Bronson Pinchot in 1998 at the Cannes Film Festival; (inset) Pinchot whoops it up in a scene from Perfect Strangers.(The Everett Collection/Fitzroy Barrett/Globe)
Feb. 18, 2000
Bronson Pinchot
No longer a Perfect Stranger, the actor found post-TV success on the Great White Way.
By MARIA CIACCIA
Bronson Pinchot in 1998 at the Cannes Film Festival; (inset) Pinchot whoops it up in a scene from Perfect Strangers.
(The Everett Collection/Fitzroy Barrett/Globe)
From 1986 to 1993, Bronson Pinchot played Balki Bartokomous and performed the uproarious "dance of joy" with co-star Mark Linn-Baker on the hit TV sitcom Perfect Strangers.
Despite his tremendous success as Bartokomous, the immigrant from mythical Mypos who moved to Chicago to live with his cousin, Pinchot, now 43, says he had difficulties working on the series. "I just didn't know about acting," Pinchot confesses. "I needed an hour for myself before the show and I had to stay in character the whole day." Though he describes the experience as "amazing -- in a way, it was part of the Cinderella thing of my life," the glass slipper was a tight fit.
The New York City native grew up with an abusive father, who left the family when Pinchot was 2, forcing a young Bronson, three siblings and his mother to rely on welfare. Encouraged by his mother, Rosina, Pinchot excelled in school and won a scholarship to Yale. He began to study painting and drawing to become an illustrator but soon changed his major to acting. After graduation, Pinchot performed on the New York stage and soon landed his first feature film, 1983's Risky Business, as Tom Cruise's hapless sidekick. He followed that up with his scene-stealing performance as an art gallery worker in Beverly Hills Cop.
His Perfect Strangers character was based on the Italian grandfather he never knew. "Loving, with an innocent heart," is how he describes the inspiration for Balki. The show was successful, but Pinchot wasn't ready for fame and fortune. "I was too young to have instant attention all over the world -- no matter where I went -- and too much money without having had anything in between," he says.
After the show's run, he became involved with producer-director Amy Heckerling (Clueless). The couple became engaged in 1997 but separated the same year, and Pinchot is still single. In 1999, he was called in to audition for Putting It Together, with Carol Burnett, and it was love at first song. "The most exciting night of my entire existence was when we opened on Nov. 21 (1999)," he says. These days, Pinchot is still acting, mostly in theater and independent films, such as the 2002 feature comedy Winning Girls Through Psychic Mind Control. And as for his love of musical theater, he says, "I'd like to do it until I have meat sagging off the bones."