Use real-life substitutions for the people and emotions you act with on film…..

These basic premises,
common to all the various acting methods and techniques, are among the most difficult for actors because most start their acting when they are young,   having limited life experience and people-substitutions with which to infuse their work.  A wealth of life experience and an unusually varied and successful forty years of adult professional and personal growth gave Bern an edge in his acting re-birth.

Bern grew up in New York City’s Chinatown, the only non-Asian in many of his elementary school classes, while his family lived in the nearby Smith Housing Project.  “This was not the Lower Eastside of many other New York actors’ backgrounds,” Bern points out. “This was Chinatown, below the Lower Eastside and a life of street survival until the family escaped to Long Island” where Bern attended South High School in Valley Stream, NY.  It was there he was struck by the sense he loved acting and was adept at its nuances.  In school plays, he realized he could impact audiences with his sense of timing and character analysis.

He attended Adelphi University on a full scholarship for combined academic and school activity excellence wherein his activity was acting rather than football which he played and loved but was never going to pay for college.  He was fortunate to be at a college near enough to NYC to attend auditions and even luckier to land NYC stage roles while still in college.  After graduation, he pursued acting on a full-time basis and was successful on regional and NYC stages until he left the stage and went into education in his mid-twenties to more fully participate as a parent of two children.

During his brief several years as a young stage actor, there were many highlights, including his work with Mercedes Reuhl, Samuel L. Jackson, Paul Price, Sesame Street, ZOOM, Rupert Holmes, Marsha Rodd, Jon Davidson, Jeri Jon, Baruch Lumet, David Debin, Renee Lippin, Twyla Tharpe and many others.  These experiences were put on hold while Bern established himself as an outstanding English teacher in NYC’s Harlem and eventually a high school principal in Middletown, NY of widespread note for his ability to turn failing schools into schools of excellence. 

While an educator, Bern also served as a consultant to National Geographic, WNET, and dozens of school districts, especially after he wrote several college textbooks in the field of education which brought him national prominence as an educational consultant.  For a period of time, he left public education and worked as an educational consultant and university professor in education, before returning to public education as a high ranking member of the NYC Chancellor’s Office where he was Director of Training for the entire NYC school system, overseeing a staff of more than 300 teacher trainers and managers.

In 2003, Bern returned to acting by studying two semesters of Advanced Acting for the Camera with Penny Templeton in her NYC studios and another with Ruth Nerkin at the School for Film and TV in NYC.  “It was great being the age of all the other students’ parents and getting to play all the age-appropriate roles being their parents or employers or shrinks or lawyers.”  The most difficult aspect of returning to acting via classes, according to Bern,  was “playing romantic and even sexual scenes with women the age of my own children or even younger…sometimes seemed a bit perverted but I got over it when I saw it didn’t bother them and they didn’t think I was a dirty old man”

Bern is poised for a breakthrough as one of films’ acting seniors but with the energy, vigor and even athleticism of a well-trained sportsman.  Directors love working with him because, as one well-known director recently described, “Bern brings an energy to the set that is uncommon among his age-peers because he’s not burned out like most guys his age who have been acting for thirty years, and he isn’t upset that he’s not DeNiro or Pacino the way his age-peers feel.” 

As acting often includes print ad modeling, you can also see Bern in print ads, most notably as the Virgin Cellular Rabbi, a recent campaign that ran several months in Rolling Stone, Details, VIBE and other national magazines.  “As a result of that ad,” Bern points out, “I got small rabbi roles in Nicholas Cage’s Lord of War and Michael Keaton’s Game Six, both due out in Spring of ’05.”

In recent years, Bern has also branched out into two other areas, photography and the Amazon Rainforest.  He is an accomplished professional photographer with shows up in galleries throughout New York, currently at the Madrigal Gallery in Nyack, NY.  And, he leads an annual trip into Brazil’s Amazon Rainforest, having taken 15 people into the jungle six times in the past five years.

Bern has what director’s call “a plastic face” that can do many things others can’t and many characters with amazing depth and reality.  Whether its on the small screen in a small role on Third Watch or a major role on the giant screen, “I am overjoyed with my immediate success and overwhelmed by Directors’ response to me in such rapid order.”  It is just this excitement and thankful pleasure, in concert with his acting talent, that will bring Bern’s name to the fore during the coming months and years.