HEROES ARE MADE Not Born

The Alias and Cagney & Lacey alum is back on the big screen in Captain America: Brave New World

- CARL LUMBLY

Over his long career, Carl Lumbly has played superheroes, secret agents, lawmen and geniuses—but no matter how extraordinary, he find the human heart of every character he inhabits.

“I work really hard at what I do, because I think it’s important,” Carl, 73, tells Closer. “In doing that work, I feel like my desire to be a part of something that connects people has connected me. I’m proud I haven’t run away from that.”

Carl arrived in San Francisco after college intent on a writing career, but wound up on stage. Since then, he’s moved between theater, television series including Cagney & Lacey and Alias, and motion pictures. He’s currently on the big screen in Captain America: Brave New World, in which he plays super soldier Isaiah Bradley, a character he first portrayed on TV’s The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.

When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?

I wanted to be a writer. I started working in libraries when I was 12 or 13. Books at that time were my entire life. The kinds of journeys that writers could take you on, the kinds of places I could go, gave me a sense that the world was much larger than Minneapolis.

On Alias, his character Marcus Dixon was a longtime operative and mentor to Jennifer Garner's Sydney.

How did you start acting?

I realized that there was something sort of self-enforced about my love of books.

I wasn’t sure I understood people as well as I understood the people in books. My better angels led me to an improvisational theater company Dudley Riggs’ Brave New Workshop. That’s where I was able to meld writing and this idea of getting up and walking around inside these words.