Chris Bruno

Christopher Malcolm Bruno was born in New Haven, Connecticut. He grew up in the small town of Milford, Connecticut, with his now-deceased mother, Nancy Mendillo, but also spent a substantial amount of time with his father, Scott Bruno, on Manhattan's Upper West Side. He developed an appreciation for the arts but had no intention of pursuing it as a career. He attended college in Vermont, where he skied on the ski team while studying psychology. During his sophomore year, he was temporarily sidelined by an injury, so he decided to try something different. He auditioned for a play, Machiavelli's "The Mandrake," and was cast as the lead. Having discovered a new passion for the arts, Bruno transferred to Stony Brook University, where he changed his major to theater. He was also a walk-on starting pitcher for their baseball team. His fastball was clocked at 90 miles per hour and he finished with a 6-0 record his senior year and broke three school records for strikeouts, wins, and games pitched. Those records were later broken by the Minnesota Twins' perennial all-star Joe Nathan. After college, Chris moved to New York full-time and, after several bartending jobs, he landed a two-year contract on NBC's Another World (1964). During his first year on the show, Chris was nominated for a Soap Opera Digest Award as "Outstanding Newcomer." A few years later, he was cast on All My Children (1970) as Michael Delaney, a gay school teacher who loses his job to social prejudice. The writers won an Emmy that year for his groundbreaking storyline. He relocated to Los Angeles to move his career to the next level. There, he performed stand-up comedy at The Improv and was discovered by an exec at Warner Bros. and subsequently was cast on Suddenly Susan (1996), The Nanny (1993), Jesse (1998), and in a recurring role on Alan Ball's series, Oh Grow Up (2006). In 1998, Chris and his brother, Dylan Bruno, were cast in Lorenzo Carcaterra's dark and gritty New York cop show "The Force" for The WB. He then was cast as Walt Bannerman in Stephen King's The Dead Zone (2002), which ran for six seasons on the USA Network. In the summer of 2004, he produced and starred in the feature film Last of the Romantics (2007), again working alongside his brother. During his hiatus from The Dead Zone (2002), he completed work on the feature film The World's Fastest Indian (2005), opposite Sir Anthony Hopkins. During the next-to-last season of The Dead Zone (2002), he was able to exercise his directing skills as he helmed an episode entitled Independence Day (2006), which included an appearance by his brother, Dylan Bruno. They dedicated this episode to the memory of their mother, Nancy Mendillo Bruno, who had died from breast cancer earlier that year. After the show was canceled, he landed recurring television roles on Numb3rs (2005) and Prison Break (2005), and later appeared in the movie Prison Break: The Final Break (2009). He was the male lead in The Cell 2 (2009). He had a long run doing guest-starring roles on Castle (2009), Southland (2009), NCIS (2003), and NCIS: Los Angeles (2009). In 2013, he teamed up with his cousin, Vohn Regensburger, to produce and star in the feature film, A Remarkable Life (2016), in which he and Dylan played brothers for the first time. Upon wrapping that, he immediately went to work on Lifetime's Sorority Surrogate (2014), and was a recurring character on ABC's Family Tools (2013) as the husband of Leah Remini's character. In 2013, he joined the cast of ABC Family's The Fosters (2013) as Adam, and subsequently played Danny on MTV''s Awkward. (2011). On December 8, 2017, he made his professional debut as an MMA fighter.