Biography
For over 25 years, Lee Michael Cohn has held an international reputation as a writer, director, producer, and acting coach. He began his professional career as an actor working with David Mamet, and was an original member of the Atlantic Theater Company. He recently produced the feature film "Bachelor Lions" starring Mitchel Musso, James Maslow, Rene Olstead, Robert Davi, David Arquette, and Jon Lovitz for RiverRock Films. He is producing RiverRock's next film, "Seven Days as a Kingpin." The film he co-wrote with Jeffrey Eyres, "Celebrity Relapse" is in development at RiverRock.
Lee wrote and directed the independent TV pilot "Crime Share" for Route 17 Productions. He was the director and co-creator of "Inside Private Lives," the hit theatrical show that was the LA Weekly Pick of the Week, recommended twice by LA Times, received a rave in NY Times, and out of over 2,000 shows placed in the Top 10 at The Edinburgh Theatre Festival, as well as winning the San Francisco Fringe Festival. He has written plays, feature films, PSAs, radio commercials, and corporate industrial films; he was also the editor of the Santa Monica Mirror. Lee is an alumnus of the Warner Bros. Comedy Writers Workshop, where he was one of 25 writers selected annually out of over 700 applicants.
Lee is also co-author of "A Practical Handbook For The Actor," the best-selling acting textbook of the last 25 years (over 300,000 copies sold; #1 on Amazon) that is required reading in hundreds of theatre programs and has been translated into Dutch, Japanese, Turkish, and Chinese. A long time educator, Lee has taught acting for over 25 years at numerous prestigious institutions including NYU, the Atlantic Acting School, and the New World School of the Arts in Miami. He has also taught acting workshops in LA, NYC, Atlanta, Orlando, Vancouver, B.C., and London, U.K. among other places.
Lee holds a BFA in Drama from NYU/Tisch and also trained as an actor at the Drama Studio, London. He also holds an MFA in Creative Writing and Writing for the Performing Arts (Screenwriting) from the University of California, Riverside. His older daughter Danielle is an actress in New York, and his younger daughter Ava is a noted NY-based photographer.
