--- name: "Michael Almereyda" canonical: "https://film.one/person/michael-almereyda" fi1m_id: "michael-almereyda" imdb_id: "nm0021899" tmdb_id: 54469 wikidata_id: "Q541368" roles: ["Director"] born: "7 April 1959" reviewed_on_fi1m: 2 average_fi1m_score: 80 average_as: "director" average_over: 2 updated: "2026-09-22T20:52:47.932638+00:00" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Michael Almereyda ## Identity Michael Almereyda - **Canonical:** https://film.one/person/michael-almereyda - **Type:** Person - **Fi1m ID:** michael-almereyda - **IMDb ID:** nm0021899 - **TMDB ID:** 54469 - **Wikidata ID:** Q541368 - **Same entity:** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Almereyda, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q541368, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0021899/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/54469 Director. Born 7 April 1959 in Overland Park, Kansas, USA. ## Details - **Work:** Director - **Born:** 7 April 1959, Overland Park, Kansas, USA - **Active:** 2000–2004 - **Average Fi1m score:** 80, as director, over 2 titles - **Elsewhere:** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Almereyda, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q541368, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0021899/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/54469 ## Streaming the US now - **HBO Max:** [*Deadwood*](https://film.one/tv/deadwood.md) (91) For United States; add `?region=XX` for another country. ## Fi1m on Michael Almereyda > Michael Almereyda takes old plays and dead inventors and hands them a toy camera, a bank of monitors and a corporation to run. The films are small, clever and uneven, and *Hamlet* (2000) is still the one to start with. The ghost in Michael Almereyda’s *Hamlet* (2000) arrives over the closed-circuit cameras. The prince carries a toy camera and talks to it more readily than to people; Polonius wires Ophelia for sound; Claudius watches his nephew on monitors. Almereyda noticed that the play was already about being watched and gave the watchers the equipment. That is his habit in a sentence: take an old text or a dead inventor, put them in the present, and see what the present’s machines do to them. He was at it long before anyone was looking. After leaving Harvard three years into an art-history degree he wrote screenplays for other people and made films on his own money, among them *Twister* (1989), a comedy about a Kansas family that does not get on, and *Nadja* (1995), a vampire picture shot partly on Pixelvision, the toy video camera, which is presumably where the prince found his. *Hamlet* is the one people have seen. Since then he has moved between Shakespeare (*Cymbeline*, 2014), inventors and psychologists (*Experimenter*, 2015, in which Stanley Milgram addresses the camera; *Tesla*, 2020, with Ethan Hawke again) and *Marjorie Prime* (2017), on memory and artificial intelligence, with one hour of *Deadwood* in 2005. Hawke has made three films with him, the actor Karl Geary three, the cinematographer John de Borman two. What works is the thinking. The play within the play in *Hamlet* becomes a short film the prince edits from old tapes and screens for the family, the cleverest thing in the picture and, oddly, one of the most faithful. We expected a stunt and were caught by it: a boy trying to say something to his mother in the only language he has, which is cutting. Almereyda writes conversations in which people answer questions nobody asked, and they tell you more about the speakers than a straight exchange would. What does not work is the centre. His *Hamlet* runs 112 minutes, and the cutting is brisk enough that the prince barely has time to think, which matters for that prince more than most. Hawke plays him so withdrawn that the play’s engine seems to be running in another room, and a film built at a mutter cannot afford a lead who mutters too. We have not reviewed the later portraits, but the risk is built into the method: formal play is cheaper than feeling, and a film that keeps interrupting itself can forget to let anyone in. Most of his films have been seen by few people, partly a matter of distribution and partly of temperament. He has said, “I don’t know how to fake it, to do something I don’t believe in,” and the films look like it, for better and worse. Start with *Hamlet*, worth an evening for the cameras, the hotel and Bill Murray’s Polonius. Our review of *Deadwood* does not mention him at all, and for the director of one episode of somebody else’s series that is more or less the job done. ## Biography Michael Almereyda is an American film director, screenwriter and producer. Born on 7 April 1959 in Overland Park, Kansas, he studied art history at Harvard University before dropping out after three years to pursue filmmaking. His feature films include *Hamlet* (2000), *Experimenter* (2015), *Marjorie Prime* (2017) and *Tesla* (2020). He also directed an episode of the HBO series *Deadwood* (2005). *Marjorie Prime* won the Sloan Feature Film Prize at Sundance, and *William Eggleston in the Real World* (2005) received a Gotham Award nomination for best documentary. Almereyda's younger sister is the actress Spencer Kayden. He lives in New York City. *Sources: en.wikipedia.org, imdb.com.* ## On Fi1m (2) - *Deadwood* (2004), Fi1m 91, Director — [page](https://film.one/tv/deadwood.md) - *Hamlet* (2000), Fi1m 68, Adaptation, Director — [page](https://film.one/film/hamlet-2000.md) ## Complete filmography (42) Every credit, newest first. Titles without a page can be requested for review on the HTML page. - *John Lilly and the Earth Coincidence Control Office* (2025), Director, Writer - *Nightmare Paint* (2023), Actor - *Tesla* (2020), Director, Writer, Producer - *The Lonedale Operator* (2020), Director, Producer - *The North Wind's Gift* (2018), Director, Writer, Producer - *To the Unknown* (2018), Director of Photography, Director - *Escapes* (2017), Writer, Director, Producer - *Marjorie Prime* (2017), Director, Writer - *Three for the Road* (2016), Director, Editor - *Experimenter* (2015), Director, Writer, Producer - *Cymbeline* (2014), Director, Screenplay - *Giving Up the Ghost* (2013), Narrator, Director, Writer - *The Man Who Came Out Only at Night* (2013), Director, Writer, Producer - *Table Scraps: Notes on Babette's Feast* (2013), Director, Writer - *Skinningrove* (2013), Director, Producer - *The Ogre's Feathers* (2012), Director, Writer - *What Is Cinema?* (2012), Director - *The Great Gatsby in Five Minutes* (2011), Director, Writer - *Paradise* (2008), Director, Producer, Camera Operator - *New Orleans, Mon Amour* (2008), Director, Writer - *A Damn Fool Scheme* (2007), Director - *Noise* (2006), Director of Photography - *William Eggleston in the Real World* (2005), Producer, Director of Photography, Director, Writer - *Deadwood* (2004), series, Director — Fi1m 91, [page](https://film.one/tv/deadwood.md) - *This So-Called Disaster* (2003), Director - *A Brief History of Surrealism* (2003), Director - *Happy Here and Now* (2002), Director, Writer - *Hamlet* (2000), Director, Adaptation — Fi1m 68, [page](https://film.one/film/hamlet-2000.md) - *The Eternal* (1998), Director, Screenplay - *The Rocking Horse Winner* (1997), Director - *Nadja* (1995), Director, Writer - *Search and Destroy* (1995), Screenplay - *At Sundance* (1995), Director - *Aliens* (1993), Director - *Another Girl Another Planet* (1992), Director, Writer, Producer - *Until the End of the World* (1991), as Additional Writing - *Twister* (1989), Director, Writer - *Cherry 2000* (1987), Screenplay - *A Hero of Our Time* (1985), Director, Producer - *Zero K*, Director, Screenplay, Producer - *The Man with Kaleidoscope Eyes*, Writer - *Tonight at Noon*, Director, Screenplay ## Awards ### Other awards — 1 won - Sitges Film Festival Best Director award 1995: Sitges Film Festival Best Director award (won), for *Nadja* *From Wikidata, which records wins more completely than nominations.* --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/person/michael-almereyda