Biography for
Bart the Bear (I) More at IMDbPro »

Date of Birth

10 January 1977, Baltimore, Maryland, USA

Date of Death

10 May 2000, Park City, Utah, USA (cancer)

Height

9' 6" (2.90 m)

Mini Biography

Bart the Bear is perhaps one of Hollywood's most remarkable animal stars. The Alaskan brown bear was born in 1977 and was brought in by Utah animal trainer Doug Seus. Bart's mother was a bear who was also in films like "Grizzly" and "Day of the Animals". Bart started to train in acting in 1980 and grew to 9 feet tall, the average for brown bears.

Bart has starred in "The Great Outdoors", "On Deadly Ground" and "The Edge". Bart's co-stars included John Candy, Dan Aykroyd, Steven Seagal, Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin, all of whom were very impressed with how well a bear could be trained to act, and enjoyed the experience of working with animals. Sadly, Bart died in 2000 of cancer at the age of 23 during filming of Animal Planet's "Growing Up Grizzly". His namesake is Little Bart. Little Bart's sister is named Honey Bump. Their mother was killed and Doug and Lynne Seus took them in.

Doug and Lynne Seus started the Vital Ground Foundation in honor of Bart, who was the organization's 1st ambassador. The organization was begun to set up lands to preserve the great grizzlies and other wildlife.

IMDb Mini Biography By: Anonymous

Trivia

Weighed over 1,700 pounds as an adult.

Bart died during the filming of the documentary Growing Up Grizzly (2001) (TV) which was presented by Brad Pitt - who plays Tristan Ludlow in Legends of the Fall (1994), the character that is killed by Bart at the end of the film.

Little Bart the Bear who had a cameo at the end of Dr. Dolittle 2 (2001) was named after Bart.

Bart was from the "Kodiak Bear" subspecies from the island on coastal Alaska, where many bears grow to be enormous. However, he frequently played inland Brown Bears, among which it is very rare to attain a size nearly as large as was Bart's.

Most of the characters he played were simply named "The Bear". The only exceptions were, The Great Outdoors (1988) when he played "The Bald Bear" and The Bear (1988) when he played "The Kodiak Bear". Ironically, The Bear (1988) translates to "The Bear".