Anson Mount

Anson Adams Mount IV is an American actor born on February 25, 1973. He is widely known for his television performances, particularly as Cullen Bohannon in the western drama series Hell on Wheels and as Captain Christopher Pike across multiple projects in the Star Trek franchise. He has also portrayed the character Black Bolt in Marvel Cinematic Universe productions.

Raised in Tennessee, Mount attended Dickson County High School in Dickson. His father, Anson Adams Mount II, worked as an original contributing editor for Playboy magazine, while his mother, Nancy Smith, was a professional golfer. He has three older siblings from his father's previous marriage. Following high school, Mount pursued higher education at Sewanee: The University of the South, later attending Columbia University.

Mount began his career on stage, starring in Terrence McNally's play Corpus Christi in 1998, a performance for which he was recognized by the Drama League. His theater credits include classic and contemporary productions, such as Anton Chekhov's Three Sisters in 2010 and Robert O'Hara's Mankind in 2018. Additionally, Mount has written for the stage; his one-act play Love Liza? won the Maxim Mazumdar New Play Prize, and his play Atomic City was selected as a finalist for the American Playwrights Conference at the O'Neill Center in 2008.

In 2000, Mount made his feature film debut in the independent picture Tully. He went on to appear in films such as Crossroads in 2002 and Cook County in 2009. For Cook County, which he also produced, he earned accolades across various film festivals, including SXSW, AFI Dallas, Nashville, and Hollywood. On television, early roles included the legal series Conviction before he secured the lead role in Hell on Wheels, a series he produced from 2014 to 2016.

Mount played Black Bolt in the Marvel Cinematic Universe series Inhumans in 2017, later reprising the role in the 2022 feature film Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. In 2018, he joined the cast of Star Trek: Discovery as Captain Christopher Pike. Positive viewer reception led to appearances in Star Trek: Short Treks and his return as the character in the spinoff series Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, which debuted in 2022.

In addition to acting, Mount works as an adjunct assistant professor at Columbia University, instructing graduate students in audition techniques. He has contributed published non-fiction pieces to Mosaic, The Daily Beast, Cowboys & Indians, and the Calgary Herald. Mount writes, produces, and hosts a podcast named The Well alongside Branan Edgens, and serves on the board of directors for METI International. He married photographer Darah Trang in 2018, and the couple has a daughter born in December 2021.