Michael Dolan

Michael Dolan is an American actor, writer, and director born on June 21, 1965, in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. At age 17, he left high school and relocated to New York City to pursue a career in acting. His professional debut came in 1985, when he appeared off-Broadway in Albert Innaurato's Coming of Age in Soho and was seen in the live television film The Execution of Raymond Graham. A childhood enthusiasm for filmmaking had taken root even earlier — at age 10, he produced a remake of the 1971 film Summer of '42, which he titled Summer of '76.

Dolan's Broadway career spanned 1987 to 1989, during which he appeared in two productions: Breaking the Code and A Few Good Men. That same period saw him establish a parallel presence in film, with roles in Light of Day alongside Michael J. Fox and the ensemble war drama Hamburger Hill, both released in 1987. In 1988, he was cast as Pvt. James J. Hennesey in the film adaptation of Neil Simon's Biloxi Blues, starring Matthew Broderick, and portrayed Scott Thorson in the Canada-US television biography Liberace: Behind the Music.

His subsequent film credits include Necessary Roughness (1991), The Turning (1992), Courage Under Fire (1996), and Lolita (1997). On television, he appeared in three episodes of I'll Fly Away (1992), one episode of The Outer Limits (1995), and two episodes of Law & Order across 1993 and 1995. In 1999, he appeared in the TNT made-for-cable film The Hunley, which chronicles the Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley. A decade later, he was featured in Geoff Marslett's rotoscoped science-fiction romantic comedy Mars (2010), playing ESA Commander David Jones.

Dolan also pursued careers in writing and directing. His short film Arrow Shot, which he wrote and directed, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 1997 and subsequently screened at more than 50 festivals, achieved European sales, and ran for two years on Bravo. In 2004, he accepted a three-year fellowship at the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas, where he became involved in developing several feature film projects. Working under the name Mike Dolan, he made his feature directorial debut with Dance with the One (2010), a film shot in Austin, Texas, with a primarily local cast, crew, and soundtrack, produced through the University of Texas Film Institute.