Max Cantor

Who was Max Cantor?

Michael 'Max' Cantor was an American journalist and actor in films such as Dirty Dancing and Fear, Anxiety and Depression.

His father was the theatrical producer Arthur Cantor. During Cantor's trips to London with his father, Vidal Sassoon personally cut his hair. He grew up in the Dakota Apartments on West 72nd Street in New York. Cantor attended Collegiate School but graduated from Buxton School in Williamstown, MA. He spent his summers until age 14 at Camp Hillcroft in Billings, New York, alongside fellow campers such as the children of Albert Shanker and Burt Lancaster. He won top roles in Winnie the Pooh and The Velveteen Rabbit. He was a 1982 graduate of Harvard University, where he lived in Adams House and starred in several productions by the then-student director Peter Sellars. He wrote for The Village Voice about ibogaine as a cure for heroin addiction and had taken an interest in the cult surrounding East Village cannibal murderer Daniel Rakowitz.

Cantor had freebased cocaine and became a heroin addict while researching addicts in New York City and died from a heroin overdose at the age of 32. At the time he died, he was conducting research and writing a book about Rakowitz and the murder of dancer Monicka Beele.