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Micheal C. Flessas (born June 2,1959 in Miami,
Florida|Miami, Florida), is the birth name of
actor Michael Flessas. Flessas' most notable film
role was Angry Man in the Cannes Film Festival
2000 Palme d'Or winning film Dancer in the Dark
directed by Danish film director Lars von Trier.
Originally, the director himself considered
playing the role but, instead, the role was given
to Flessas. Dancer in the Dark starred Icelandic
singer/actress Björk who won the Best Actress
award at Cannes for her role. French film icon,
Cesar Award winner, and Academy Award nominee
Catherine Deneuve, and other noteworthy artists
such as Academy Award and Tony Award winner Joel
Grey, Peter Stormare, David Morse, and Stellan
Skarsgård also performed in the multiple prize
winning film. One of Björk's songs for the film
received an Academy Award nomination for Best
Song.

In Iranian actress/director Susan Taslimi's film
Hus i helvete (The film's English title: All Hell
Let Loose), starring Melinda Kinnaman, which won
the Best Feature Film prize at the Brooklyn
International Film Festival in 2003, Flessas
played the vicious pornographer "Videomannen" in a
nightmarish flashback scene in the film. 

Flessas also portrayed massive and deadly Russian
hitman "Jurij Rostoff" in Beck - Okänd
avsändare, a made for television movie directed
by Swedish actor and director Harald Hamrell. 
Beck - Okänd avsändare was among the popular
Swedish Beck detective films and
made-for-television movies starring Swedish actor
Peter Haber.  As "Jurij Rostoff" Flessas weighed
in at 150 kilos in the role as a result of weight
training and diet; however, in his younger and
less heavy years, Flessas danced in the corps de
ballet of the Columbia City Ballet then under the
direction of Ann Brodie in Columbia, South
Carolina|Columbia, South Carolina.

Although he won two scholarships in Music, Flessas
changed majors and majored in Religious Studies
and minored in Philosophy at the University of
South Carolina. Flessas did not complete his
undergraduate degree at the University of South
Carolina yet he continued his studies on an
informal basis with travels around the world in
order to meet and speak with adherents of various
religious forms and philosophical points of view.

Flessas began his professional acting career after
hearing a barber mention that a :Fox Broadcasting
Company series in Boston was about to begin
production. Although the series, :Against the Law
starring Academy award nominee :Michael O'Keefe
lasted for one season, Flessas was in six episodes
of the show as an uncredited extra. Flessas was
able to do six episodes by constantly changing his
facial appearance for each episode of the series.
Flessas also was an uncredited extra in films such
as :HouseSitter, starring :Emmy Award winner
:Steve Martin and Academy Award winner :Goldie
Hawn, :Wind, starring Academy Award winner :Cliff
Robertson, :Matthew Modine, and :Jennifer Grey,
and the :NBC made for television movie :MacShayne:
Final Roll of the Dice starring :Grammy Award
winner :Kenny Rogers. 

Flessas also gained notoriety in the mid 1990's
for his creation of a now defunct :website
entitled "Resources for the Homeless" which was
one of the first websites in the :United States of
America solely devoted to helping the homeless
through individual initiative by offering the
homeless relevant data on resources via one
website. At the time, many poor people were being
removed from Milwaukee, Wisconsin|Milwaukee,
Wisconsin welfare rolls while many Milwaukee city
officials were engaged in plans to fund and build
a new multi-million dollar stadium. Flessas
perceived the situation (building a new stadium
while removing the poor from welfare) as an
injustice to the poor. Given that libraries in
Milwaukee, Wisconsin were just connecting to the
World Wide Web, Flessas gathered and placed
information regarding all the services available
to the homeless in Milwaukee on the web so service
providers to the homeless and the homeless
themselves (who often sought shelter in local
libraries) had equal and rapid access to
information about resources available in Milwaukee
via the Milwaukee County library system computer
network. "Resources for the Homeless" was
considered an unusual information delivery
solution at the time given the new nature of the
method of delivery and the biased misperception
that the homeless did not and would not use
computers to learn about resources available. The
"Resources for the Homeless" project in Milwaukee
received no direct funding for it was Flessas'
express purpose to show what one person with
computing skills could do to help the homeless
with the use of the web. The project began in
Milwaukee on a freenet and, later, a similar site
was created with the help of a local web designer
in Columbia, South Carolina. Flessas' exploits
with the site were reported on television in
Milwaukee, WIS television in Columbia, and in an
article in Silicon Valley's San Jose Mercury News
newspaper. 

In a newspaper article in Columbia South
Carolina's The State newspaper, Flessas promoted
the use of e-mail in the 1990's to broadcast a
demand (then akin to what is now guerrilla
communication and subvertising) that thousands of
potential visitors to South Carolina boycott the
state's multi-million dollar tourism industry to
force state government officials to remove the
Flags_of_the_Confederate_States_of_America#Controv
ersy|Confederate flag from South Carolina's State
House dome. (Flessas, curiously enough, through
his mother's side of the family, is a descendant
of Elisha Jefferson "Elijah" Sutherland who fought
with the Confederate States of America during the
American Civil War.) Social and political activism
is not unknown in the Flessas Family for Flessas
himself (through his father's side of the family)
is also a direct descendant of Papaflessas through
Papaflessas' father Demetrios Flessas. 

==External link==
*imdb name|id=0281917|name=Michael Flessas