Ron Bottitta

Ron is the second most famous actor to come from Claygate, England. The most famous is still currently Terry Jones, and third place is still held by a beagle named "Toby" that had a recurring on a BBC sit-com called To the Manor Born (1979) in the '70s. He moved to the U.S. in 1979 to avoid conviction on a string of unjustified speeding tickets, and to study History at U.C. Berkeley. Reluctant to start repaying student loans, he leaped at the opportunity to go to the M.F.A. Acting program at N.Y.U., spending three precious years of his life with such neurotic geniuses as Rob LaBelle, Augusta Allen-Jones, Marcia Gay Harden, Bill Mondy, Ami Brabson, Teagle F. Bougere, and Eliza Foss. He has appeared in over 100 plays Off-Broadway, regionally, in converted Circle K stores, and in Los Angeles, playing an assortment of characters from Nazis to lyrical guys in doublets, IRA rebels, pompous hotel detectives, cowboy politicians and lots of guys with anger issues or terminal illnesses. In 2006 he portrayed Anton Chekhov in "Chekhov and Maria" at the Odyssey Theatre in Los Angeles, in a production that moved to the Barrow Group Theatre in NYC in July of 2006. The New York Times called Ron's performance "outstanding and complex" and he agreed. In November Chekhov and Maria (2007), starring Ron and Gillian Brashear made it onto film, directed by the legendary Eric Till, for a spring 2008 release. It finally made it to PBS in March of 2012, after showing on TV in several European countries, and making its way around the festival circuit, winning award after award, though astonishingly and possibly because of widescale corruption in the judging process, none for his acting. In 2008 he joined L.A.'s Rogue Machine Theatre to play the sympathetic and psychopathic killer "Leftie" in the world premiere of "Razorback", by John Pollono, a performance the L.A Times, for a very nominal fee, called "vivid and intriguing", Variety called "compelling" after only a few threatening phone calls, and the L.A. Weekly critic hailed as "terrific" and "very rich", after less than a week as a guest in Ron's windowless basement. He was again spotted at Rogue Machine in 2009 as the "charismatically creepy" Hector Zook in the West Coast premiere of Lisa Dillman's "Half of Plenty", and in 2010 at The Odyssey Theatre as the "psychotic" and "ghoulish" waiter Eisenring in the critically acclaimed revival of "The Arsonists" by Max Frisch. Ron returned to Rogue Machine at the end of 2010 to appear in 6 months of sold-out performances of Cormac McCarthy's "The Sunset Limited", with Tucker Smallwood, in a production nominated for "Best Two-Person Play" by The L.A. Weekly. You may have been one of the 25,000 people that saw him last summer as Russian entrepreneur Max Tarasov, at The Geffen Playhouse, in the West Coast premiere of Tracy Letts' "Superior Donuts", alongside Gary Cole and Edi Gathegi. One print reviewer said that he was "so good, and so different from his character in "The Sunset Limited", another noted that he "only recognized him on the way home after reading his bio in the programme - what greater praise for an actor?", one called him "brusque", another "irrepressible", and yet another compared him to "an unwanted disease". Praise indeed. Since then he's played a penguin in the world premiere of Henry Murray's Ovation Award-nominated "Monkey Adored" at Rogue, Carr Gomm in Pomerance's "The Elephant Man" at L.A.'s Theater 68, and as various characters in The Odyssey's LA Weekly Award nominated "Theatre in the Dark". Ron continued at The Odyssey as "Jackie Farrell", the vice-lord with a heart of stone, in the American Premiere of "Rank" and continued to shill for corporations by appearing as a London cabbie in an NBA/Cisco spot, as "Farnsworth" the highly motivated chauffer in the "Lost Footage" Grey Poupon commercial, and as a reluctant golfer through the ages, in a Nike golf ball ad. And yes, he is that guy in the Geico "medieval torture chamber" commercial. He was last seen on stage in "The Unexpected Man" at the Two Roads Theater with the lovely Sasha Higgins and prior to that, wearing speedos in Enda Walsh's "Penelope" at Rogue Machine, directed once again by John Perrin Flynn. Next up is Greg Kalleres "Honky", directed by Gregg Daniel at Rogue Machine, also starring Burl Moseley, Inger Tudor, Bruce Nozick, Tasha Ames, James Liebman, Matthew Hancock, and Christian Henley. He's the regular host of Rogue Machine Theatre's monthly spoken-word series: "Rant and Rave", now in its eighth year. Ron's been riding motorcycles since 1975 (legally since 1977), has clocked over a million miles, has been a BMWMOA member since 1984, and is a proud member of the Iron Butt Association, having once ridden his R1100RT from L.A. to Seattle in 17 rain-soaked hours. He's also a pilot working extremely methodically on his instrument rating. He owns and operates Canyon Flyer Inc., a motorcycle messenger service in Los Angeles. Somehow he's made the time to spawn two smart-alecky kids, Danny (boy, b. 1995) and Sasha (girl, b. 1997), both of whom mean nearly as much to him as his career.