BERNADETTE
CRONIN
Height: 5ft8 | 173cm
Eyes: Blue
Hair: Auburn
Bernadette has been training in the performing arts since she was a child – drama, theatre and music at Cork School of Music, which culminated in a gold medal and a Diploma in Acting from the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. Dance and movement training includes ballet, Irish dancing, 5-rhythms dance and contemporary jazz. She went on to train with and be directed by leading international directors and actor trainers including Phillip Zarrilli, Kristin Linklater, David Zinder, and Margot Stein in Ireland, the UK, the US and Germany, and completed her PhD in Theatre in 2010 at the University of Exeter. She co-founded Gaitkrash Theatre Company in 2007 with actor, theatre artist and director Regina Crowley and sound artist Mick O'Shea. They have collaborated with a range of interdisciplinary artists to create several cutting-edge theatre events.
Bernadette is an experienced and versatile actor, having performer and played roles across a broad range of acting and production styles, including Mina Harker in Dracula, Amanda in Private Lives, Camille in an award-winning production of Kaite O’Reilly’s Cosy, Solange in the Wales tour of playing ‘the maids’, May/Amy in Footfalls and w1 in Play in Phillip Zarrilli’s award-winning production The Beckett Project in Ireland, and Anna in Gaitkrash’s devised adaptation Killing Stella.
An accredited Linklater Voice Teacher and a qualified yoga instructor, Bernadette finds these practices sustain her sensitivity and dexterity as an actor and performer and keep her vocal and physical skills fine-honed. She also trains regularly with Still Waters Dance Company, led by Tina Horan. A reiki master of 25 years, she draws on reiki and other energy-healing practices to heighten her awareness of energy, presence and atmosphere in her work as an actor.
In recent years Bernadette has become interested in acting for camera, successfully completing the Acting for Camera 3 course at ActorsVision, Cork, and masterclasses in Acting for Camera with Bow Street Academy. She was commissioned in 2021 by the Austrian Cultural Institute in London to present a screen-adaptation of Gaitkrash’s award-winning production of Killing Stella https://youtu.be/jQ1hYQpOTG0?si=6rxJCESL2G90Y-1B (dir. Regina Crowley). A fluent German speaker, Bernadette translated the Austrian novella by Marlen Haushofer and adapted the script for theatre and screen.
Bernadette loves to work as part of a collaborative team, to keep learning and adding to her skills and expressive possibilities, and looks forward to embracing a wide range of acting experience in screen media.
