Nylon: Michael Stahl-David | Source: Nylon
By Kate Williams

Michael Stahl-David grew up in Chicago, the son of activist physician parents who named him after a doctor murdered in a racially motivated North Carolina massacre, and the actor proudly recalls his own father once getting arrested for fighting a KKK supporter. Stahl-David acted in pays as a teenager but was more interested in graffiti - writing under the tag Fight Back - and helming the local Communist Party.

"I had gotten an agent, but I was very skeptical about booking anything," he says. "At that point I wanted to be a history teacher and keep organizing for the party more than I wanted to be an actor." A couple of positive experiences in local theater productions changed his mind, though, and Stahl-David moved to New York. He landed a role on The Black Donnellys, then the lead in J.J. Abram's Cloverfield, and will apper in the upcoming Ye Olde Times with Lindsay Lohan and Will Arnett, and The Project, a movie about three white students trying to make a documentary about black inner city kids. The film's multi-layered social and political commentary attracted Stahl-David like a moth to a flame. "In the beginning, I wondered if it was going to be racist," he says, "but it's a pretty accurate protrayal of how white people sensationalize black culture."