Michael Fay

The significant facts of my life are that I was one of six children, born of middle class parents in Pittsburgh, Pa. At the age of six my father was called up as a 2nd Lieutenant in the U.S. Army and thus began an odyssey of 13 schools in the next five years. What I remember is that travel was interesting and educational, and that saying goodbye to friends was very painful, eventually numbing after so many goodbyes.

My father took up his life as a lawyer and the next 5 years were wonderful. Then I went off to private schools, first to Exeter in New Hampshire, and then Kiskiminetas Springs School for Boys in Pennsylvania since the challenge of Exeter was too great. Then I was transferred to the Hill School in Pottstown, Pa, whose reputation nearly equaled that of Exeter and Andover. I was happy there and made many friends, including the Headmaster who was my bridge partner every Friday night, while the rest of the school slept. I was also President of the Hill School Glee Club, which had an excellent reputation and which afforded me those rare experiences with females during the school year,, a luxury enjoyed only by the Glee Club. It was due to one of these girl Preppies that was the reason for my dismissal from the Hill, three months before graduation, destroying forever my chances at Yale, which had been assured.

My parents were marvelous, and though disappointed, had me quickly enrolled in Greenville High School, a rural High School that was in the town that my father had grown up. I lived with my Uncle, and graduated in June, just in time for the Marine Corp, which I had joined to overcome my fear of physical violence especially that which was directed at me. Accomplishing that, I enrolled at Bucknell University and through an amazing sequence of events, ended up the the lead in the Drama Department staging of the “Caine Mutiny Court Martial” in which I played Captain Queeg. Terrified, I went on and did such an excellent job that people started suggesting that I do it full time and right after Christmas I went back to school and decided to quit school and go to New York and become an actor.

It was not a mistake, the next three years with the Actors Repertory Theatre Workshop were the happiest of my life to that point. It was at the Actors Workshop that I met and married my first wife who had come all the way from Argentina to be an actress and instead became a wife. Now disillusioned with New York, “How are you going to keep them down on the farm after they’ve seen Paris?” I decided to drop out entirely and live in Pago-Pago and decided on London instead. My acting teachers had taken me far with an understanding of life and living and that created a quantum leap into London. Settling in South Kensington, bordering Hyde Park and near the West End we found a fabulous flat which became our home for the next three years. During these years, I studied Philosophy and the Religions of the world. I became somewhat of a scholar as I didn’t have to work, which I discovered after I got married and my father-in-law gave me a bank book for a wedding present. I read two books a day for most of those three years, and because I couldn't get work as an actor, I wrote screenplays which interested me very much. I was finally told by my Member of Parliament that the quickest way for me to get work as an actor, was to form my own Film Company and hire myself. That way I could be assured of getting a membership to Actors Equity which was a prerequisite for working in any film or play. So with some friends I formed Wardham Fay Films Ltd, London, England. Towards the end of my third year in England, I had an inner command to go to India which had become a source of great interest to me having read many books of Indian Philosophy and Indian Masters. My wife decided to visit her parents in Argentina, and said she would meet me there if I found anything of interest. So with a Parsee cameraman I set out for India, 12,000 miles away.

It took three months and I was invited by His Holiness Swami Chinmayananda to stay at a new school/ashram that had just been completed when I arrived. He invited me to stay and learn, and I said I can't. I am married, and I had been told that married people could not stay in the ashram, even overnight. He then told me that she could come too and I said I would write to her and if she agreed to come I would stay. She came and we stayed for two years, finally being told that we were his best students but that it was time for us to leave. He asked me if I would be willing to set up a world tour for him and I agreed willingly. For the next four months I spent arranging his tour getting honorariums from major Universities all through Europe and the U.S.Oxnard, Cambridge, University of Paris and Rome, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, C.C.N.Y, UCLA, LA, Stanford and U.C.Berkeley.

My wife was pregnant when we left India, and when the tour was arranged I met her in Buenos Aires and our son was born. I left a little after the birth to arrange things in our new home in the San Fernando Valley, A year later she left on vacation with her mother and sister and never returned.. In 1966 I was divorced and two years later remarried to someone I considered to have unfinished business from another lifetime. It was a disastrous marriage that produced two wonderful children. It was during this time that I had gone to work in the restaurant field as a stop gap until I broke into the film world and that stop gap became my livelihood for approximately 15 years. In 1978 we broke up for the last time and I came back to Los Angeles from Seattle, and divorced and married Joan which has been the most sanguine and healing of all my relationships. I owe her myself.

In summary, I have been predominantly a seeker in this life and I have found all of life’s experiences to be incidental to and an adjunct to my spiritual quest. In the United States, I have attended many churches and all without exception were unfulfilling. In the Centers for Spiritual Living, I finally found a spiritual home where there were people who understood the divine nature of man that most closely related to what I had studied and discovered in India.