Tim Powell

Timothy Alan Powell was born on June 16th, 1956 in Jonesboro, Arkansas to Carl and Bettie Powell. Tim has three brothers two older and one younger. At the age of three the family moved to Sheffield, Alabama where his father opened his own wholesale electronic parts company. Tim went to Blake Elementary in Sheffield, Alabama. When he was eight years old his grandmother dragged him to nearby Tuscumbia, Alabama, the birthplace of Helen Keller. where he auditioned for the part of a little black boy in the annual Miracle Worker Production. It was 1964 - the first year the show was integrated, and Tim didn't get the part. In the sixth grade Tim began attending Mars Hill Bible School, a private Christian School run by a very strict fundamentalist sect called the Church of Christ. At Mars Hill Tim received several years of a capella voice training. His parents planned for him to be a preacher and, at the age of eight, he preached his first sermon. Tim had other aspirations. When he was eight he had seen a live production of the Music Man and he wanted to some day play the stuttering kid. From 14 to 17 Tim played bass guitar in a rock and roll band with some other guys from Mars Hill. As a result of a blowout with his father Tim left Mars Hill after his Junior year and went to a public school and graduated in 1974. After graduating from High School his father gave him two alternatives to attend one of two Christian colleges if he would take them and Tim was to major in Bible and minor business and come back to work for him or become a minister. Instead, after a three month hitchhiking adventure Tim returned to Florence, Alabama, and paid for his own education at the University of North Alabama and started a major in psychology. In his second year a friend of his suggested an easy arts credit in theater lab, you work 50 hours and get a B. Work a 100 hours building sets and get an A. One night he was working on a set piece when the director came over to me and asked if he could sing or act, as he needed a freaky looking guy to play the illiterate Bible salesman in Inherit the Wind. He took the part and for the next few years, went out on every audition he could and got parts in almost all of them. He took theatre classes for fun, never dreaming he'd use them. In his junior year he was told he only needed three more hours for a theater major so he ended up going a fifth year and double majoring in English and drama. Tim took the first graduate assistantship that was offered to him at the University of Mississippi as an MFA Directing Candidate in Theater. Now he was moving into academic theater, teaching 12 - 14 hours, taking 12 hours, he had to perform in every main stage production that came up and had to produce and direct one of his own in each semester. This was wearing him down and at the end of the third semester a friend of his from UNA came through town and asked Tim how he would like to be a lighting designer doing rock and roll concerts. Tim jumped at the chance and dropped everything and left and worked one niters all through the southeast. He found out that the lighting was the first thing in and the last thing out and he spent a lot of time by himself sitting in motel rooms. He knew he was on the wrong side of the stage. Tim soon tired of this lighting life and went back to the University for another year and six hours short of his MFA, again, dropped everything to go to New York to work for Playboy's marketing division. He produced and directed promotions for spring break in beach resorts for six months out of the year for Playboy and other marketing companies for the next six years. He then played the part of Private White in a low-budget Science Fiction movie called: What Waits Below. With the earnings from this film he joined SAG and moved to Nashville, Tennessee and shared a house with four other guys he had known from Florence AL. Tim booked several jobs in commercials, joined AFTRA, got his equity card and became a regular performer at Tennessee Repertory Company. For his day jobs Tim conducted tours at the Guinness Hall of World Records on Music Row, booked performers for a singing telegram service, and continued to do Spring Break Promotions for various Advertising and Marketing companies. It was in Nashville that he met his future wife, Elizabeth. Tim often went to Atlanta for auditions and was cast in a Disney Feature called Goodbye, Miss 4th of July (1988). While living in Nashville a friend, who had moved to Orlando in the early eighties, began sending Tim newspaper clippings describing the building film industry and describing Orlando as "the new LA." In 1987 the Powell's sold their home and moved to Orlando. Tim signed with a few agents and at first got very few calls. Things started to happen for Tim in Orlando with Superboy, and Superforce and regular commercial gigs, and he frequently returned to Atlanta where he did Silent Victim (1993) and Class of '61 (1993). While Tim was working at the Caldwell Theater in Boca Raton in the play The Importance of Being Ernest, Lori Wyman who at the time was casting Miami Vice, came back stage and asked him for a resume. She invited Tim to read for the show and he booked a part on Miami Vice. Other television credits are In the Heat of the Night, Wiseguy, Problem Child 2 (1991), Sea Quest, The Cape, ER, Safe Harbour, Unsolved Mysteries and once as a guest star and as SAG Voice talent looping 28 episodes of Sheena. His theater credits include roles in Macbeth, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Fallen Angels and Pygmalion. Some of his film credits are China Moon (1994), Drop Zone (1994), Holy Man (1998), Walking Across Egypt (1999), Sunshine State (2002), The President's Man (2000) and most recently Bad Boys II (2003). Today, Tim has his own production company called Bark at the Dog Productions, Inc. He continues to do regular Voice-Over work, produces, develops and performs as a narrator-spokesperson in non-broadcast industrials and interactive CD ROMs, and is a continues to work as a Macintosh computer consultant to a few select clients. He also teaches occasional voice-over workshops. (2014) Tim lives in Los Angeles, CA where he serves on the SAG Conservatory Steering Committee, teaches their Acting and VO workshops at the American Film Institute, and is an active member of the TV Academy. He has built a professional acting resume in Theatre, Film, TV, and VO, that spans 3 decades. From Shakespeare, Moliere, and Oscar Wilde at TN Repertory in Nashville and the Caldwell Theatre in Boca Raton, FL, to on-camera work throughout much of the east coast; landing speaking roles in 30+ Films (Pregnancy Pact, Recount, Bad Boys II, Sunshine State, Holy Man) and Dozens of Television shows (Rake, Criminal Minds, The Glades, One Tree Hill, Army Wives, Burn Notice, ER). In 2014, he appeared in a (Sold-out) one-man show, entitled Man's Dominion, in the LA Fringe Festival where the show was held over for the Encore presentations.