Being brothers, you’d expect Bernard and Stephen Curry to have a close bond. In fact, they’re best mates.
So when Bernard landed back in Australia after five years in Los Angeles, he went to his younger brother to ask about a show he’d scored a role in. Some little series called Wentworth.
“I hadn’t seen any of the show,” Bernard, 44, tells TV WEEK. “I knew it was a reimagining of Prisoner. But, to be honest, I was prepared for it to be a bit sh*t.”
Logie-winner Stephen, however, set him straight.
“He said, ‘Mate, it’s really good – it’s a top-class drama,'” Bernard recalls.
Thankfully, he had faith in his sibling’s judgement. For the past three seasons, Bernard has played opportunistic prison officer Jake Stewart in the Foxtel series.
For Bernard, it’s the chance to work with people he considers some of the best in the game.
“From the day I wandered onto the set, I was instantly welcomed into this family atmosphere,” he says.
“People like Pamela Rabe, Celia Ireland, Robbie Magasiva, both Kates [Atkinson and Jenkinson] – it’s a gift to be considered a peer of the cast.”
Bernard’s non-acting family includes his wife Sonya and sons Fox, seven, and five-year-old Banjo.
After leaving Home And Away in 2010, Bernard packed up the family and moved to Hollywood to chase his acting dreams.
He’s on record as saying his five years there were the hardest of his life.
“Sometimes you’d wonder, ‘What am I doing here?'” he says of the brutal nature of living and working in Los Angeles. “You feel like you don’t belong.”
The actor was fortunate to have booked decent jobs while in LA. He worked on hit US series CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, NCIS, Pretty Little Liars, Once Upon A Time and Blindspot, among others.
“Those times in your life when you take a risk, and put your head on the chopping block, you can look back on with fondness,” Bernard says. “You do feel as though you’ve achieved something.
“It’s all there within reach [in LA]. You’re at the centre of the entertainment industry.”
Bernard feels like he has unfinished business in Hollywood.
Having Wentworth on his CV can only help his chances there. Enough people in the industry watch the series, he says, and hopefully he can use that to leverage his status in Hollywood.
“I’ll go back to LA,” Bernard confirms. “It’s a case of whether we make the decision to drop everything to move back and start again,” he says. “Or I go over to try to get work and then move the family over there.”
