After studying art during his young adult life, film and stage actor Michael Mercurio moved from his hometown of Brooklyn, New York, to Chicago to study acting. After completing an acting conservatory, he was offered a scholarship with the Chicago Actor's Studio, under the tutelage of Edward Dennis Fogell. While in Chicago, he made his off-Broadway theater debut in Jorge Aviles' 'Nicas', securing the lead role as an outspoken young gay man who returns to Nicaragua to confront his past. Shortly afterward, he was offered his first film role in the low budget film Angel in Chains (2004), portraying an outlaw biker in Benson, Arizona. He then secured another supporting role as a small-time drug dealer in the film, 'Everyday', and upon moving to Los Angeles, landed a supporting role as 'Greaser', in the independent movie, Fixing Rhonda (2008).
Other subsequent roles include a computer programmer who questions his own ethical obligations in Adam Cosco's, God Complex (2009) ; a psychiatric inpatient suffering from schizophrenia in Mark Kindred's existential short film, 'Psycho Killer Reflections on God'; and a man suffering from chronic depression who methodically plans his own suicide in Tad Chamberlain's dark comedy, Anti-Samaritan Hotline (2010). His most recent films include Gregory Torrillo's directorial film debut, Adoration (2010), centering on a man who suffers from a borderline personality disorder, and a disenchanted former soldier who has been recruited to build a bomb for a domestic terrorist, in the independent suspense-thriller Elevator (2011), written and produced by Marc Rosenberg (Dingo, December Boys) and directed by Stig Svendsen (The Radio Pirates).
In addition to film, Mercurio is an accomplished artist and a member with The Actors' Gang theatre company in Los Angeles, CA.
