Gene Mitchell, Jr. was born in Torrance, California, to a family of four children. His parents, Gene Mitchell, Sr., an auto body repairman from Flint, Michigan, and Jill, a homemaker from Cincinnati, Ohio, divorced after his freshman year of high school. Gene joined his mother and step-family on a 5,000-acre Hereford cattle ranch in Northern California, where they assisted neighboring families during the lean times of the 1970s.
Living in this rural setting had a profound impact on Gene's life and future career as an actor, writer, and filmmaker. After graduating from high school, Gene returned to Torrance and lived with his grandparents before enrolling in college at California State University, Long Beach, with the intention of pursuing a career in business.
However, Gene caught the acting bug the summer before his senior year when he auditioned for the role of young Conan in a live show based on the popular film series. He was encouraged to get professional training and enrolled in a summer program at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute in Los Angeles, where he studied with acting coach Susan Peretz and learned "The Method."
Gene advanced his training in front of the cameras at the Film Industry Workshops, where he worked with professional film and TV performers. Within a year, he left college to work as an actor, inspired by the real-life story of Sylvester Stallone and his Rocky creation. Gene soon wrote his first screenplay, Passion, which landed him a writing coach and literary agent, and he began training in the "Sweet Science" of boxing at the Fabela Chavez Boxing Center in Carson, California.
One of Gene's first paid acting roles was Brutus in the cult classic Surf Nazis Must Die. In addition to acting and performing stunts, Gene learned all that he could about making a movie. Through the 1980s, Gene continued studying, screenwriting, and began directing while working at The Actors Studio, where he was mentored by veteran actors, playwrights, and directors.
Gene's first screen break came in the role of Detective Peel in John Stockwell's Under Cover (1987) and was followed by a chilling portrayal of a neo-Nazi in 1989's Skinheads. With his acting versatility and no-nonsense presence, Gene had no difficulty finding work in movies.
In the 1990s, his screenwriting and filmmaking career began to take precedence, with the brothers drama Strong City (1992) and the critically-acclaimed Flipping (1997),a stylish crime-thriller in which he made his directorial debut. During this period, he also took on the role of co-producer for some of his projects, including Fatal Choice (1995) and Sins of the Father (1998).
While Gene defined his onscreen persona as the tough, no-nonsense leader in films like Centurion Force (1998),in the 2000s his screenwriting was moving in a new direction, both cerebral and meticulous, and he began developing a library of deeply personal stories of spiritual triumph and historical significance.
As an actor, Gene was directed by Ron Howard in Frost/Nixon (2008) and followed up by completing several new screenplays, including Footprints, a fantasy adventure in the genre of Pete's Dragon, Sutter's New West, a historical mini-series which chronicles the life of empire builder John Augustus Sutter, and True Reckoning, a rare American drama which juxtaposes a young boy's dream of being a football quarterback with the brutal life of being a prizefighter, scheduled for release in Summer 2017.
