They say that if you want something done well, give it to a busy person to do. Exhibit A: Michelle Danner, an artist with a sparkling resume of success as a performer, teacher, storyteller, filmmaker, producer, director, entrepreneur and expert.  Oh, and by the way, she’s also the mother of two boys that she unhesitatingly calls her most important focus.

Danner is a force of nature who is driven by her passion for creativity.  As she explains, “We all have creativity inside ourselves, and we can’t help but be creative.”

Shaping Artistic Passion

In many ways her life experiences from childhood and exposure to international culture has shaped that artistic passion. Born in New York, her father was born in Austria, eventually fleeing the country with his brother to escape concentration camps. He relocated to Lima, Peru, and eventually moved to Europe after the war. Her mother was Italian born in Milan and taught her Italian. But her European and South American experiences helped her become fluent in French, Spanish and Portuguese, as well as English.

Raised in a show business environment, Danner tells The Hispanic Outlook in an exclusive interview, “My father was very well known as a producer. As a matter of fact, he opened the first William Morris Agency in Paris in 1964. At a very early age I was close to a lot of people like Sammy Davis Jr. and Marlena Dietrich. In addition, I remember all these French and European stars would come to dinner.”

Yet, Danner wasn’t starstruck and attracted to acting because of her family’s dinner guests. She explains, “The acting bug bit because of my love for literature. Being raised in Europe, things are different there. You are exposed to a variety of literature. My love of words, my love of writing is what made me love acting.”

Fast forward to the 1990s while Danner was establishing an acting career in Los Angeles, she had what can only be described as an epiphany. “I had two auditions, one in Pasadena and the other in Hollywood,” she explains, “but my phone was ringing off the hook with actors asking if I had time to work with them. I made a decision that day. Would I rather go on these two auditions for parts I may or may not get or work with these actors? And I decided I’d rather work to support other actors. I remember that day. It was a sunny day, and I was at my guest house and a few days earlier I was on the beach reading about acting techniques. I’ve always been fascinated with the craft of acting, so I suppose my decision was easy to understand.”

That fateful choice, informed by her reading habits and insatiable desire to bring more to her craft, set Danner on a path where the culmination of her life experiences played a major part. Three decades of assisting both A-List and up and coming actors to fulfill their maximum potential, as well as being a film director and international acting coach would be enough for any creative soul. But Danner isn’t just any creative soul. Her background and fluency in multiple languages and cultures has made her an international success, attracting Hispanic clients like Salma Hayek, Penelope Cruz, Michelle Rodriguez and Kate Del Castillo.

Most recently, Danner has donned her director hat once again and launched production on “The Runner,” a drama written by Jason Chase Tyrrell and marks the first film in more than a decade for actor Cameron Douglas (son of Michael Douglas). “What excites me as a storyteller and actor? The story I am about to tell now, ‘The Runner,’ is about neglected children, and I’m the mother of two boys, so it breaks my heart when kids fall through the cracks whether they are addicts or sell drugs. I think I would see it from day one [if one of my children were in trouble]. I don’t think my kids would be able to sneak anything by me. The story I’m telling is about how adults fail kids in that respect.”

More specifically, “The Runner” is an action thriller ripped out of the headlines about a troubled young high school student who was charged with drug possession (played in the film by Edouard Phillipponnat) and who is forced to go undercover to expose a drug kingpin. It co-stars Douglas, Elisabeth Röhm and Eric Balfour and Nadji Jeter.

“We have a great cast with a unique casting choice. Cameron Douglas playing a main role as a detective (the son of Michael Douglas and grandson of Kirk Douglas) who [in real life] is putting his life back on track after spending nearly 8 years in prison for drug-related crimes.”

Danner is also preparing to direct actress Anne Archer in a one-woman show based on “A Ticket to the Circus,” the memoir by Norris Church Mailer about her decades-long marriage to writer Norman Mailer.

STEAM And Diversity

A legendary acting teacher and co-founder of the Edgemar Center for the Arts and the Los Angeles Acting Conservatory, Danner has strong ideas about the STEM versus STEAM, which is the debate about whether arts are as essential to education as science, technology, engineering and math.

She explains, “The arts make you human. You can have this wonderful gifted child who is a math and science expert, but you never want to take the humanity part out of education. It helps us to communicate and connect with people. In the most technical of professions it still takes teamwork and collaboration with our peers and the arts helps students see that and understand that.”

Acknowledging the challenge of having more diverse stories and storytellers in the entertainment industry, Danner says addressing that challenge rests, in great part, in the hands of Hispanics and other peoples of color. “You have to develop your own projects. Commission writers to develop stories that are important, and when minorities are underrepresented, writers, directors, actors and filmmakers have to get together and develop content.”

With the success this Hollywood Renaissance woman has had as an actor, director, producer and filmmaker, one would think it would be difficult for her to decide what she would opt for if she was limited to one choice of career options going forward. But Danner doesn’t hesitate in following her heart to make that selection.

“I would stick with directing,” she says, “because right now it is a passion, and when you direct something good and that’s close to your heart, you reach the biggest classroom as you can possibly reach.”

It’s an unsurprising answer from a woman who decided one sunny day that her passion for teaching and supporting fellow actors was more important to her than auditioning for her own acting roles. And her continued enthusiastic ventures in multiple creative fields makes her one of the most successful women working in the industry today. •