Michael Howard has been active in the theatre since 1940, the year of his first professional acting job, and joined Actors Equity in 1947. Teaching has been a major part of his life since 1953, the beginning of the Michael Howard Studios. An actor, director and teacher, Michael Howard taught and directed at the Juilliard School, Drama Division for seven years, served as an Adjunct Professor at the Yale School of Drama, and as a Visiting Associate Professor at Boston University. Michael Howard also taught in the inaugural season of the American Conservatory Theatre with William Ball, serving as a teacher-director. While at A.C.T. he directed the company in George Bernard Shaw’s Misalliance for public television.

As an actor, Michael Howard has performed on Broadway in Clifford Odets’ The Country Girl, among others, and in literally hundreds of roles in summer and winter stock, repertory companies, regional theatres, television and film. Michael Howard's last film was John Patrick Shanley’s Five Corners.

As a director Michael Howard was a pioneer in the off-Broadway movement. Michael Howard's credits include the American premiere of Leonid Andreyev’s The Waltz of the Dogs, Time of Storm by Sheldon Starks, and Lofton Mitchell’s Land Beyond the River, the first modern play by an African-American writer that dealt with the emerging civil rights movement. On Broadway, Michael Howard directed The Troublemakers by George Belak and the Theatre Guild’s The Third Best Sport by Eleanor Perry, with Celeste Holm. Michael Howard was the founding artistic director of Atlanta’s Alliance Theatre Company, where he directed the landmark production of John Dryden and Henry Purcell’s opera Masque King Arthur, as well as 15 other productions in the three years he was in Atlanta.

Among America’s most important theatrical figures with whom Michael Howard has worked as an actor, director and teacher are: Uta Hagen, Celeste Holm, Estelle Winwood, Sidney Lumet, Michael Kahn, William Ball, Jean Erdman, Joseph Chaikin, Michael Douglas, Charlton Heston, Jason Robards, Jacquie Brooks and Terry Schreiber. More recently Michael Howard has worked with actors Keith David, Boyd Gaines, Kyra Sedgwick, Judy Kuhn, Kelsey Grammer, Alfre Woodard, Joe Pantoliano and William Hurt.

During the past many years his major effort has been the development, growth and success of the Michael Howard Studios, and his teaching therein. Michael Howard's pleasure and excitement in teaching is unabated. In 2003 he taught a very successful workshop in Tokyo.