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Bart the Bear

Bart the Bear was a screen performer whose presence could never be separated from his extraordinary physical scale. A Kodiak bear who grew to 9 feet 7.5 inches tall and weighed 1,500 pounds as an adult, he could dominate a shot simply by entering it. His career, though, was built on more than size: the roles he took on required careful training, precise behavior and an unusual degree of trust between animal, trainers and filmmakers. Born at the Baltimore Zoo on January 19, 1977, Bart made his film debut in Windwalker in 1981. His greatest recognition came with Jean-Jacques Annaud’s The Bear, the 1988 French film in which he played an adult grizzly who befriends an orphaned cub and confronts hunters. Annaud auditioned 50 bear actors from around the world before choosing him. Trained by Seus, Bart learned new routines for the production, including accepting the unrelated cub who appeared alongside him despite his natural aversion to an unfamiliar bear. The Bear became a substantial international success, earning more than $31 million in the United States and over $100 million worldwide. It also reportedly inspired a campaign for Bart to receive an Oscar nomination, although animal actors were not eligible for Academy Awards. Bart later worked with Anthony Hopkins in both Legends of the Fall and The Edge. Lynne Seus recalled that Hopkins acknowledged and respected Bart like a fellow actor, spending hours observing and admiring him. Reviewing The Edge, critic Kenneth Turan called Bart’s work “the capstone of an illustrious career” and “a milestone in ursine acting.” In 1998, Bart appeared at the 70th Academy Awards during a salute to animal actors, presenting an envelope to Mike Myers onstage. It was a fitting public moment for an animal actor whose imposing screen presence was matched by the demanding, carefully trained performances behind it.