Avis-Marie Barnes was born in NJ and raised in Montclair. She did not realize her love for the theater until her Freshman year in high school when a classmate, set to direct a one-act play, asked her to play a role in it. She went from not knowing what she wanted to do, to seeing the rest of her life. After attending Howard University’s Fine Arts Department and receiving her BFA, she moved back to New Jersey and worked in New York theater for 13 years, as well as working in films as an extra, and in soaps, and commercials. In 1992 an opportunity came to attend a seminar to meet casting directors and talent agencies in Orlando, Florida, at a time when Florida was being tapped as “Hollywood East”. After the seminar, she made the leap to leave New Jersey and move to Florida in the hopes of obtaining an agent and a SAG card and taking that back to New Jersey. But after a time of steadily increasing work in Industrials, television, voiceover, films, and theater; as well as trying her hand at directing theatrical productions – she has made Florida home. But, in her heart, she is still from New Jersey! Along the way, she has put together a business building and maintaining websites, filming actors’ auditions and sending them to the proper casting offices, and holding classes teaching others how to audition in front of the camera – and how to film auditions as well.
