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Michael Harrelson, an award-winning American actor of Irish-Scottish-Danish heritage, was inspired to pursue a performing career after a childhood encounter with screen legends Tyrone Power and Leif Erickson. His career spans around 60 films, numerous TV shows and commercials, and many voiceover and narration projects, featuring a distinctive voice industry peers describe as "whisky and smoke dipped in honey."
Born James Michael Harrelson in Pensacola, he is one of three children of a former World War II infantryman who later sold newspaper linotype, and a homemaker mother who occasionally worked as a secretary. Growing up along the Gulf Coast, he took on various jobs from age six, starting with grape picking near the Florida-Alabama border to help support his family.
Over the years, he worked as a restaurant busboy, stevedore unloading cargo ships, tugboat deckhand in the Caribbean, furniture mover, taxi driver, bouncer, bartender, real estate broker, photography studio salesman, car salesman, and a well-liked local TV personality.
At one point, he also worked tracking down people and delivering legal summonses, a role he came to deeply dislike: "I was basically bringing misery to folks."
His residences frequently shifted among cities such as Montgomery, Alabama, Atlanta, New Orleans, Dallas, Kansas City, and Miami.
These diverse life experiences and cultural backgrounds have provided a rich source for his acting. "What we do as actors is tell stories," he says. "These were all individual stories I was living. A good actor can sell real estate, can sell cars, can practice law. Good actors tell the truth." He added, "I can play lawyers and judges and salesmen and ministers because I've known lawyers and judges and salesmen and ministers. I play people across the social scale."
Alongside working, he studied journalism—being an avid reader of Ernest Hemingway—and business at Pensacola and Miami-Dade junior colleges, earned a real estate license, and took on-camera acting classes while in Chicago.
Eventually, he decided to pursue his lifelong dream of a professional acting career. Moving west to Arizona and Los Angeles, he has spent the last 20 years as a full-time, highly sought-after character actor, working across the two states and wherever roles take him.
He has held significant roles alongside actors like Eric Roberts, Tom Sizemore, Dean Cain, and Lin Shaye, earning accolades including two Best Actor awards from the Almost Famous Film Festival for "Funny Business" and "End of the Road."
The grandson of a Pentecostal minister, he is increasingly drawn to faith-based projects, one of which earned him a Best Supporting Actor nomination at a prominent Los Angeles film festival.
In 2017, he was among just 14 artists nominated for the Arizona Governor's Arts Award, presented by Arizona Citizens for the Arts in partnership with the Governor's Office, recognizing artists of notable merit, leadership, or reputation whose work enriches the state and the arts.
"To be an actor, you have to really, really love it and everything that goes with it, good and bad," he reflects, "and I do.
