Michael Fitzgerald was born in New York City, raised in Italy and educated in Ireland. After graduating from Harvard University he began his film career as a screenwriter in Rome. In 1979, he produced and co-wrote John Huston’s celebrated film adaptation of Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood. His second film with Huston, Under the Volcano was nominated for two Academy Awards A producing partnership with actor/director Sean Penn culminated in their critically acclaimed production of The Pledge, starring Jack Nicholson. In 2005 he completed both Colour Me Kubrick, starring John Malkovich, about a con-man who impersonates director Stanley Kubrick, and The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada directed by and starring Tommy Lee Jones.
He is actively preparing a project with the Romanian writer/director Nae Caranfil to be filmed later this year as well as Waiting for the Barbarians from the novel by Nobel Prize winner J.M. Coetzee to be shot in 2011. Michael Fitzgerald is a member of the Board Of Governors of the Telluride Film Festival, The Board Of Advisers of The Harvard Film Archive, and a Trustee of The Virginia Wellington Cabot Foundation. He has served on many Film Festival Juries around the world, including Mexico City, Morelia, Buenos Aires, Thessaloniki, Cluj and Abu Dhabi. He chaired the Jury in Astana in 2008.