Vegas upbringing shines through in Hollywood

Tuesday, April 10, 2007 | 7:18 a.m.

Maybe someone should stake Michael Bunin to a seat in the World Series of Poker.

The 37-year-old actor parlayed his poker playing into a co-starring role on the TBS sitcom "My Boys." Bunin plays in a weekly game with Betsy Thomas, the show's creator. The idea for the series about a Chicago sports writer and her male friends came out of the game, which has been running for eight years in Los Angeles.

Bunin learned to play poker while growing up in Las Vegas, and his experience is evident as the characters in the show play their weekly game.

"They allow me to flip the chips around, do a lot of dealing. That sort of stuff comes through," Bunin said. "We still play at Betsy's every week."

The show begins shooting the second half of its first season next week . "My Boys" premiered in November with 13 episodes, and TBS requested nine more episodes, which will air in the summer.

On the show, Bunin plays one of the main characters, a sports memorabilia store owner named Kenny.

"He's one of PJ's best friends," Bunin said. "He just wants to hang out, be involved. He wants people to think he's tougher than he is, but he's a little shy with the girls. He has difficulty asking them out."

The Bunin name is familiar to many Las Vegans. Michael's brothers, Joseph and Daniel, are partners in the Bunin & Bunin law firm.

Fans of theater probably saw Michael Bunin perform in the mid-1990s when he was a theater major at UNLV. He was in productions such as "The Front Page," "Color of Bruise " and "Exploded View," and was the lone male in an off-beat version of "Glengarry Glen Ross."

Bunin received a speech and debate scholarship to UNLV and was a business major until he developed a crush on a girl who asked whether he would take an acting class with her.

"The first time I took the acting course was because of a little bit of interest in acting, but mostly because I wanted to go wherever this girl was going. But at the end of that semester I was 100 percent into it," he said. "I enjoyed studying acting, studying scenes, doing scene work. I knew this was something I was taking to. I knew right away that I really wanted to pursue acting."

Bunin and his family moved to Las Vegas in 1982.

"It was a rough age to move," Bunin said. "The friends I had at 12 were going to be the guys I was going to grow up with, so when I first arrived in Vegas - I don't know if I was angry, it kind of made me a quiet kid for the first year or so. You go through being the new kid."

He attended William E. Orr Junior High and Chaparral High, where he became involved in speech and debate.

"In my household it was common to discuss the issues of the day," Bunin said. "My brothers did a little bit of speech and debate in high school and they were doing it at UNLV at the time, so it was something I was growing up around."

At Chaparral, he met Anthony Zuiker, who'd later create the hit series "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation" and produced its offspring "CSI: Miami" and "CSI: New York."

"Anthony was a senior when I was a sophomore," Bunin said. "He was very good at the speech and debate events. When he graduated he would come back and coach and teach some of the more promising kids. That's how I met him."

They're still pals, sometimes getting together for a friendly game of poker. Bunin has appeared on "CSI" a few times. Zuiker still lives in Las Vegas with his wife and children.

But Bunin left town to seek fame and fortune. He dropped out of UNLV in 1996.

"I was 26 years old, a senior," he said. "I had been doing theater solid for quite some time and decided I better get to L.A. and take a shot at it to see if I can make a living at it."

Bunin's bet sounded like any other aspiring actor drawing to an inside straight.

"I crashed at a friend's house down at the beach, but I learned right away that I can't live out at the beach or I won't get anything done," Bunin said. "So I got an apartment in Hollywood."

His Vegas luck was good. He landed an agent and booked the first audition she sent him on - a commercial. "So I kind of worked right away and I managed to work pretty steady."

The ease with which he broke into the business sparked jealousy among some aspiring actors.

"My attitude was if I couldn't get the part then I rooted for my friend. I hoped one of my buddies would get it," he said. "But I noticed right away out here when I would say I just moved here and I'm on my fourth job, you didn't make very many friends that way."

So he learned to bluff with fellow actors.

"They'd say 'How you doing?' I didn't want to tell them I had 10 commercials under my belt so I'd just say , 'Ah, you know how it goes.' I lied about my success, but I lied in the other direction."

Bunin has since appeared in several movies, including in an uncredited part as a bodyguard in Jackie Chan's "The Tuxedo," and in TV series such as "Scrubs."

When he isn't acting he likes a good poker game - after all, he is from Vegas.

"I used to play poker at Bally's when I was underage," he said.

He recalls playing four days a week with Redd Foxx.

"A great experience as a kid," Bunin said. "And I've continued to play through the years, but now it's become such a fad that I don't want to tell people I'm a card player because if you ask anybody in Hollywood they all tell you they're card players now.

"But I really have been playing a long, long time. I certainly paid for more than one class at UNLV my freshman and sophomore years with the game of poker."

Bunin's parents have died, but he comes to Las Vegas as often as he can to visit his brothers and friends.

"I still hang out with the guys I've been hanging out with since I was 15 and 16 years old," he said. "I don't call it going home . I just go up there to catch up with everyone. I know where everybody is - either at my brother's house on Saturday or Paddy's Pub, at Pecos and Flamingo, on Fridays.

"It's the same eight guys, only now there are wives and children. The group just got bigger."