Lynwood Metts
- Actor
Lynwood Metts is an actor, writer, stand-up comedian, musician, and
professional photographer born in Kinston, North Carolina. His father
Jedious, a tobacco farmer from Comfort, North Carolina, moved the
family to Newport News, Virginia as a construction worker, then to
Cocoa Beach, Florida as a mechanic for General Electric, and finally to
Summerville, South Carolina again with General Electric. His mother
Peggy (maiden name Peggy Thigpen) helped support the family as a
secretary and book keeper. He is the second oldest of four children.
His ancestors were German immigrants escaping conflicts involving land
between France and Germany about 1700. His siblings are former
musicians. Buddy played trombone, Nancy played saxophone, and Jeff
played french horn. His daughter Ashley Metts, who won awards for the
roll she wrote and performed as the Fairy Godmother in "Another
Cinderella" in High School drama, inspired Lynn to follow his dreams.
Lynn's introduction to the arts began, and continues to this day, as a
way to overcome shyness and to help others. His writing is based on his
unusual personal experiences and the people he has met. During the
Winthrop College Summer Camp for the Academically Talented (SCAT) in
the summer of 1972, Lynn caught the attention of his first girlfriend
by parroting Southern stand-up comedians such as Brother Dave Gardner,
Jerry Clower, and Andy Griffith.
While not a prude, he prefers to be involved in projects such as
Romantic or Family Comedies that any of his friends, who span the range
of religious and political views, would attend and admire. Lynn's role
models in the arts are Ron Howard,
James Stewart,
Steve Martin, and
Tim Abell. Lynn learned to play trumpet at the
age of 11, and transitioned to valve trombone and baritone during his
senior year in the Summerville, South Carolina High School Marching
Band. While Lynn enjoyed the rigors of practice and enjoys the benefits
of being able to distinguish instruments while listening to music, he
felt he was much better at the physical performance aspect as opposed
to being a good musician, so sought other avenues to express his
creativity. Upon the encouragement of a fellow trumpet player, Milton
Blanchett, Lynn successfully auditioned for the part of Brian in the
high school play "Murder is a Matter of Opinion". The role called for
Lynn's big Southern hair to be spray died gray, which prophetically
made him the spitting image of the character he would play 40 years
later in his first film role as Government Agent 3 in
Subconscious (2015). On opening
night, the play had rave reviews as a drama. On the second night, after
a few sophomores in the crowd laughed at some opening lines, Lynn
witnessed the genius of Milton, who starred as the lawyer defending
Lynn's character, altering his delivery to harness the energy of an
engaged audience, resulting in the play being acclaimed as a must see
comedy. While attending The Citadel, the military college of South
Carolina, Lynn met and became life long friends with Bob Luke, who
after a career on Broadway, became the acting coach for
Sarah Michelle Gellar during her
Emmy Award winning season on
All My Children (1970).
Although Lynn was in The Citadel's Air Force program, during the
Christmas break of freshman year he volunteered and attended
marksmanship training with his Marine Corps classmates at Paris Island.
He earned the Pistol Sharpshooter badge with a 45 automatic and Rifle
Marksman badge with the M16. Lynn quickly learned that joining
extracurricular groups helped avoid many of the challenges a military
school. By senior year, he was Commander of the Touchdown Cannon Crew,
a reenactment group that fired large Civil War replica black powder
cannons at football games. In the Spring of 1979, Lynn commanded the
crew as it accompanied the Charleston Symphony orchestra playing the
1812 Overture during the Spoleto Festival at Middleton Garden's
Butterfly Lakes. Graduating with a degree in Biology at age 20, Lynn
entered the Air Force and attended pilot training at Columbus,
Mississippi. He washed out after six months due to an inner ear
problem, and has been rated as a Service Disabled Veteran due to
complications from injuries sustained during parachute landing fall
training accidents. He then attended Intelligence Officer training in
Denver Colorado, where he learned the science and management principles
of running large reconnaissance laboratories that processed film from
systems such as the RF4 Phantom, the U2, and satellites. But his
training was cut short due to the Iranian hostage crisis and he was
assigned to the First Special Operations Wing at Fort Walton Beach,
Florida. Lynn received a Commendation Medal for developing and
demonstrating a technique to adapt night vision goggles to still and
motion picture cameras. While filming a Joint Special Operations
Command (JSOC) night time exercise from an orbiting AC130H Spectre
Gunship, the crew opened the scratched and discolored dome on the tail
ramp used to observe surface to air missiles in attempt to allow Lynn
an unobstructed view while filming with his motion picture camera. Upon
hitting an air pocket, Lynn fell out of the plane as far as his knees,
and was pulled back in with the body harness that had been tied to the
ribs of the plane. When asked how he had remained calm and kept hold of
the camera, which the crew thought he would drop to free his hands and
attempt to pull himself back in, Lynn replied that all he could think
of was being blamed for killing the President of the United States if
he dropped the camera, who was observing the exercise one mile below.
