Biography

Michael Colyar (Michael K. Colyar) – American actor, comedian, and author, born 9 February 1957 in Chicago, Illinois. Raised in the Robert Taylor Homes public housing project on Chicago's South Side. He gained national attention in 1990 by winning the $100,000 Grand Prize Comedy championship on Star Search (donating $50,000 to homeless charities in Los Angeles), then spent nine years performing on the Venice Beach boardwalk, where he was nicknamed "The King of Venice Beach" and later had his shoe prints and handprints embedded in cement by the city of Venice. His most notable film roles include Showboat in House Party 3 (1994), the Apollo Announcer in What's Love Got to Do with It (1993), a part in Poetic Justice (1993), Williams in Hot Shots! Part Deux (1993), Morris the Barber in Norbit (2007), and Buford (voice) in The Princess and the Frog (2009, Disney). On television he is best known for Mr. Whitaker in Martin (1995–1997), Milky Ray in Homeboys in Outer Space (1996), Leonard in Barbershop (2005), Reverend Hubbard in black-ish (2015), and Willie Turner in The Rich and the Ruthless (2017–2021). He is also the author of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to The White House, I Knocked on The Door and a Brother Answered (2012).