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Colson Baker stands almost six and a half feet tall and has his torso covered in black ink. On film production credits, he drops the Machine Gun Kelly alias and signs with his real name. He aims to filter out the noise of the stage and focus on the discipline of cinematic framing.

In 2014, director Gina Prince-Bythewood gave him his first break in Beyond the Lights. He played an arrogant rapper in just a couple of scenes. Four years later, he appeared in the thriller Nerve and the survival drama Bird Box. These were supporting roles designed to make use of his street-tough look.

The drumsticks of Tommy Lee

In 2019, the biopic The Dirt hit streaming platforms. The project required recreating the wild physical energy of Mötley Crüe's drummer without faking the moves. Baker practiced juggling the drumsticks until his palms were blistered.

He learned to play the drums from scratch so he wouldn't need hand doubles for close-up shots.

And the gamble paid off.

But the industry still labeled him an opportunistic intruder in mainstream music. So Baker combined a brief role in the comedy The King of Staten Island in 2020 with appearances in action titles such as Project Power. He wanted to rack up set hours regardless of how big the credit was.

The disaster of the stoner comedy

In 2022, he decided to write and co-direct his own feature film with musician Mod Sun. The movie was Good Mourning, a cannabis comedy born from a household misunderstanding over phone messages.

Critics slammed the film, with a resounding zero percent positive reviews on Rotten Tomatoes. The movie barely grossed 21,348 dollars at the box office, and in 2023 it earned Baker the Razzie for Worst Director of the year.

It was a hard slap of reality.

Berlin and raw catharsis

Movies don't forgive pretenders.

That same 2022, he attended the Berlin International Film Festival with the independent drama Taurus, directed by Tim Sutton. Baker played Cole, a musician pushed to his limits who searches for one last melody amid hotel rooms and anxiety attacks.

Sutton planned eight-minute takes with little scripted dialogue. Because Baker didn't build an outside caricature, but a raw portrait of the loneliness of life on tour and chemical dependency.

In 2024, he accepted a supporting role in the action comedy Jackpot! under the direction of Paul Feig. For his chase sequence, he wrapped shooting in Atlanta after a single four-hour day.