I was born in San Francisco in 1954 and raised amid the tangle that was the racial tension of the late 1950's and 1960's. I was trained in the classic Russian Ballet by Dimitri Romanoff, moved to New York on a prestigious scholarship with the School of American Ballet at the Julliard School and later, American Ballet Theatre.

I was recruited to the Iranian National Ballet in 1976, but in the wake of the frightful events leading up to the toppling of the Shah of Iran, I fled Tehran over the Turkish mountains, a fugitive of the state.

After returning home I searched for a more personal means of expression. I danced with Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo, en travesti, and created an infamous persona of a beautiful and talented lesbian dancer named Peg, a very real personality. I performed in the avant-garde theater of the East and West Villages in a time when mind-altering drugs forged a unique bond between audience, writer and performer.

A chance elevator encounter brought me back to Paris with a recording contract where I met a young, unknown, Madonna Ciccone. Madonna and I made a little movie together called A Certain Sacrifice.

In Europe I found my voice and over three years, wrote and recorded my music, released three albums ...music of truly dangerous proportion.

In later years I turned to acting, the long list of credits is easily accessed on IMDB. I studied with Uta Hagen while she was writing her famous book A Challenge for the Actor. After it's completion, Uta presented me with a copy ... inscribed simply, "To Michael, Bravo! - Love, Uta"

I have always kept a journal of the extraordinary events of my life and was so often asked to recount one or more stories from my past. In the retelling of those events I was forever faced with the inevitable tailoring of those stories to fit the dinner or audience at hand ...never a lie but never the whole truth either, so I chose finally to write my autobiography and tell the whole truth.