Bronson Pinchot

Bronson Alcott Pinchot (; born May 20, 1959) is an American actor. He is best known for playing Balki Bartokomous on the ABC sitcom Perfect Strangers (1986–93). He also performed in films, such as Risky Business (1983), Beverly Hills Cop (1984), After Hours (1985), True Romance (1993), Beverly Hills Cop III (1994), Stephen King's The Langoliers (1995), It's My Party (1996), Courage Under Fire (1996) and The First Wives Club (1996), and in television series, such as Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, Meego and Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. In 2012, he starred in his own reality series, The Bronson Pinchot Project on the DIY Network. Pinchot has worked extensively as an audiobook narrator, with over 100 recordings as of 2014. AudioFile magazine recognized him as Best Voice in Fiction & Classics for his 2010 renderings of Flannery O'Connor's Everything That Rises Must Converge (1965), Karl Marlantes's Matterhorn: A Novel of the Vietnam War (2009) and David Vann's Caribou Island (2011). Early life Pinchot was born in New York City. His mother, Rosina, was a typist and house cleaner, while his father was a bookbinder, born in New York and raised in Paris. Pinchot's paternal grandparents were from Russia and settled in France following the Russian Revolution. Upon returning to the United States, Pinchot's father changed his surname from Poncharavsky to "Pinchot". When Pinchot was two and a half, his family moved to South Pasadena, California. He graduated at the top of his class from South Pasadena High School and earned a full scholarship to Yale University. There, he resided at Morse College and intended to study fine arts, but instead majored in theater studies, graduating with honors.