

THE MEIERS NOTE:
A Jeff Award-winning actor, Thornton most recently appeared in Natural Gas, The Ruby Sunrise, The Last Days of Judas Iscariot (The Gift), Museum Pieces (Second City), Messing With A Friend (with Susan Messing), and Steppenwolf’s The Elephant Man. Michael is a graduate of The School at Steppenwolf, The Conservatory Program and Directing Program at Second City, has trained in improv at iO and Annoyance and teaches at Second City, Columbia College, and The School at Steppenwolf. As a playwright, Thornton’s play, The Princess and the Bear, was published in excerpt by Third Coast Press and is being workshopped through a grant from The Second City Foundation.
Michael has received numerous awards including: Chicago Finalist: National Shakespeare Contest (Mitzi-Newhouse Theatre at Lincoln Center, New York), Northlight’s Jack Springer Award for Outstanding Performance, The Second City Foundation’s 2009 Jim Zulevic Chicago Arts Award, The 2009 3Arts Artist Award, and The Joseph Jefferson Award for Solo Performance.
Thornton currently plays Dr. Gabriel Fife on ABC’s “Private Practice.”