A lifelong cineaste and third-generation monster maker, Barney Burman was quite literally raised in and around the world of movies, acting and special make-up effects.

At the age of 14, he took his first acting class and, at the same time, started officially working in his father, Tom Burman’s, make-up fx studio. As a young adult, Barney split his time designing and creating monsters and dead people as well as continuing to pursue an acting career. He accepted bit parts in films he was doing make-up for, such as From a Whisper to a Scream, Circuitry Man and Adam Simon’s Brain Dead, to name a few.

In the early 1990’s, feeling frustrated with career stagnation, Barney started producing plays and actor’s showcases for he and his friends to star in, including Eugene Ionesco’s Rhinoceros, for which he received very favorable reviews. He credits this, in part, to his having studied with the great acting teacher, Sanford Meisner.

But in the latter half of that decade, marriage, a newborn son, a union card and the promise of a creative outlet, lead Barney to focus on the art of make-up fx. He honed his skills working for some of the greatest make-up artists in the business on shows like Body Snatchers, Powder, The X-Files, Buffy: The Vampire Slayer, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Planet of the Apes, Pearl Harbor, Men in Black 2, The Ring, Master and Commander: Far Side of the World, and many more).

In 2004, Barney opened his own make-up fx studio, creating characters for such films as Mission: Impossible III, Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny, Blades of Glory and Camille, starring James Franco and Sienna Miller. In 2008, he was hired to co-design the make-up for Tom Cruise in the summer blockbuster Tropic Thunder.

His artistic skills and personal esthetic proved rewarding when, in 2010, Barney was honored with an Academy Award for his work in JJ Abrams's reboot of Star Trek.

Most recently Barney found adventure traipsing around the country turning Sacha Baron Coen into 6 different characters for his latest and most scandalous project Who is America.

And through it all, Barney the cineaste – having dreams of being an actor since childhood, and being a secret writer for the past 25 years – longed to play a bigger role as a filmmaker.

Barney’s feature film directorial debut, Wild Boar is finished and expected out early in 2019.