Michal Sinnott was born Michal Shalom Leamer in Rock Island, IL, the eldest of three children to Brad, a carpenter, and Griselda, a local actress and housewife. Her parents divorced when she was six. She and her brothers grew up in Norfolk, VA, where they were raised by their mother, who originally pursued acting before moving into casting and teaching acting for kids. Michal began acting at the age of seven, when her mother was asked to bring her along for a commercial she was auditioning for and they both landed the job. This led to other local roles in commercials, radio and theatre, before Michal landed a small role in the movie of the week Ironclads (1991) starring Virginia Madsen and directed by Oscar-winning Delbert Mann. Occasional film and television roles followed whenever a SAG production came to Virginia.
Michal graduated from The Governor's School for the Arts (GSA) Drama Department, a five-city-wide Performing Arts High School based in Norfolk. Having long watched her mom struggle in the business, Michal loved acting but never intended to pursue a career in the field. She had a change of heart, however, when a play she wrote at GSA won Theatre Virginia's Young Playwrights Festival and she attended a three-week program in Richmond, where her play, "The Waterbabies", was subsequently mounted and had a staged reading with Equity Actors.
Michal attended The University of Virginia for a year before transferring to Catholic University, where she graduated with a degree in Drama. After college she worked briefly as a flight attendant for a charter company, traveling the world and visiting more then 25 countries on six continents before moving to New York City to pursue an acting career.
While in NY, she studied at the now closed GATE acting conservatory, a 40-hour-a-week, nine-month program with an 8:6 student-to-teacher ratio. The program was run and taught by Stella Adler-trained actor and teacher Gregory Abels and focused largely on the classics, with classes also in Tai Chi, mask and yoga. She also studied the Sanford Meisner under Paul Le Mos and, at present, under Maggie Flanigan. She is featured in the book "Acting Teachers of America" as a student of Gregory Abels.
In 2008 she and Catholic alum Mary McHale started Cross Country Productions LLC in order to produce their Sundance Screenwriting Lab finalist feature, "Born That Way." Michal lives in NYC with her husband, Joseph, and their two dogs, Wylie and Jasper.
