Novelist, screenwriter, producer and director, Michael Tolkin has solidified his reputation as a “feeling intellectual”in the jaded milieu of show business. His father, Mel, was screenwriter and his mother, Edith, a VP at Paramount. His brother, Stephen, is also in active in the movie and television industry.

Tolkin’s early childhood was spent in New York City before moving to Los Angeles, the customary setting for his stories. He is best known for the screenplay of his novel The Player, a highly-acclaimed satire of the movie business that was directed by Robert Altman in 1992. The film won the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Picture and a Golden Globe Award for Best Comedy or Musical.

Tolkin’s works are known for their complicated and absorbing examination of meaning and morality in modern life. As critic Gavin Smith noted in Film Comment: “All his characters abandon or fall from the social mainstream and enact dramas of self-redefinition.”

Tolkin wrote and directed The Rapture in 1991, scheduled to show at this year’s Virginia Film Festival, featuring Mimi Rogers in a star turn as a woman born again into both an acceptance and examination of faith. The New Age followed in 1994, a dark comedy starring Peter Weller and Judy Davis as a financially overextended couple who opens a boutique. Other screenwriting credits include Changing Lanes, Deep Impact, and The Burning Season.

His novel The Return of the Player was just published by Grove Press, continuing the story of the conniving studio executive, Griffin Mill.

Tolkin graduated from Middlebury College, Vermont in 1974. He lives in New York City with his wife.