Personal life Įmerson married actress Carrie Preston in 1998 in her hometown of Macon, Georgia. He played a billionaire who teams up with a supposedly dead CIA agent to fight crime in New York City. Emerson joined the cast of another Abrams series, Person of Interest, that debuted in September 2011 on CBS. It was expected to start filming by the end of 2010, but further development of the show has been postponed. Įmerson was set to reunite with former Lost cast member and friend Terry O'Quinn in a comedy-drama, tentatively titled Odd Jobs, by J. Gurney's Love Letters, which was a 1990 finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, at the Charleston Stage as a fundraiser for the theater. On July 31, 2010, Emerson and Preston read A.R. He was nominated for an Emmy for each season in which he was listed in the main cast. Įmerson was nominated in 2009 for a Golden Globe Award in the Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role category. He won the award in 2009 after being nominated for his role in the fifth season. He received an Emmy Award nomination in the Outstanding Supporting Actor category in 20 for his work in the third and fourth seasons. Emerson was originally set to appear in a small number of episodes, then returned for Season 3 as a main cast member and eventually became a main antagonist of the program.
In 2006, Emerson began a guest-star role as Benjamin Linus on the serial drama television series Lost. In September 2001, Emerson won an Emmy Award as Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series for playing serial killer William Hinks in several episodes of The Practice. Michael Emerson filming Person of Interest in New York City He co-starred with Kate Burton in both Give Me Your Answer, Do! and Hedda Gabler. In 1999, he played Willie Oban in The Iceman Cometh. In 1998, he performed opposite Uma Thurman in an off-Broadway production of Le Misanthrope. Career Įmerson landed a starring role in 1997 as Oscar Wilde in Moises Kaufman's critically acclaimed off-Broadway play Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde, and then followed up with several other notable stage performances. After several years of work including illustration and teaching, Emerson earned a Master of Fine Arts degree at the University of Alabama in the Alabama Shakespeare Festival acting program. In 1986, he moved to Jacksonville, Florida, where (from 1986–93) he appeared in local productions at Theater Jacksonville and The Players by the Sea and worked as a director and teacher at Flagler College. Unable to find acting work, he took retail jobs and worked as an illustrator. He studied for a semester at the National Theater Institute at The Eugene O'Neill Theater Center, then moved to New York City. He graduated in 1976 from Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, where he majored in theater and minored in art. He grew up in Toledo, Iowa, where he was a member of his high school marching band.
Emerson was born in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, to Carol (née Hansen) and Ronald H.