Bronson Pinchot was born on May 20, 1959.
As of May 17, 2021, he is 61 years old.
Pinchot was born in New York City to a bookbinder named Henry (Russian descent) and a typist named Rosina (Italian descent).
The family moved to Southern California while Bronson was still a child, and he grew up in those sunny climes. Eventually, after a stellar academic career in high school (valedictorian!), Pinchot attended Yale on a scholarship and got serious about theater.
His passion and efforts weren’t lost on others, as a Hollywood casting director “discovered” him on the college stage and signed him for a role in Risky Business.
Pinchot landed parts in several films through the mid-1980s, but it was the role of Balki Bartokomous in ABC’s Perfect Strangers that made the actor a household face and name across America.
Starring opposite Mark Linn-Baker, Pinchot turned to his eastern European roots to bring Balki to life as an unexpected drop-in on Cousin Larry Appleton (Baker) in Chicago, by way of “Mypos.”
The show was a ratings success and ran from 1986 to 1993, after which Pinchot nabbed the starring role in another sitcom, CBS’s The Trouble with Larry. The new series flopped after a few weeks, but Pinchot continued to rack up appearances on both television and in the movies.
As of early 2021, Pinchot had landed more than 30 film roles and picked up nearly 50 acting credits on the small screen. He has also provided the voice for more than 100 audio books, and he counts several animated works among his numerous acting credits.
That voice work has made “Cousin Balki” a familiar part of many people’s lives, even if they don’t remember his iconic 1980s role (or roles) at all. For his voice work, Audible.com named Pinchot as their 2010 Narrator of the Year right at the birth of the modern audiobook boom.
Pinchot has also won several other awards for his narration work.
