Biography
Randall Berger grew up in Santa Barbara, California, studying drama, vocal and instrumental music. He performed in school, rep and summer stock productions since age 13, mainly musical comedies. From there he did a lot of work with local theatre companies, namely Youth Theatre Productions (1967-1972) and Alechama Productions (1972).
In 1973, wanderlust got the better of him and he migrated to Australia by himself at age 19 ‘on a lark’ to follow close childhood chum, actor Lance Strauss (“Elton Jack”, “Chucky”) across the Pacific Ocean!
Following the course set in his early teens, Randal went into professional theatre, namely musical theatre in original Australian casts of Broadway and West End shows, as well as broadening into more dramatic roles. He married drama educator Helen Sandercoe in 1977 and settled in Melbourne with three cheeky and creative adult daughters, Sarah, Rebekah and Matilda.
Randall began a parallel career as a professional, award-winning copywriter and freelance scriptwriter in radio, multimedia and advertising, as well as taking extras work and small roles in local TV productions. In 1983, the first film role of note was as a reporter in the film “Phar Lap”. As a ‘portly’ character actor and an American expat, roles were few and far between at the time.
While only doing a couple of roles a year, Randall still had the opportunity to share some celluloid chemistry with a lot of incredible people, notably James Coburn, Reb Brown, Anthony Hopkins, Ron Leibman, Heather Thomas, Joe Bottoms (an old Santa Barbara chum), Barry Bostwick, John Savage, Steven Berkoff, Art Malik, Noah Taylor, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Laura Brannigan, Peter Graves, Paul Hogan, Cuban Gooding Jr and so on, not to mention the amazing rage of directors and DOPs.
Randall might have finally come out of the closet as a screenwriter but has fond memories of his highest profile role, which was as as violinist Isaac Stern in the Geoffrey Rush classic “Shine” (1996).