small, subtle things, but different colors come out. That's all there is to it.
Sometimes you don't know the effect of words until you hear it used on you.
When you're a black man in a hoodie, all of a sudden you're a criminal. That's something we shouldn't have to deal with, but we do. It's a double standard. We can't cover our head when it's cold and raining because God forbid someone sees us and puts our life in danger.
I don't think Luke Cage as a superhero is something that has changed dramatically from the '70s to now. He's a black man going through the same thing as other people of colour - it's just that he has superpowers.
The black community wants to buy things and want to see themselves portrayed in a certain way. And if they don't like what they see, then they won't spend their money. Everyone's not gonna always relate to Captain America; everyone is not going to always relate to Thor. A lot of characters just don't speak to them.
Not being white has never prevented me from enjoying Luke Skywalker or Han Solo. These are heroes of mine.
It's nice to be recognized, but at the same time, there are always consequences. You may get fame, but you lose anonymity. You lose a certain sense of who you are.
It serves anyone, when they're going into some project, to try to distance themselves from the material so you can really have an objective viewpoint.
My mother wanted to be an actress. She wanted to follow her dreams, and she never really got a chance to do that. I feel like I'm following her dream in a way.
New York City is a big city but a small city when it comes to theater.
Acting, really, is a lot of mental fatigue, emotional fatigue, concentration... it's mentally draining.
I think, in a career, you have several breaks that lead to a big break. Small things here and there all add up to cracking away at the dam. Then the dam breaks.
It's a part of my DNA that I've never really taken time to revel in success.
I think all actors, when they're not working, say, 'If I can get to this point where I'm working on a consistent basis, I'll be happy.' Of course, then, if that happens for you, and you're lucky, you find some other reason to complain. There's a joke: 'If you want to hear an actor complain, give him a job.'
I always make a joke: 'Don't look into the future; it's too bright.' That's as positive as I can be.
Luke Cage isn't going to throw a pity party for himself. He literally says to himself, 'This is the world I'm in. These are the circumstances I have.' He's a self-made man. He's trying to continuously build, and that's what's interesting about him. He's a work in progress.
When Barack Obama got elected, I remember being in Harlem specifically. I remember watching that whole part of town just swell. People walked the streets, but it wasn't a riot - it wasn't mayhem. It was a unified feeling of euphoria.
I got lucky. To be frank, I was surrounded by white teachers who never did the whole, 'You're never going to amount to nothing' thing you hear about in the South. Instead, they would say, 'You're really smart. You can do this.' If I hadn't gotten that, I don't know where I'd be.
When I was playing Bishop, I would always walk on set thinking, 'This is my show; this is a show all about me.'
What I like about my character: Luke Cage is a person first and foremost. We do have other black superheroes, but he's important because he's touchable. Luke has moments when he has to try to forget his pain, but then, unlike the rest of us, he's also able to channel that frustration into fighting bad guys. Real martyrs aren't trying to be martyrs.
Dialogue is not always the best way to show emotion, to show your thought process, or to reveal yourself, as a character.
A lot of times in life, women want to talk, but men don't want to listen, and if they do want to listen, they turn it back to themselves.
I'm pretty relaxed on what people should be able to do as long as they're not hurting anybody else.