Anson Mount

Anson Mount is an American actor whose best-known television roles include Cullen Bohannon in Hell on Wheels and Captain Christopher Pike in Star Trek: Discovery and Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.

Cullen Bohannon

Mount gives Bohannon a physical ease that makes the railway Western believable before he has said very much. He looks comfortable doing the work and less comfortable explaining himself. The performance leaves room for stubbornness, fatigue and a dry sense of humour beneath the familiar hat and beard.

That restraint matters in a series with so many forceful personalities. Bohannon can hold a scene opposite Colm Meaney's expansive Durant without trying to match him speech for speech. Mount's attention to how the character stands, listens and waits makes the silences useful.

From the stage to the frontier

Mount studied at the University of the South before completing an MFA in acting at Columbia University in 1998. His stage work includes Terrence McNally's Corpus Christi, Mourning Becomes Electra and Elle. That theatre background sits alongside a screen career which began well before the railroad.

His early films include Tully, Crossroads and City by the Sea. He also starred in and produced the independent drama Cook County. Television appearances include Lost, where he played Kevin, as well as Smallville and Dollhouse.

Captain Pike and other roles

Mount introduced his version of Pike in the second season of Star Trek: Discovery, later leading Strange New Worlds. The captain has a more welcoming manner than Bohannon, but both roles benefit from an actor who does not have to hurry to establish authority.

He also played Black Bolt in Inhumans and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Those roles make unusually different demands on expression and speech; Bohannon, Pike and Black Bolt are not simply the same leading man in three costumes.

For his work as Bohannon, read the Hell on Wheels review.