Michelle Danner is an acting coach at the Los Angeles Acting School who specializes in the Meisner, Strasberg, Adler, Hagen, Chekhov and Stanislavsky techniques. She is also the founding and artistic director of the Edgemar Center for the Arts.
Danner is the daughter of a former William Morris agent, and she currently works as an actor, director and acting coach.
Danner's film directing debut, How to Go Out on a Date in Queens, won the LA Film Awards' Best Acting and Best Movie awards. Michelle Danner’s 2013 film Hello Herman catalogs the effect that peer abuse, parental neglect and the general coarsening of society has on a typical high school student. A New York Times review found that Danner's anti-bullying agenda freighted the movie.
Danner has acted in and directed over thirty plays in Los Angeles and New York, with her favorite acting credit cited as the Dramalogue award-winning Tennessee Williams' The Rose Tattoo.
At Edgemar, Danner produced The Night of the Black Cat, winner of the 2005 Best Musical of the Year at the Los Angeles Music Awards. She directed the world premiere of Mental the Musical, winner of several 17th Annual TicketHolder awards for acting and musical score. Last year she wrote and directed You're on the Air, an improvisation-based comedy which is currently under development to become a movie.
She produced and acted in the award-winning short Dos Corazones, directed by Larry Moss, which won Best Cinematography and Audience Favorite at the Malibu Film Festival. In 2006 she made her feature film-directing debut How to go Out on a Date in Queens.
She was the acting coach expert on comedy on the WB show "The Starlet". She was voted favorite acting coach by Backstage readers. Once a year Danner directs for the industry at the multimedia event Scene Bites. She was featured coaching Andy Richter on The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien in July 2009.