I asked Michael how exactly he became an actor, being an ordinary boy from Mount Hope, and that sparked an interesting story in and of itself. After attending Concord College (now Concord University) for one year and dabbling in their theatre and stage productions, Michael decided to leave West Virginia for good: “I left WV at a dead run and swore I would never look back. WV wasn’t big enough to hold me.” Michael smiles, remembering his youth fondly, and goes on, “When I got to Haight-Ashbury (a neighborhood in San Francisco), I was traveling with a friend. Well, he was an escaped convict, actually. We were hitchhiking. I still don’t know his real name, but I called him ‘Opie’. Who knows what his real name was. Anyway, we got there (to California) and we didn’t have a place to stay. We tossed our sleeping bags on some cardboard under a bridge in San Francisco, and we went to sleep. Opie got up earlier than I did the next morning, he wanted a drink. In San Francisco you could get a drink any time of the day or night, it didn’t matter. So he went to a bar and he ran into a fellow who said, ‘The theatre company I work for is in some real trouble. I don’t know what we’re going to do. Shows start tomorrow and we just lost our male lead’. Opie, knowing I had some experience in the theatre, told the guy, ‘Oh brother, are you in luck,’ and he got me a job. Just like that. Basically, I got my first professional acting job while I was sleeping on some cardboard under a bridge in San Francisco. That’s a fact.”

The adventure didn’t stop there. Michael would go on to experience Woodstock in 1969, and (almost) book a gig with Arena Stage in D.C. a matter of years later. Alas, Michael did not complete his job with Arena Stage; instead, he chased a woman whom he’d fallen in love with up to Buffalo, New York, and stayed there awhile. Somehow, though, Michael found himself back in California, then in Cumberland, Maryland, and then back in… West Virginia? Michael tells me: “I came home to Mount Hope for a visit with my parents. At that point I had two daughters, and was in the midst of a divorce from my first wife. I called my folks first to be sure it was okay to come around; I wasn’t even sure I was welcome in their house. I was told, of course, that it was my home. So I went. When I got there, I saw the grass needed mowing. Naturally, I mowed the grass for them. And as I did that, it felt more and more like home. So, I’m still here. I’ve not left yet.” Michael laughs a little as he tells me the last bit, and reiterates something he’d said earlier in our interview: “Like I said, I left West Virginia at a dead run. I had no intention of looking back. But, there’s a place on this earth that I belong, and it’s right here.

Michael would remarry during his time in West Virginia, and he is still married and living in Mount Hope (the town in which he served as mayor for many years before retiring from that position) with his wife, Nancy, to this day. Michael continues to act (he most recently shot a film this March in Athens, Ohio, with a female Iranian director), and he is now a proud grandfather to three grandchildren (one of whom has starred in some films with him, including the Student Academy Award-winning film that sent him to Los Angeles, Down in Number Five). Michael plans to return to the stage this summer with Theatre West Virginia, starring in their annual production of Hatfields and McCoys.

As Michael and I finish up our interview and wrap up our discussion of his latest project in film, he tells me something quite charming: “You know, the best work I’ve done in film has been directed by a woman. Female directors often produce the best work. The best work I’ve done. Now, I’ve worked with some damn good male directors… Somehow, I respond better to female direction.” Michael Meredith Martin, or Michael Meredith as he is known in the acting world, is a wise man indeed.
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