Biography
Michael Cornelison launched his professional acting career in 1967 at age fifteen, featuring in a series of educational shorts for Coronet Films. In 1974, he co-starred alongside Cliff Robertson and Robert Preston in the ABC-TV movie My Father's House (1975). In 1978, Cornelison moved back to Los Angeles for an extended period, during which he completed pilots for three TV series: Nightside (1980), Inspector Perez, and Family in Blue (1982). Throughout the mid-1980s, he guest-starred on numerous shows including Hill Street Blues (1981), Remington Steele (1982), Dallas (1978), Knots Landing (1979), and The Greatest American Hero (1981), among others. He also starred in and co-produced Stephen King's The Woman in the Room (1984), marking the first collaboration between Stephen King and Frank Darabont (noted for The Shawshank Redemption (1994) and The Green Mile (1999)).
In 1984, Cornelison returned to the Midwest to become the artistic director of his own theatre, The Two Rivers Acting Company. Over the next two decades, he performed in a broad range of plays, including classics like A Man For All Seasons, Inherit The Wind, Of Mice And Men, and To Kill A Mockingbird, as well as contemporary works such as Camping With Henry And Tom, Sideman, The Guys, and The Complete Works Of William Shakespeare (Abridged). He also served as the artistic director of Rejection Slip Theatre, a radio comedy/drama anthology that aired on WHO radio for more than ten years.
Additionally, Cornelison collaborated extensively with writer/director Max Allan Collins (Road to Perdition (2002)), appearing in five of Collins' films: Mommy (1995), Mommy II: Mommy's Day (1997), Real Time: Siege at Lucas Street Market (2001), Eliot Ness: An Untouchable Life (2005), and Three Women. He also narrated Collins' acclaimed documentary Mike Hammer's Mickey Spillane. Other film credits include a role in Rain (2001), produced by Martin Scorsese. Recently, he recorded A Little Death, a Mike Hammer adventure audio novel starring Stacy Keach as Hammer, and is set to portray Captain Pat Chambers in a second Hammer story, Encore for Murder. Both projects are written by Max Allan Collins and based on original material by the late Mickey Spillane. Cornelison resides in Iowa with his wife, Cindi, and their son, Nick Cornelison.
