Bronson Pinchot

Bronson Alcott Pinchot is an American actor born in New York City on May 20, 1959, who has worked across film, television, theater, and audiobook narration. He appeared on Broadway between 1990 and 2004, starring in Putting It Together, Zoya's Apartment, and Stones in His Pockets, and also appearing in the play Sly Fox.

Pinchot grew up with his mother Rosina, two brothers, and a sister. His father, a bookbinder born in New York and raised in Paris, abandoned the family, leaving them in poverty. His paternal grandparents were Russian immigrants who had settled in France after the Russian Revolution, and upon returning to the United States, his father changed the family surname from Poncharavsky to Pinchot. When Pinchot was two and a half years old, the family relocated to South Pasadena, California, where he attended South Pasadena High School, graduating at the top of his class. His academic performance earned him a full scholarship to Yale University, where he lived at Morse College and majored in theater studies, graduating with honors. A casting director discovered him after college, leading to his film debut in Risky Business in 1983.

His screen career expanded quickly through the 1980s and 1990s. He appeared in Beverly Hills Cop in 1984, After Hours in 1985, True Romance in 1993, Beverly Hills Cop III in 1994, Stephen King's The Langoliers in 1995, Courage Under Fire in 1996, It's My Party in 1996, and The First Wives Club in 1996. He returned to the Beverly Hills Cop franchise in Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F in 2024. Before landing his most prominent television role, Pinchot played Dennis Kemper in the short-lived NBC sitcom Sara. He was also hired to replace Fisher Stevens as Ben Jabituya in the 1986 film Short Circuit but left the production to begin work on Perfect Strangers, after which Stevens was rehired.

Beginning in 1986, Pinchot played Balki Bartokomous on the ABC sitcom Perfect Strangers, a role he held for eight seasons until filming concluded in September 1992, with the final condensed season airing in mid-1993. Following the show's end, he starred in the CBS sitcom The Trouble with Larry, which premiered in August 1993 but was canceled after three weeks due to poor ratings and reviews. Perfect Strangers producers Tom Miller and Bob Boyett subsequently cast him in two additional sitcoms: Step by Step, where he played French hairdresser Jean-Luc Rieupeyroux in early 1997, and Meego later that year, in which he played an alien who had crash-landed on Earth. He also appeared in Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman. In 2018, he joined the Netflix series Chilling Adventures of Sabrina as George Hawthorne, the villainous, puritanical principal of Baxter High, whose character regularly clashes with Sabrina Spellman and her friends.

On February 12, 2012, Pinchot starred in The Bronson Pinchot Project, a home restoration series on the DIY Network centered on his practice of restoring old homes using salvaged materials. His interest in historic properties led him to spend considerable time in Harford, Pennsylvania, beginning in 1999, where he purchased six properties in the town of approximately 1,300 residents with the goal of reviving its nineteenth-century aesthetic, including a circa 1839 mansion originally built by Joab Tyler. In 2015, he filed for Chapter 13 bankruptcy, listing liabilities between $100,000 and $500,000, and his Harford properties were subsequently put up for sale.

Pinchot has also built a substantial career as an audiobook narrator, accumulating more than 400 recordings as of 2024. Between 2009 and 2014 alone, he narrated over 100 audiobooks. In 2008, he read the audio version of Chip Kidd's The Learners, and in 2010 he narrated Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes and Blood Oath, as well as several Patricia Highsmith stories for Blackstone Audio, including Strangers on a Train. He also narrated Christopher Healy's children's series The Hero's Guide. Audible.com named him its 2010 Narrator of the Year, and AudioFile magazine recognized him as Best Voice in Fiction and Classics for his 2010 readings of Flannery O'Connor's Everything That Rises Must Converge, Matterhorn, and David Vann's Caribou Island.