Jim Ross Meskimen

JIM MESKIMEN is an actor/impressionist who also writes and directs. His first career was as a visual artist, doing cartoons and commercial art in New York City. During that time he took a job designing cartoon characters for a new animated TV show called Thundercats, which became a hit for Rankin/Bass. While working in animation, Jim realized that being a voice actor was a better career path for him, and he began to work in radio and TV voiceovers, as well as animation for the same company that launched Thundercats.

He worked extensively in the 80’s and 90’s on TV campaigns as a man-on-the-street interviewer for grocery chains and other clients, in improvised comedic commercials that won many industry awards.

In New York City, he was a member of several improv companies and did hundreds of live shows, culminating in guest starring spots on Britain’s Whose Line Is It, Anyway?
In 1993, Jim moved home to LA with his wife and young daughter and began pursuing a career in TV and film, beginning with Fresh Prince of Bel Air and a role in Ron Howard’s Oscar nominated Apollo 13.

Howard, whom Jim had met as a boy on the set of his mother’s series Happy Days (she is Marion Ross, AKA Marion Cunningham) has cast Jim in a total of five feature films, including The Grinch and Frost/Nixon.

Jim has guest starred on many major television programs; Friends, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, This is Us, SWAT, NCIS, Parks & Recreation, to name but a few.

His character voices have been heard on innumerable video games and animated shows; he is currently voicing a role on the latest Thundercats reboot, Thundercats Roar, for Cartoon Network, premiering this year.

He also has a thriving YouTube presence, with a channel that has had several viral hits. His Shakespeare in Celebrity Voices brought him global attention and lead to many opportunities, including an invitation to perform on America’s Got Talent in 2013, where he did his celebrity impressions at Radio City Music Hall.

As a writer, in 2016 he penned a short film, Son to Son, about the Opioid crisis and how It affects one family, which won 12 festival awards including Best Actor and Best Screenplay awards for Meskimen.

In voiceover, Jim provides the voice of iconic Colonel Harland Sanders for the KFC brand on radio and television ads.

He is currently developing a screenplay for a feature film for him to play the lead, entitled (unsurprisingly) The Impressionist, a comedic thriller set in Las Vegas.

Jim lives in Los Angeles with wife of thirty plus years Tamra Meskimen, also an actress and one of the founders of The Acting Center, a revolutionary acting school in LA. His daughter Taylor Meskimen is an award-winning narrator and actress.