MELEE HUTTON
Actor. Director. Coach.
Melee was born in Belfast Northern Ireland and trained as an actor in Glasgow at The Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, graduating with the James Bridie Medal and The Citizen's Theatre Award. She holds an M.F.A in Acting as well as a Graduate Certificate in the Teaching of Acting from York University, Toronto, Canada.
As an acting coach for film and television, her work includes: Avatar The Last Airbender (Netflix Live Action), The Mother (Netflix and Jennifer Lopez’s Nuyorican Productions), Gen V (Sony Pictures), POLARIS (Little Dipper Films), Anne with an E (Netflix and CBC), Beans (EMA Films), Shazam (DC Films), The Grizzlies (Northwood Films) and the presently the untitled Bass Reeves anime series (Netflix).
Earlier this year Melee spent three months in the Canadian Arctic coaching on upcoming Netflix/CBC ‘s North of North a comedy with edge set in Iqaluit, Nunavut.
Current projects include Mae Martin’s Tall Pines (Netflix) and Thorpe a feature film exploring the life of Native American super star Olympic athlete Jim Thorpe, directed by Tracey Deer.
Melee works both as a pre-production and an on- set coach and has also served directors, show runners, producers and casting directors as an audition and screen test coach and consultant.
Melee’s acting career includes roles with major professional theatre companies in both the United Kingdom and Canada, including two Laurence Olivier award-winning hit shows in London's West End: Our Country's Good by Timberlake Wertenbaker and Popcorn by Ben Elton. In the U.K. she has received a Citz Award for her role as Sarah in Harold Pinter's The Lover and The London New Play Festival Best Actress Award for Wendy Hammond's Julie Johnson.
In Toronto, she was nominated for a Dora Mavor Moore Award for Outstanding Performance in 2012 for her performance as Dmitri in the all-female Brothers Karamazov. The following year she was nominated for a Dora for Outstanding Direction for her production of Harold Pinter's The Dumb Waiter.
On camera work includes The Ninth, Kill Order, Love and Savagery, Beautiful People, Murdoch Mysteries, Casualty, Circle of Deceit, PSI Factor, This is David Harper, Perfect Scoundrels, Frank Stubbs, Minder.
Melee currently teaches on faculty at Sheridan College in Oakville, Canada. Formally, she taught for twelve years at both the Masters and Undergraduate level within the Theatre Department at York University in Toronto. Other significant teaching credits include The National Film and Television School in the United Kingdom and The Professional Actors Lab in Toronto.