Barry Prima
- Actor
Barry Prima (real name Bertus Knoch) was born in Bandung, West Java,
Indonesia. His father was a Dutch physician, his mother Indonesian.
They had four children (three boys, one girl), with Bertus being the
oldest. His sister graduated from Pajajaran University in Bandung with
a medical degree and is a doctor, but Bertus only got his high school
degree from Aloysius High School in Bandung.
He learned taekwando in a small martial-arts studio located behind his father's house on Jalan Dago (Dago street). The taekwando master at that time was known as Master Kang, from Malaysia. In his early 20s, Bertus came to the attention of Indonesian producer Gope T. Samtani, who offered him a small role in a picture he was making about cannibals. Bertus took it, the picture--Primitif (1978)--became a hit and Samtani changed Bertus' name to Barry Prima. In his second film he played opposite renowned Indonesian star Suzzanna, as her husband who gets killed in the middle of the movie.
Prima soon became the biggest star in Indonesian films, making a string of action/fantasy films for various studios. He made several pictures with Eva Arnaz and was briefly married to her. Famously reclusive, and somewhat ornery, he seldom gives interviews and in the few he has given often contradicts himself (many interviewers suspect he does it deliberately); he once said that he never wanted to be an actor and never made a good movie because the scripts were always so bad and the budgets were always so low, but later in the same interview he said that he enjoyed making films and liked everyone he worked with.
After several years off the screen, he played a cameo (in drag!) in Upi Avianto's "Realita Cinta dan Rock 'n Roll" (2006).
He learned taekwando in a small martial-arts studio located behind his father's house on Jalan Dago (Dago street). The taekwando master at that time was known as Master Kang, from Malaysia. In his early 20s, Bertus came to the attention of Indonesian producer Gope T. Samtani, who offered him a small role in a picture he was making about cannibals. Bertus took it, the picture--Primitif (1978)--became a hit and Samtani changed Bertus' name to Barry Prima. In his second film he played opposite renowned Indonesian star Suzzanna, as her husband who gets killed in the middle of the movie.
Prima soon became the biggest star in Indonesian films, making a string of action/fantasy films for various studios. He made several pictures with Eva Arnaz and was briefly married to her. Famously reclusive, and somewhat ornery, he seldom gives interviews and in the few he has given often contradicts himself (many interviewers suspect he does it deliberately); he once said that he never wanted to be an actor and never made a good movie because the scripts were always so bad and the budgets were always so low, but later in the same interview he said that he enjoyed making films and liked everyone he worked with.
After several years off the screen, he played a cameo (in drag!) in Upi Avianto's "Realita Cinta dan Rock 'n Roll" (2006).
