Bunny Levine
- Actress
Bunny Levine has had a passion for entertaining from her earliest
memory. At the age of two, she subjected all her relatives to her
rendition of the song "When I Grow Too Old to Dream" at every possible
opportunity. Playing with her sister and friends in pre-school days,
her favorite game was a simulation of the performances of the current
Hollywood stars, replete with screams and fainting, in the mode of the
times. Her greatest regret was that she, unlike her contemporary
Shirley Temple, had not been discovered
in dance class. By third grade she wrote, directed and starred in the
epic, "Debbie's Diary." A year or so later, with increased maturity,
she limited her contributions to no more than two of the three
elements. All through elementary school and high school, she played
either the lead or a character role in school and local productions.
Transferring colleges on her marriage after sophomore year made her
rethink the wisdom of a short, young, character woman gaining fame and
fortune in the field, so she switched majors from Theater Arts, but
continued to act, and to work on the college radio station. Already
pregnant upon graduation, she put her acting aspirations on the back
burner for 25 years, working primarily as a school librarian, to help
her underpaid college professor husband raise their three children.
Storytelling and book talks helped fill her performing aspirations.
Foolishly, she would not participate in community theater, thinking of
herself as too much of a professional. Upon early retirement, she began
taking acting classes, going on auditions, and gradually immersing
herself totally in the fabulous, mad world of acting. Soon she was a
member of all the unions and began booking commercials, roles on soaps
and episodics, as well as films. Upon her beloved husband, Bernie's,
death, she moved from the New York area to the LA market, and continued
studying, booking, and striving. Among her credits are
Law & Order (1990),
The Jimmy Show (2001),
Everybody Loves Raymond (1996),
_Gilmore Girls_, the soon-to-be-released
Charles Busch film, and
Las Vegas (2003). She considers
herself the most energetic and agile septuagenarian in the field and
the oldest living student (her philosophy being that you can never stop
learning and exercising the acting muscle).