Patrick Cherry

Cherry was born in the small Italian immigrant town of Emporium, Pennsylvania in 1951. He weighed only 1 pound 2 ounces at birth due to the after effects of the atomic bombing in Hiroshima. His father, a naval survivor of the USS Indianapolis, was in Hiroshima at the time. As a result of his Cerebral Palsy he spent his high school years in a Shriners hospital but managed to graduate with honors excelling in literature. After getting his broadcasting license he was hired by a local radio station as a disc jockey for a few years. He then moved to Daytona where he ran the sound equipment for a theater company there. Six months later he took his first acting class, which eventually led to him being a full time acting teacher. Pat studied under Kenny Walker, the Dean of Fine Arts at Daytona Community College. He later received a Bachelor of Arts in Theater at the University of South Florida in 1980. He then became affiliated with the actor Charles Nelson Reilly who sent him to the Uta Hagen HB Studios in New York City to study and substitute teach there. When both of his parents died within 14 days of each other he moved back to Pennsylvania. In the same time frame his closest friend since childhood drowned, and he made the decision to bury himself in his acting. He returned to Tampa, Florida where he opened his own studio, teaching acting for the camera. A short time later he received a call from Charles Nelson Reilly asking him to come to Los Angeles and assist him in auditioning actors for Reilly's Chandler Studio. After four years of Reilly's associate teacher of Acting Technique and Scene Study he then decided it was time to take his experience and return to Florida. Because of all of his film and theater work, along with his teaching credentials, Pat decided that the time was right to open his own studio, teaching 'on camera techniques' in Tampa. He appeared in several plays in the Tampa area and although very successful there, he decided to move to Orlando as a result of several auditions and many more opportunities to work in motion pictures. He also felt that Orlando had a much larger market to teach acting for film. Also with Ann Jillian in Our Son, the Matchmaker (1996) and Arliss Howard in Somebody Has to Shoot the Picture (1990). He played opposite Dedee Pfeiffer in King's Ransom (1993). In 2000 he worked on Jeepers Creepers (2001). He was featured as a Deputy Sheriff in Small Town Conspiracy (2002) along with Jeannetta Arnette. Cherry attributes much of his success to casting director Melvin Johnson, CSA, who has placed him in a number of motion pictures filmed in Florida. Cherry is currently teaching 'on camera acting techniques' at Zoe's and Company in Maitland. He also teaches 'audition technique for the camera', 'beginning acting', 'beginning camera technique' and 'advanced camera technique'. He is in the process of teaching seminars all over Florida about acting and auditioning for the camera and is finalizing a book he has written - 'What Just Happened?' - about auditioning for motion pictures.