Avis-Marie Barnes was born in NJ and raised in Montclair. She did not realize her love for the theater until her Freshman year in high school when a classmate, set to direct a one-act play, asked her to play a role in it. She went from not knowing what she wanted to do, to seeing the rest of her life. After attending Howard University’s Fine Arts Department and receiving her BFA, she moved back to New Jersey and worked in New York theater for 13 years, as well as working in films as an extra, and in soaps, and commercials. In 1992 an opportunity came to attend a seminar to meet casting directors and talent agencies in Orlando, Florida, at a time when Florida was being tapped as “Hollywood East”. After the seminar, she made the leap to leave New Jersey and move to Florida in the hopes of obtaining an agent and a SAG card and taking that b...