Christopher Bernau

Christopher Bernau, born Herbert Augustine Bernau on June 2, 1940, in Santa Barbara, California, was an American actor whose career spanned stage, television, and soap opera. His father, Herbert Bernau, worked as a physiotherapist, and his mother, Emma Bernau (née Vercellino), was a homemaker. From an early age Bernau demonstrated an affinity for performance, regularly taking part in high school theatrical productions.

Bernau pursued formal training in the drama department at the University of California before making an early professional mark with the New York Shakespeare Festival in a 1962 production of Antony and Cleopatra, a role he continued through 1964. He subsequently toured nationally in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and performed at Canada's Stratford Festival. Those stage credentials positioned him for a Broadway career that ran from 1967 to 1975, during which he appeared in Saint Joan, The Jockey Club Stakes, Sweet Bird of Youth, and Galileo.

On television, Bernau appeared in a story arc on the daytime serial Dark Shadows in 1969 and 1970, portraying Philip Todd. His most prominent screen role came when he was cast as Alan Spaulding on Guiding Light, becoming the first actor to play the character. He originated the role in 1977 and held it until 1984, then returned from 1986 through 1988. Alan Spaulding was written as a villainous and habitual womanizer, a contrast to Bernau himself, who was widely known among colleagues and within the soap press to be gay, making him one of the few openly gay actors working in daytime television at the time.

Bernau was diagnosed with HIV and continued working on Guiding Light until the summer of 1988, when his deteriorating health made it impossible to report to work. His role was subsequently recast with Daniel Pilon. He died on June 14, 1989, of a heart attack resulting from complications of AIDS at St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital in New York City, at the age of 49. His AIDS diagnosis was initially kept private, and his death certificate listed natural causes. Bernau is buried at Santa Barbara Cemetery.