Biography

Kathryn Hardy Bernal studied screen acting for film and television at the Lionel Long Conservatory Actors’ Studio, Chippendale, Sydney, in the late 1980s, under the renowned Australian actor, Lionel Long (O.A.M.). Organised by Long, and with a group from the studio, she travelled to Los Angeles on an internship, hosted by the Hollywood casting director, Joe Scully, gaining knowledge and extra experience at leading film and television studios and sets, including scene shoots for Columbo Cries Wolf (1990). There, she undertook acting and script-reading workshops run by Tracey Roberts at the Tracey Roberts Actors’ Studio, and Ron Burrus at The Art of Acting Studio, which incorporated live audience, blind improvisation stage performances. After returning to Sydney, she participated in further script-reading and stage and screen acting workshops by Maura Fay and Malcolm Frawley. More recently, she has attended a breakout acting and voice session by Lara Macgregor in Auckland, New Zealand. As a young child, her training began in Australia with Joy Hruby at the Children's Performance Agency, leading to her participation in the opening sequence for the television show, The Yellow House (1974).

Kathryn Hardy Bernal was raised in Bondi Junction, Sydney, Australia. Her father was a secondary school teacher of French, German, Latin, English and History, and her mother was a school administrator. Kathryn also has a background in education, and is known as an art and culture historian, researcher and publisher, on intersections between fashion, film, costume, subculture, art, design, history and society. Her formal qualifications include a Ph.D., Doctor of Philosophy in Visual and Material Culture, Master of Philosophy in Art and Design Theory with First-class Honours, and Bachelor of Art Theory with Distinction Honours in Art History.

From the 1990s, she turned her pursuits towards her academic endeavours, whereby the stage was substituted by the podium, as a Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) at leading universities in Australia and New Zealand, specialising in and teaching critical and contextual fashion studies, costume design, and fashion in film theory. After a long, successful academic career, she has refocussed on her first love of acting.
- IMDb mini biography by: Kathryn Hardy Bernal