- Born
- Birth nameMichael Procaccino
- Michael Cristofer was awarded a Pulitzer Prize and an Antoinette Perry "Tony" Award for the Broadway production of his play, The Shadow Box. Other plays include Breaking Up (Primary Stages), ICE, (Manhattan Theatre Club); Black Angel, (Circle Repertory Company); The Lady and the Clarinet starring Stockard Channing, Amazing Grace starring Marsha Mason and Man in the Ring, the story of prize fighter Emile Griffith, which received the American Theater Critics Award for best American play in 2017.
Mr. Cristofer's film work includes the screenplays for The Shadow Box (1980) directed by Paul Newman (Golden Globe Award, Emmy nomination), Falling in Love (1984), with Meryl Streep and Robert DeNiro, Les Sorcières d'Eastwick (1987) with Jack Nicholson, Le bûcher des vanités (1990) directed by Brian De Palma, Breaking Up (1997) starring Russell Crowe and Salma Hayek, Georgia O'Keeffe (2009) (Writers Guild Award) with Joan Allen and Jeremy Irons, Casanova (2005) starring Heath Ledger, and Outsider (2016) starring Liev Schreiber. His directing credits include Femme de rêve (1998), for HBO Pictures starring Angelina Jolie, Mercedes Ruehl, and Faye Dunaway, which was nominated for 5 Emmys and for which he won a Director's Guild Award. He next directed Sexe attitudes (1999) for New Line Cinema and Péché originel (2001) starring Antonio Banderas.
For eight years he worked as co-artistic director of River Arts Repertory in Woodstock, N.Y., where he wrote stage adaptations of the films Love Me Or Leave Me and the legendary Casablanca, directed Joanne Woodward in his own adaptation of Ibsen's Ghosts and produced the American premier of Edward Albee's Three Tall Women - a production which later moved to Off-Broadway. His most recent works for the theater are in workshop at the Actor's Studio where he is a member. After a fifteen year hiatus, Mr. Cristofer has returned to his acting career appearing in Romeo and Juliet (NY Shakespeare Festival), Trumpery by Peter Parnell, Three Sisters (Williamstown Theater), Body of Water with Christine Lahti, and the acclaimed Broadway revival of A View from the Bridge with Liev Schreiber and Scarlett Johansson.
His film work includes The Girl in the Book (2015), Un hiver à Central Park (2009) with Natalie Portman and Michel Franco's Chronic with Tim Roth. He created the role of Gus in Tony Kushner's The Intelligent Homosexual... at the Public Theater and starred in Stephen Belber's Don't Go Gentle at MCC Theater. He appeared as the infamous Truxton Spangler in the AMC series Rubicon (2010) and was recently seen in the NBC series, Smash (2012), American Horror Story (2011), Showtime's Ray Donovan (2013). On the USA Network series, Mr. Robot (2015), he plays Evil Corp CEO, Philip Price.- IMDb mini biography by: Michael Cristofer
- ParentsJoseph Peter ProcaccinoMary Procaccino
- Pulitzer Prize winner for his 1977 Broadway play, "The Shadow Box", which was made into a television film, The Shadow Box (1980) starring Joanne Woodward and Christopher Plummer.
- He was awarded the 1977 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for "The Shadow Box.".
- Won Broadway's 1977 Tony Award as author of Best Play winner "The Shadow Box."
- Michael Cristofer is appeared as the C.E.O. of the Evil Corps in Mr. Robot (2015), Cristofer co-starred with James Badge Dale in Rubicon (2010). James Badge Dale co-starred with Rami Malek, the star of Mr. Robot (2015) in The Pacific (2010), an HBO mini-series.
- He was awarded the 1978 Drama Logue Award for Outstanding Achievement in Playwriting for "Black Angel" at the Mark Taper Forum Theatre in Los Angeles, California.
- [on his libretto for the opera 'Champion'] I saw in Emile [Griffith]'s life the story of a man who was fighting to reconcile who he was inside with who he was in the outside world. He was a young man who wanted to make hats and sing and play baseball and instead became a famous and successful prize fighter. He was confused about his sexual identity and that confusion led to violence. That violence led to the death of another man.
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