Michael Christopher “Mike” Manning is an American actor, producer, television personality, and activist. Manning first gained fame as a cast member on the MTV series The Real World: D.C.
Since then he has starred in a number of films and television programs, such as the 2014 Disney Channel original movie Cloud 9, Hawaii Five-0, and Teen Wolf. He produced and acted in the fifth and sixth seasons of The Bay, which was nominated for seven Daytime Emmy Awards in 2020. He has also joined the cast of NBC’s Days of Our Lives as Charlie Dale.
Manning is an Executive Producer on the documentary film Kidnapped for Christ along with ‘N Sync alum Lance Bass. The film sheds light on controversial behavior modification methods used on children, sent there by their parents, at an Evangelical Christian reform school “Escuela Caribe” located in the Dominican Republic.[1] Manning became involved with the film after a friend told him about his own experiences at Escuela Caribe.
In an interview with Metro Weekly in 2010, he broke down his experience with coming out to his parents.
My mom was worried it will make my life harder. She was like, “Mike, you’re prom king. You have all these things going for you. You’re a jock. You get straight A’s. You’ve always been like the perfect child to me. I don’t want this to be your imperfection.” That hit me harder than anything else. She was putting me on this pedestal, holding me to a really, really high standard. Like everything else doesn’t matter because this is what she’s going to focus on, and she’s my mom. Is society going to focus on this? Are people going to judge me and overlook everything else that I’ve done just because of the gay thing? That’s what really made me upset about society in general.[2]
He is also a producer on the documentary film Lost in America (2018), a film that follows director Rotimi Rainwater, a former homeless youth, around the United States to examine the issues surrounding youth homelessness