Bradley Hawkins(II)

Bradley Hawkins began his acting career in the San Francisco Bay Area in the early '90s, starring in several stage productions before working as an on-camera actor. Upon moving from Sunnyvale, California, to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in 1997, Hawkins taught film studies, acting, and humanities courses at the high school level and directed several stage productions throughout his 12 years as an educator.

Upon retiring from teaching at the high school level in 2012, Hawkins returned to on-camera acting and branched out as an award-winning indie film director of family-friendly shorts, with his debut comedy, Roller Coaster (2015), earning 30 film festival awards nationwide. His second short, the comedy-fantasy Filling In (2016), more than doubled the number of awards won by his directorial debut and was screened not only in 19 states across the country but also in Australia, Canada, England, Italy, and Lithuania. Hawkins' next short, the semi-autobiographical coming-of-age family drama Calf Rope (2020), exceeded the combined success and critical acclaim of his two previous short films and cemented his reputation as a filmmaker of family-friendly content. However, Hawkins' latest work, Night Voices (2023), an intense psychological thriller with adult themes (such as aging, grief, isolation, and spirituality), stretches his previously self-imposed boundaries as a maker of family-friendly fare, becoming the darkest yet most redemptive film of his career. Night Voices won 93 awards in both secular and faith-based film festivals around the world during its festival run from May 2022 to October 2023.

As a result of his being an award-winning film director and his decades of experience as a stage and on-camera actor, Hawkins has a history of drawing powerful performances out of the talent in his films, who have cumulatively won over 50 awards for their work in both lead and supporting roles in each of the projects that he has directed. Over the past 30 years, Hawkins has studied with some of the best-known acting coaches in the country and, as a result, has developed his own unique coaching/directing style for actors of all ages, which he continues to enjoy doing between film projects.

Hawkins has three completed feature-length screenplays, each co-written with three other award-winning screenwriters, that have undergone several drafts to tell their cinematic stories. He is currently experimenting with adapting each of them into stage plays as the first major step from the stage to the screen with the help of those collaborators. Being an actor-turned-director and an avid theater buff who got his start on stage, Hawkins sees this path as the best way to build momentum and a following for these redemptive stage tales, and hopes to get at least one of them workshopped by the spring of 2027.