JAMES FOLEY (Director/SCA Alumnus)

Themes have always been vital to James Foley’s filmmaking. The complexities of his films have drawn the best and brightest actors-ranging from Gene Hackman and Al Pacino to Sean Penn, Mark Wahlberg and Reese Witherspoon. His debut film, the teen thriller RECKLESS starring Aidan Quinn and Daryl Hannah, established his unique ability to combine suspense with complicated, unsentimental character portraits. He next directed the critically admired AT CLOSE RANGE, starting Sean Penn, Christopher Walken, Christopher Penn and Mary Stuart Masterson in a story that probed to the dark heart of family ties by exploring the relationship between a criminal father and his coming-of-age sons.

Switching gears again, Foley directed Madonna in her first major leading role in the screwball comedy WHO’S THAT GIRL?, before delving into the noir world of Jim Thompson in the acclaimed AFTER DARK, MY SWEET starring Jason Patric, Rachel Ward and Bruce Dern. Foley dove head first into Thompson’s disturbing, morally ambiguous world of drifters, loners and small-time criminals, creating one of the truest tributes to the noir master’s work. Foley next moved from back roads criminals to big-time con-artists, from dark drama to black comedy, adapting David Mamet’s Pulitzer Prize winning GLENGARRY GLENN ROSS to the screen. Featuring a stellar cast including Jack Lemmon, Al Pacino and Kevin Spacey, the no-holds-barred screen version brought Mamet’s scorchingly funny tale of moral chaos to cinematic life.

  

Foley’s subsequent film shifted the director another 180 degrees - this time into a poignant and poetic Depression-era family drama, TWO BITS. Here, Foley’s theme of family bonds and conflicts is dipped in a lush, nostalgic mood. Al Pacino and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio star in the moving story of an elderly grandfather who announces rather suddenly that he is about to die. Following the elegiac tone of TWO BITS, Foley returned with a bang to contemporary times with the taut, edgy exercise in terror, FEAR, featuring his first collaboration with Mark Wahlberg and also starring Reese Witherspoon. Retreating into the halls of justice, Foley then directed THE CHAMBER, based on John Grisham’s best selling novel about a young lawyer who defends his racist grandfather awaiting execution on Death Row. Starring Gene Hackman, Chris O’Donnell and Faye Dunaway, the film explores Grisham’s most morally intricate story - again touching upon themes of family connections and illusions that die hard.

His next venture, the urban thriller THE CORRUPTOR, reunited Foley with Mark Wahlberg. Wahlberg starred with Chow Yun Fat in the labyrinthine story of two cops, attempting to build a bond while trying to make a difference in New York City’s Chinatown, both following their individual senses of duty until they dangerously collide. CONFIDENCE continues in that tradition with Ed Burns, Rachel Weisz, Andy Garcia, and Dustin Hoffman. A fast paced, time bending con-game, CONFIDENCE explores Foley’s fascination with intricate relationships and a character’s ability to stretch morality, trust and family-like bonds to their thinnest.

  

Twice in his career, Foley has stepped briefly away from cinema for forays into innovative television. In 1990, he directed David Lynch’s groundbreaking, surreal series TWIN PEAKS, collaborating with one of television’s most acclaimed casts. More recently, he directed for David Fincher’s HOUSE OF CARDS, a game changing series starring Kevin Spacey that launches Netflix’s first foray into original programming. But his heart truly lies with the big screen, the power of which initially lured him into filmmaking.

Foley was born in Brooklyn and raised in Staten Island, New york, son of a lower-middle class Irish-Italian family. He was on a clear path to becoming a clinical psychologist after graduating from SUNY Buffalo when he decided, on a whim, to take a summer course in filmmaking at NYU. The immediate and emotional response to his (albeit one minute long) films convinced Foley that this was where he wanted to concentrate his heart and mind. He never looked back.

Foley moved to California and studied film at USC. It was the heyday of gritty, realistic, intelligent 70’s filmmaking and Foley was mesmerized by films like “Serpico,” ”Dog Day Afternoon,” “The French Connection,” “Coming Home” - films of moral and psychological complexity, but also mainstream appeal, which continue to influence him. The strength of his student films led to early mentoring by Hal Ashby and later Scott Rudin, leading to his first film project, RECKLESS, in 1984.

Since then, Foley has worked to avoid what he calls “ghettoization” of his filmmaking style, straddling as many different genres, tones and moods as he can and working with as a wide a range of acting talents as possible. The result has been a career that combines the fierce independence of the personal art film with the exciting finesse of mainstream entertainment.

MICHAEL KELLY (Actor, "Doug Stamper")

With an expansive list of film and television credits spanning over 15 years, Michael Kelly can currently be seen starring opposite Kevin Spacey as Doug Stamper, the House Majority Whip’s formidable and crafty aide-de-camp, in David Fincher’s Netflix original series House of Cards. He is currently filming The Secret in their Eyes starring Julia Roberts, Nicole Kidman, and   Chiwetel Ejiofor and will soon be seen as Jon Krakauer opposite Josh Brolin, Jake Gyllenhaal, and Robin Wright inEverest, and as Michael Drakeford in the upcoming Blumhouse feature, Viral.

In 2008, Kelly starred as ‘Detective Lester Ybarra’ opposite Angelina Jolie and John Malkovich in Clint Eastwood’s Changeling, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and was distributed by Universal Pictures and Imagine Entertainment. For his performance, Michael received a coveted spot as one of “Daily Variety’s 10 Actors to Watch”.  Also that year, Kelly starred in the HBO miniseries Generation Kill, which chronicled one Marine’s journey in the American-led assault on Baghdad in 2003.  Kelly’s other feature film credits include Louis Leterrier’s Now You See Me opposite Mark Ruffalo and Jesse Eisenberg, Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel, the hit film Chronicle, George Nolfi’s The Adjustment Bureau, Doug Liman’s Fair Game opposite Sean Penn and Naomi Watts, F. Gary Gray’s Law Abiding Citizen alongside Gerard Butler and Jamie Foxx, Did You Hear About the Morgans? with Hugh Grant and Sarah Jessica Parker, Defendor with Woody Harrelson, Invincible opposite Mark Wahlberg, the Universal blockbuster Dawn of the Dead directed by Zach Snyder, Tenderness starring Russell Crowe, The Narrows directed by Francois Velle, Broken English written and directed by Zoe Cassavetes, nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival, and Loggerheads nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival.  Kelly also appeared in M. Night Shyamalan’s Unbreakable, Milos Forman’s Man on the Moon and River Red (Sundance Film Festival).

On television, Kelly most recently has had recurring roles on the hit shows The Good Wife, and Person of Interest. He played the Series Regular role of Jonathan “Prophet” Simms in Criminal Minds: Suspect Behavior, ‘Terrence Brooks’ on Law & Order: Criminal Intent and ‘John Mosley’ on Fringe.  Michael also had the recurring role of ‘FBI Agent Ron Goddard’ on The Sopranos and was a series regular on the USA network television series Kojak with Ving Rhames and Chazz Palminteri and the UPN action drama Level 9.  He has also guest starred on numerous hit television shows, including Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Law & Order, C.S.I. Miami, The Shield, Judging Amy, The Jury and Third Watch. 

A lifetime member of The Actor’s Studio, Kelly has performed in such plays as Arthur Penn’s production of Major Crimes, Theatre Studio’s Miss Julie as well as in a production of In Search of Strindberg staged in Stockholm, Sweden.

Kelly resides in New York City with his wife, daughter and son.