Thomas McCreery Powers was an American actor in theatre, films, radio and television. A veteran of the Broadway stage, notably in plays by George Bernard Shaw, he created the role of Charles Marsden in Eugene O'Neill's Strange Interlude. He succeeded Orson Welles in the role of Brutus in the Mercury Theatre's debut production, Caesar. In films, he was a star of Vitagraph Pictures and later became best known for his role as the victim of scheming wife Barbara Stanwyck and crooked insurance salesman Fred MacMurray in the film noir classic Double Indemnity (1944).

Strange Interlude is an experimental play in nine acts by American playwright Eugene O'Neill. It won the 1928 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Strange Interlude is one of the few modern plays to make extensive use of a soliloquy technique, in which the characters speak their inner thoughts to the audience.