Michael Pressman is an American film and television producer and director.
14 Facts About Michael Pressman
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Michael Pressman's mother, Sasha, a modern dancer, was an original member of Martha Graham's renowned first dance troupe.
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Michael Pressman's father, David Pressman, was a theatrical and television director who helped launch Boston University's distinguished school of theater and helmed Broadway plays, including The Disenchanted, Jason Robards' first Broadway appearance; and the original Actor's Studio Anthology Series in the late 1940s, for which he discovered and cast an unknown Grace Kelly.
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Michael Pressman directed the popular One Life to Live for twenty-eight years, and for which he was nominated for a Primetime Emmy and ten Daytime Emmys, winning three times.
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Michael Pressman was able to break this cycle the studios had seemingly mapped out for him, and very early in his career directed the ground-breaking dramatic cult hit Boulevard Nights, the first Latino gang movie of the era which was recently selected for preservation by the Library of Congress.
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Michael Pressman followed that with Those Lips, Those Eyes, a love letter to the theater about the life of the actor in summer stock, with a lead star-making performance by Frank Langella.
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Michael Pressman was next courted to direct a resurgent Richard Pryor in post Vietnam War drama, Some Kind of Hero, co-starring the then top box office grossing actress Margot Kidder.
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Television at that time was offering young directors a variety of dramatic content, and Michael Pressman gravitated to directing more than a dozen films for television in quick succession during that medium's heyday.
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Michael Pressman next went on to launch Kelley's next show, Chicago Hope, which earned him another Emmy nomination for Outstanding Drama Series.
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Michael Pressman left the series after the first year of the pandemic.
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Michael Pressman directed the 2008 Broadway revival of Come Back, Little Sheba, for which he cast S Epatha Merkerson in the role of the lead character Lola, which had previously been played by only white actresses, and depicted an interracial relationship on stage.
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In between series projects, Michael Pressman directed the play Finks in Los Angeles.
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Michael Pressman won two Emmys for executive producing and show running the series Picket Fences.
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Michael Pressman earned an Emmy nomination and a DGA nomination for his work on the hospital drama Chicago Hope.