Herman Wilkins

Herman De Woyne Wilkins III is an American actor/writer and filmmaker born in Memphis, Tennessee on May 27, 1975, though most of his childhood was split between Memphis and various villages and cities on Chicago's North Shore. His parents are civil rights activists and union organizer Herman Wilkins Jr. and Dorothy Ingram Wilkins. He is a cousin of NBA stars Dominique Wilkins and Gerald Wilkins and NAACP figure Roy Wilkins. On his mother's side he is related to Confederate General P. G. T. Beauregard and Charles II of Great Britain.

As a youth, he won the Optimist Club International Oratory Contest on the city and state level and was awarded the key to the county of Shelby, city of Memphis by Mayor Richard Hackett (1988). He appeared onstage at the renowned Playhouse on the Square in "Peter Pan" and "Oliver!" and in local television.

Wilkins attended St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire 1988-1992 (while there, he also attended the School of American Ballet at Lincoln Center in New York). Afterwards, he attended Rhodes College in Memphis and then Lake Forest college in Lake Forest, Illinois, in both cases to be near to his family. After a brief stint at the School of Visual Arts in New York City he left for Los Angeles, California.

After landing in Los Angeles, Wilkins struggled for years to make a name for himself in the arenas of television and film. He appeared in A Clockwork Orange at The Greenway Arts Theater and he finally got a break when an agent saw him in The Lillies of the Field at the Santa Monica Playhouse. He has appeared in several television shows including HBO's From the Earth to the Moon, Fox's The Shield and Lifetime's The Division. He co-wrote Broken Cookies with Udo Kier. His first full length feature Three Boys Named Mario (2000) received a grant from Avid to be edited. His second film Affairs In Order was completed in 2006. He has appeared in advertising campaigns for KIA Motors, Captain Morgan's and Nokia. Herman co-stars in the upcoming films "American Son" with Nick Canon and Chi McBride and "Stiletto" with Michael Biehn, Dominique Swain and Tom Sizemore.

Herman also appeared in A Tale of Two Cities in North Hollywood, California and more recently in Measure for Measure with the Promeathean Theater Ensemble in Chicago, IL.

In 2008, he finished production on the documentary feature film "Victor" Directed by Gabriela Isas with Chocolate Albino Productions which is the story of Tijuana’s maverick human rights activist, Victor Clark Alfaro who fights for the rights of the most marginalised of society, stumbles upon evidence that the new ruling party of Baja California is colluding with the infamous Arellano Felix drug cartel. With quixotic bravado Victor launches a campaign to bring down the government. What happens (or doesn’t happen) to him, those close to him and all those involved, is the core of the story. "Victor" debuted at Cannes in May 2010.

In 2010, after the devastating earthquake in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Herman ventured to the Caribbean nation to begin production on the documentary Voices In the Rubble, to document the stories of the victims of the quake and stayed in the country for nearly six months working with aid groups such as Mobile Medical Disaster Relief and the American University of the Caribbean at Les Cayes. Herman is in production on the documentary film as well as the pilot reality-docu series "Angels In the Field''.

In 2012, Herman began the year long production of HOGTOWN a feature-length dramatic study of the soul of the Chicagoan. The film is set in 1919 against the backdrop of the race riots of that year, the end of WWI, and the Black Sox scandal. Its plot relates to the investigation into the disappearance of a millionaire theatre owner during a snowstorm. While it is both a murder mystery and a love story, it is also experimental at every turn, and celebrates the city while exploring the isolation and emotions of many of its inhabitants. The period piece is much more a period-less piece, shot in black and white in undisguised contemporary Chicago and incorporating neoclassical motifs. The film involves a multi-racial, ensemble cast of more than 100 actors and evolves directly from the ensemble process of the making of director Daniel Nearing's previous feature, Chicago Heights (now The Last Soul on a Summer Night), which was named to Roger Ebert's list of the Best Art Films of 2010.

Also in 2012, Herman began production on Searching For Venice, as Graham. Award- Winning Director Jason Knade's SEARCHING FOR VENICE is an ensemble film that follows a diverse collection of characters, all of whom are eccentrically flawed and part of the same dysfunctional family. Tragic, comedic, and romantic, this narrative explores what it means to live, love, and be a family in contemporary society.

Next Herman stated production on Englewood, Will Cochran's pilot for the San Francisco Black Film Festival Award Winner of Summer 2012, Englewood