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James C. Stewart was a late entry into the acting world, after a good friend persuaded him to drop the shy kid persona he had always clung to, and join the cast of their high school production in their hometown of Christchurch, New Zealand.
Being good with numbers, he surprised no-one by going straight into a banking job out of high school, but continued to take acting classes on the side to help that shy kid come out of his shell. At the point when the bank had just about sucked his soul dry, he surprised the hell out of everyone by announcing he was leaving to go to the Linwood Performing Arts Centre (LPAC). He spent the two years there working out if this acting thing was really for him, and with a resounding YES he has not looked back since.
Thrust out into the real world, along with fellow LPACers he co-founded the award-winning Scrambled Legs Theatre Company and spent several years with them, writing and performing, mixing acting with contemporary dance (being the little guy he was always the one getting lifted and flipped).
Needing a life change, he left his hometown for the cultural capital of New Zealand - Wellington. After a short time there he became a co-founding member of the award-winning theatre company The Bacchanals, and this began his love of Shakespeare. The company became known for making Shakespeare accessible to everyone, and toured to many small towns in the country that would not normally have the chance to see the plays live off the page. Many contemporary and classical highlights of his career were born here.
He spent the next few years making a name for himself gravitating between playing the comic sidekick, with multiple crazy characters, to the villain. This led to not only great roles in theatre, but also principal roles in indie feature films Event 16 (2006) and The Last Great Snail Chase (2007), as well as the lead in the European Festival award-winning short film Rob (2007).
Now how on earth did a shy Kiwi from Christchurch, New Zealand end up living in the U.S. of A. you may ask. It's all thanks to the craziness that is the Green Card Lottery. Yes, they actually have a lottery for that. Just when he was ready for another change of scenery and contemplating a move to Australia, the lottery he had been entering for over a decade suddenly let him know he had won!
So in 2007 he uprooted his life, said farewell to family & friends, and moved everything to the Big Apple of opportunity. The place where his only recognized New Zealand credits are the months he spent as an orc extra on The Lord of The Rings: ROTK, or the fact that he did a play with those Flight of the Conchords guys and the director of Thor: Ragnarok. Plus now he has gone and fallen for an American, so it looks like the States is stuck with him. In 2013 he became a citizen, so now has dual US & NZ citizenship, then after eight years in NYC, including being Co-Artistic Director of the critically acclaimed and published Redd Tale Theatre Company, he relocated to Seattle in 2015 to bring Kiwi to the Pacific Northwest.
