| Bronson Pinchot  AKA Bronson Alcott Pinchot
Born: 20-May-1959
Birthplace: New York City
Gender: Male
Race or Ethnicity: White
Sexual orientation: Straight
Occupation: Actor Nationality: United States
Executive summary: Balki on Perfect Strangers Bronson Pinchot is a comic actor best known for playing foreigners or oddballs. On the long-running sitcom Perfect Strangers, he played Balki Bartokomous, the naïve shepherd from Mypos who immigrated to America.
Pinchot's father was a drunk who often beat his wife and children. Pinchot vividly remembers one Christmas when his father "kicked the presents around the house like soccer balls and beat my mother with a telephone cord". After his father abandoned the family, Pinchot was raised by his working mother, and earned a scholarship to Yale, where he studied drama. He made his film debut as one of the kids in Risky Business with Tom Cruise, and had memorable supporting roles as the gay gallery salesman "Serge" in Beverly Hills Cop, the office trainee in Martin Scorsese's After Hours, and the cocaine connection in True Romance.
Since Perfect Strangers, Pinchot has reappeared in several failed sitcoms and increasingly obscure films. His series work includes The Trouble With Larry, where he played a honeymooning man kidnapped by baboons; and Meego, where he portrayed a space alien working as a nanny. He also played a very French hairdresser on Step By Step near the end of that show's long run, and appeared in the 2005 edition of Surreal Life. On Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, Pinchot appeared twice as The Prankster, a silly villain from DC's comic books. His recent films include such disasters as Slappy and the Stinkers with B. D. Wong, and Second Best with Joe Pantoliano. Pinchot played Stan Laurel in The All New Adventures of Laurel & Hardy: For Love or Mummy.
He often works on stage, where his credits have been more impressive, including Shakespeare's Henry V with Liev Schreiber, Stephen Sondheim's Putting It Together with Carol Burnett, and Larry Gelbart's Sly Fox with Richard Dreyfuss. In his biography for Playbill, Pinchot wrote that his "performance as a child murderer in Stephen King's The Langoliers has its own rotunda in the Smithsonian's new Wing for Comic Actors With Something to Prove."
Pinchot is often reported to have been a founder of The International Wizard of Oz Club, for fans of L. Frank Baum's books and the movies based on the books. The club began two years before Pinchot was born, but he is a long-time member, and once drew an illustration that was included in the club's annual calendar. He collects classical Greek art.
Father: Henry Poncharavsky (bookbinder worker, abandoned family in 1961)
Mother: Rosina Poncharavsky (office worker)
Girlfriend: Marcy Walker (actress, The Guiding Light, b. 1961, briefly engaged 1984-85)
Girlfriend: Amy Heckerling (dated and briefly engaged 1993-97)
High School: South Pasadena High School, Pasadena, CA (1977)
University: BA Drama, Yale University (1981)
Freemasonry Lodge #445 in Harford, PA Dec-2002
Endorsement of Target 1998
Russian Ancestry Paternal
TELEVISION
The Surreal Life Himself
Perfect Strangers Balki Bartokomous (1986-1993)
Step by Step Jean-Luc Rieupeyroux (1997)
Meego Meego (1997)
FILMOGRAPHY AS ACTOR
Second Best (16-Jan-2004)
Lady and the Tramp II: Scamp's Adventure (18-Feb-2001) [VOICE]
The All New Adventures of Laurel & Hardy in "For Love or Mummy" (31-Aug-1999)
Beach Movie (25-Nov-1998)
Quest for Camelot (15-May-1998) [VOICE]
Slappy and the Stinkers (23-Jan-1998)
The First Wives Club (20-Sep-1996)
Courage Under Fire (12-Jul-1996)
It's My Party (11-Jan-1996)
The Langoliers (14-May-1995)
Beverly Hills Cop III (25-May-1994)
True Romance (10-Sep-1993)
Blame It on the Bellboy (6-Mar-1992)
Second Sight (3-Nov-1989)
After Hours (13-Sep-1985)
The Flamingo Kid (21-Dec-1984)
Beverly Hills Cop (5-Dec-1984)
Bachelor Party (29-Jun-1984)
Risky Business (5-Aug-1983)
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