Jim Ortlieb performed in John Kolvenbach’s lauded Reel to Reel at Rogue Machine coproduced with Horse Chart Theatre Company. Since 2021 Jim has been performing Stand Up If You’re Here Tonight which premiered in Atwater Village with Circle X and VS theatre companies and has travelled with the show to Chicago, Paris, Key West, and Boston’s Huntington Theatre. He began his acting career in 1977 doing musicals before he found Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University where he studied with William Esper, Kathryn Gately-Poole, and a host of other great teachers. Upon graduation he moved to Chicago where he taught the Meisner acting technique and acted at the Steppenwolf, Goodman, Northlight, Lookingglass, Court, Organic theaters, Gare St. Lazare Players, and American Blues Theater as a proud member. In Los Angeles, he helped to inaugurate the The Getty Villa indoor theatrical venue in Meryl Friedman’s adaptation of The Wasps, acted at Boston Court, Circle X, and the Inkwell. Nationally he worked at The Fords’ in DC, Merrimack Rep in Lowell, Mass., Weston Playhouse in Vermont, Great Lakes Shakespeare in Ohio.

As a member of Chicago’s Gare St. Lazare Players, Jim worked extensively in Ireland, Scotland, and Paris. He taught drama in West Cork, Ireland for high school students from Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France, Spain and Italy. Jim’s Broadway work includes Of Mice and Men with James Franco, Chris O’Dowd, Ron Cephas Jones, and Leighton Meester directed by Anna Shapiro, Aaron Sorkin’s The Farnsworth Invention with Jimmi Simpson, Stephen Land, and Hank Azaria, and Guys and Dolls with Oliver Platt and Lauren Graham, both directed by Des McAnuff. He toured for two years in the Elton John’s Billy Elliot the Musical directed by Stephen Daldry. His last musical was Sir Elton’s The Devil Wears Prada in Chicago.

Jim has twice been a Best Actor nominee for the Joseph Jefferson Award in Chicago, a Best Actor nominee for Boston’s Independent Reviewers of New England Award for John Kolvenbach’s Marriage Play at Merrimack Rep in Lowell, MA, and won a Best Actor Solo Performance winner of the Stage Scene LA’s ‘scenie’ award and the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle award for his work in Stand Up If You’re Here Tonight also by John Kolvenbach. Jim has appeared in many films including Magnolia, Home Alone, A Mighty Wind, Running Scared, Drunkboat, Flatliners. Some of Jim’s television credits include American Horror Story, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, How to Get Away w Murder, Grey’s Anatomy, The West Wing, The Closer, Roswell, Six Feet Under and The Shield.