Andrea Powell

Photo Credit: Powell's twitter

Like most people, Andrea Powell gets up and goes to work.  Unlike most people, her colleagues are Harrison Ford and Viola Davis. 

Powell, a North Carolina resident and professional actress, has just been cast in Ender’s Game, a sci-fi thriller set to be released March 2013.  The film is set in the future and revolves around Ender Wiggin, a child genius trained by the government to fight against a hostile alien race that has invaded Earth.

The film’s stacked cast includes Harrison Ford, Viola Davis, Ben Kingsley, Asa Butterfield and Abigail Breslin.  Asa Butterfield, the star of Martin Scorsese’s five-time Academy Award winning film Hugo, will play Ender Wiggin.  And Powell has been cast as his mother, Theresa Wiggin.

“I’m incredibly excited,” Powell said.  “It’s like it’s too good to be true.”

           

Powell, who will also appear in The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2 as the vampire Sasha later this year, said she doesn’t know exactly how she landed her role in Ender’s Game.  

“I mean you never really know,” Powell said.  “The casting director knew me from other projects, and she thought I’d be right for the part, so I auditioned.  The director liked what I did, and I went to New Orleans for a meeting with him.  After a long wait, I got the call.”

Powell said filming for Ender’s Game will begin next week in New Orleans, but that the cast has already had several rehearsals.  Powell said she wasn’t nervous about working with her celebrity castmates.    

“I don’t get intimidated by celebrities,” Powell said.  “To be in the room with all these people at once, you see that they’re all really normal.  They’re human beings.”

Powell has been acting since she was a child.  At age 12, she was cast as the lead in a school production of Oliver, and she has been doing some form of acting ever since.  After graduating from high school, Powell went to the University of Hawaii and later to Louisiana State University to study theater.  Over the past 20 years, Powell has appeared in numerous T.V. shows and films.  In 2010, she was cast as a recurring character on the T.V. series The Gates.

Paul Ferguson, Powell’s husband and acting coach, said Powell’s success—especially her most recent success—is well deserved.

“This is an ideal experience,” Ferguson said.  “I think of it as a reward that she’s earned every bit of.”

Ferguson and Powell just celebrated their 18^th wedding anniversary.  They have worked together on various theatrical productions for more than 20 years.  Ferguson, a writer, director and professor at UNC, works with Powell on her auditions and has directed Powell in many of his original musicals and adaptations. Ferguson said he and Powell are each other’s biggest fans.

“We’re a team,” Ferguson said.  “That’s one of the secrets to our success.  We both believe that neither of us would be able to be as good as we are without the other.  I hope that I’m able to help her go further as an actor.  And I know that she helps me go further than I could as a writer and a director.”

Powell credits Ferguson and her friends’ continued support for much, if not all, of her success.

“Having love and health and friends I think makes me a better actor,” Powell said.  “In a way, I don’t think success could have come to me if I didn’t have that perspective.”

Powell and Ferguson have mentored many of Ferguson’s students at UNC.  Ferguson’s students said they were excited, but not shocked, by the news that Powell had been cast in a major motion picture.

“I wasn’t surprised,” Laura Ann Tully, a senior dramatic art major, said.  “Andi’s a brilliant actress and a wonderful person.  She totally deserves this success.”

Kallie Wray, a junior dramatic art and communication studies double major, agreed. 

“She’s an inspiration,” Wray said.  “She’s able to achieve anything she sets her mind to, and she keeps such a good attitude.”

Tully said she sees Powell as a role model.

“She’s a great example of a good person making it,” Tully said.  “You always want good people to make it.  It’s really refreshing to see.”

Powell said that it is impossible to predict whether being cast in Ender’s Game will skyrocket her to stardom.  Regardless, Powell said that becoming famous isn’t one of her priorities.  

“There was a time when I was more single-minded about pursuing my acting career,” Powell said.  “Ultimately I figured out that the most important thing in my life is love, which I have.”

Powell said that she’s not sure what she will do after she is done filming Ender’s Game.  She said she hopes another project will come along, or else she will have some time off.  If nothing else, Powell said landing her role in Ender’s Game will lead to interesting experiences. 

“And that’s all I really want to do,” Powell said. “To live a life full of interesting experiences.”