It’s become a common catchphrase: “I’m not a doctor, but I play one on TV.” In the case of Michael John Benzaia, a Delray-based actor who’s played more than a dozen medical professionals on TV and film, he doesn’t need such a disclaimer: In real life, he’s a certified radiologic technologist whose job encompasses myriad regions of the hospital.
“In radiology, we’re the connective tissue of the health care field,” he says. “We are everywhere. We’re in the OR, the ER, we do portables in the room, we’re in the morgue.”
As a TV doctor, Benzaia has been everywhere, too. Of his 27 Internet Movie Database credits dating from 2013, he’s played health care pros in 17 of them, including a nurse on “Good Trouble,” an ER resident on “How to Get Away With Murder,” an EMT on “Welcome to Chippendales” and “Life & Beth,” and a resident paramedic on “General Hospital.” He helps Jean Smart through a panic attack on “Hacks,” and he reports on a fresh victim in a “Law & Order: SVU” episode, telling Olivia Benson, “We did CPR, took a shot at Narcan, but she was already gone. The whole world is laced with fentanyl these days.”
In his roles, Benzaia can often be seen declaring somebody dead, transporting a body through a hospital or comforting the grieving. If it seems he’s being pigeonholed into a certain type, it might be that casting directors see in Benzaia the same compassionate bedside manner that his real-world patients experience. “Some people, it really irks them to be typecast,” he says. “For me, because I love the radiology field and I love medicine, I’ll play a doctor every day.”
In fact, Benzaia has played so many health care professionals that he sometimes doesn’t need to audition for the parts. “They know that once I hit the ground running, I’m not going to flub the words; I know the terminology,” he says. “I know sterile technique—what I can touch with the gloves, what I can’t. So everything that I do on that set onscreen is going to be realistic. And if I don’t, everyone in the medical field will call me.”
Of Benzaia’s twin passions, the arts came first. Growing up in New York’s Hudson Valley, he attended musicals, often with a backstage pass, as early as age 8, thanks to an aunt’s professional affiliation with legendary Broadway composer Jerry Herman (“La Cage Aux Folles,” “Hello, Dolly!”). For “Porgy & Bess,” “I remember getting a front-row seat, because my aunt had pulled some strings,” he recalls. “And I remember touching the stage and them coming out for curtain call, and just being enamored by this live art. I was transported to these stories that were so different than my own.”
While Benzaia was cultivating his appreciation for the theatre, his mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. This led Benzaia to become her chief medical advocate, learning the intricacies of radiology. She died eight years later. Benzaia, then 18, jumped into medicine with both feet, obtaining an MBA and a certification in Radiological Sciences from Nyack College and Manhattan College.
He was in his late 20s when, as he puts it, “television came knocking.” Having trained at the venerable Stella Adler Academy in Los Angeles, Benzaia made his TV debut on “The Mindy Project” as—surprise—a doctor. He has since worked with actors such as Robert De Niro and Viola Davis, and has been directed by Amy Schumer and Awkwafina.
It would be easy to divide Benzaia’s joint careers between the hemispheres of his brain—medicine being the left-brain science, acting the right-brain art. But he sees little distinction between the work. “I see everyone as multifaceted, no matter what field you work in,” he says. “I don’t think you stay in one section of your brain. You have to be able to flow between both.”
This is why, when he speaks at radiology conferences, he touts the yoga and breathwork techniques he developed as an actor. “We have to be aware of our vessel,” he says. “In any field, you need to make sure you’re taking care of yourself.”
While work often brings Benzaia to Los Angeles or New York, his home base is Andover, a gated community on the border of Delray and Boca. He loves both cities—for the nightlife, for the dining and for the people watching. Of the latter, “I’ll take little actions [I see] and use them for characters that I’m building. … If you want to be a great actor, you have to go out and watch people and be around and have experiences and take that in your tool belt, and then put that into your work.”
Benzaia says he’s more than ready to level up his career from bit parts to major roles, even if it might complicate his schedule as a “rad tech.”
“I want to throw myself fully into it,” he says. “That is the goal. I know that it’s coming for me, and when it is the time, it will fit perfectly into wherever I am with my medical career. But I will never leave one field or the other. I can’t. It’s a part of me.”
This story is from the March/April 2026 issue of Delray magazine. For more like this, click here to subscribe to the magazine.
