Former Warsaw Resident's Show Business Career Heats Up

LOS ANGELES - If you watch "The Practice" at 10 p.m. Sunday on ABC, you'll catch a former Warsaw resident who just may steal the show.

Bernard White lived with his family in Warsaw from 1960 to 1966 and attended Sacred Heart Catholic School.

On Sunday's episode of "The Practice," he will portray a Pakistani-American named "Imaad Sharif" who is accused of conspiring to kill his wife.

"It's a politically controversial episode and a really good role," White said Thursday morning in a telephone interview from his Los Angeles home.

According to White, the show's executive producer told him the episode is probably the strongest episode of the season due to White's portrayal of Sharif.

White's interest in show business began when he was young. He said he became interested in acting through his sister.

"My sister, Ivy, who also went to Warsaw High School, I saw her in a play at the old Warsaw High School in the early '60s. That did something to me," he said.

Ivy then attended Indiana State University, and White saw her in plays there, too. The family moved to Detroit when White was in third grade and he eventually went to college at Michigan State, he said, to study the performing arts. That led him to Los Angeles.

His first break, he said, was on a soap opera. "I had a job on 'Days of Our Lives.' I played 'Snake.'"

He then had his own television series, "The New Dragnet," and had the lead in that series. After it was canceled, he guest-starred on "NYPD Blue," "ER," "Hill Street Blues," "Knots Landing," "Santa Barbara," "General Hospital" and "Judging Amy."

A few years ago, White said, he started his own theater company in Los Angeles and was in a play in New York.

Interested fans also can catch White in the movie "Pay It Forward," which is playing at theaters and stars Academy Award winners Kevin Spacey and Helen Hunt and Academy Award nominee Haley Joel Osment. In "Pay It Forward," White plays a police officer who answers a domestic violence call in an opening scene.

Another movie White can be recognized in is "City of Angels," with Meg Ryan and Nicholas Cage. White was a "member of the surgical team" in the movie. In one scene, Ryan's character sews up a patient and then the "doctors" think they may have sewed up a sponge in the patient. However, they didn't and White's character finds it. White said he had only eight lines in the film.

White's busy schedule isn't just television and movies, however. He recently married actress Nathalie Canessa in France; she has performed in some television but mostly performs in the theater.

"I just finished a play with my new wife," said White. He directed and she starred in "Crazy Drunk."

For the future, he said, nothing is set. He's been away from the business in the last three years because he started the theater company. Now, though, he wants to concentrate on his acting career in movies and television.

White and his family became U.S. citizens in 1964, making the front page of the Times-Union then. The family came from Sri Lanka and moved to Warsaw when White was just 9 months old. They moved to Warsaw because White's father received a job at Creighton Brothers.

While living in Warsaw, the family lived on Fort Wayne Street. He said he remembers eating at Penguin Point and "I remember the Lake Theatre and the lakes."

He said he was back in the area recently and was surprised at how everything's grown and changed.

Regardless of where he's been and where he goes, he said, "I appreciate all the support" from the Warsaw community.

If viewers enjoy White's performance on "The Practice," they can write David E. Kelley and tell him to put White back on the show.

The address is: David E. Kelley Productions, 1600 Rosecrans Ave., Bldg 4B, Manhattan Beach, CA 90266.