One of Lynn's sergeant's, Edward Simpson, was an award winning
photographer and student of Ansel Adams. Ed offered to train Lynn to be
a professional photographer as opposed to just managing the processing
lab, and asked what subject Lynn wanted to photograph. Lynn replied he
wanted to put the Girl Next Door on magazine covers, and hoped that
would help him stop stuttering around women. Simpson gave Lynn books on
the theory of light by glamor photographer Peter Gowland and handed him
an unloaded Nikon F3 with instruction to study a tree behind the office
through it every morning at sunrise for a month to get Lynn's eye
accustomed to faint differences of light as described by Gowland's
methods. The first and second rolls of film Lynn ever shot were of Tina
Kroske (maiden name Tina Ruth Jennings). The rolls produced the June
and July 1985 covers of "True Romance" magazine. Upon reassignment to
the Defense Intelligence Agency in Washington, DC a neighbor introduced
Lynn to Deborah Leveque, whom he had on the December 1984 cover of
"True Romance", the January 1985 cover of "True Story", and the June
1986 cover of "Secrets" magazines. Family friends in Charleston, South
Carolina introduced Lynn to College of Charleston freshman Robin Powell
(maiden name Robin Truett) whom he had on the August 1987 cover of
"True Story". Robin's daughter Rebecca Powell, a student at the
University of South Carolina, is now one of Lynn's models and is
planned to appear in his first film Youth Ministers (in development).
Lynn met actor Tim Abell and Gail McGlynn
during a modeling competition in Baltimore, Maryland and invited them
to a surprise party for Deborah Leveque during which Deborah would meet
all of Lynn's models and be told she had been picked for her third
magazine cover. The morning of the party, in order to kill time, Lynn
assisted by one of his former photographers in the Air Force, Charles
Wright, shot one roll of Tim and Gail. That roll produced the Autumn
1987, Collector's Series No 14 cover of "True Confessions, Romance
Special" magazine. Lynn discovered that some of the best photographs
don't get published when an editor he was visiting rejected a photo of
one of his favorite models, Kathy Probst (maiden name Kathy Kohler),
with a comment that Kathy was one of the most beautiful women she had
ever seen, and reminded her of the girl that stole her high school
boyfriend. Lynn overcame his fear of women until 1994 when he met
Kimberly Rutledge Baughn, the sister of his three time cover girl
Deborah Leveque. Lynn and Kimberly have been happily married since
Christmas Eve 2003. She still makes him stutter. Lynn served four years
at The Citadel teaching National Security Policy and Military Law with
students including two sons of
Ted Turner. He also served as the
Military Adviser to The Citadel's elite, silent rifle drill platoon The
Summerall Guards. Lynn's next duty station was a three year tour in
Hawaii. Due to Lynn's success as a magazine photographer, he was
invited to judge bikini contests, which led to his meeting celebrities
including Lee Majors and the other
cast members of the TV show
Raven (1992). Lynn was given the
opportunity to visit on set in return for allowing some cast to
accompany him on photo shoots of glamor models such as Angela DeVore
Sosna (maiden name Angela DeVore), Kate Hogle (maiden name Kate Klabo),
and Theresa Reese. While having lunch at his favorite hang out,
Snappers Sports Bar in Waikiki managed by his friend Paula McKnight,
Lynn met US Immigration Agent Dennis Smith, who was grabbing lunch for
agents observing a human smuggling operation. Denny explained to Lynn
that smugglers are cruel and that the aliens often end up in horrible
conditions akin to slavery. After discovering that the smuggler's motel
room was directly opposite Lynn's Waikiki apartment balcony, the
federal agents accepted Lynn's offer to base their operations from his
home. "The Honolulu Advertiser" reported on September 19, 1992 that the
eight smugglers were arrested for smuggling 137 people. Lynn was
reassigned briefly to the Headquarters USAF at The Pentagon, before
moving to his final duty station, a return to the Defense Intelligence
Agency as the manager of a software program which he deployed on trips
around the globe. Lynn became friends with actor
Jay Hillmer, best known as Principal
Davidson in Hairspray (1988). Jay
shared scripts he had written with Lynn, and encouraged him to continue
writing a story based on his life as a glamor photographer, Bedside
Manner (in development). Lynn had no idea that
Tim Abell had moved to Los Angeles and become
an actor. Reconnecting in 2012, Lynn was intrigued by the story of
Tim's career and proceeded to interview Tim by phone 6 hours a week for
6 months in order to produce material for Tim's biography. In August of
2013, Tim invited Lynn to the set of
Subconscious (2015). Lynn
volunteered to help behind the scenes in order to learn the art of film
making and became friends with cast and crew. The Director,
Georgia Hilton invited Lynn to perform in
a speaking role as Government Agent 3 during pickup shooting in April
2013. Lynn is now collaborating with
Tim Abell,
Naomi Brockwell, and
Georgia Hilton to bring to fruition his
film projects Bedside Manner and (in development) Youth Ministers (in
development).