Remember Bernard From The Santa Clause? This Is What He Looks Like Now

"The Santa Clause" fans will be thrilled to know the actor who played sassy head elf Bernard looks very much the same today. Granted, he looks like an older version of the teen elf who made the big screen in the '90s, and yes, that was addressed in the spinoff. 

David Krumholtz was just 16 in the original "The Santa Clause," but he's joked that he was grumpy beyond his years. As he told Entertainment Weekly in 2022, "I didn't know what about me was interesting, but I did have this kind of wise-cracking Queens attitude, and for lines like 'Haven't you people ever heard of basting?' I guess that really worked." Of course, there was one slight problem with the actor being so young. Elves aren't supposed to age (case in point: the workshop full of kids and the fact that despite presenting as a teen, Krumholtz' character was well over 1,500 years old). 

For the second film, that wasn't a major issue, with Krumholtz being in his early 20s. What's more, as many know, he wasn't in the third film. However, rather than sit out the Disney+ spinoff series in 2022, the character was given a very unexpected arc to explain the fact that he looked like (to quote Tim Allen's character), "An old man with pointy ears." Spoiler alert for those who haven't already binged the show: Bernard gave up immortality for his mortal wife, Vanessa Redgrave.

JSYK, Krumholtz isn't the other man in Redgrave's marriage to Franco Nero, and speaking to Time, he quipped that he didn't know why she, specifically, had been chosen as Bernard's missus, but he loved the idea. "I didn't question it. When I read the script ... I screamed out laughing. It was such an irreverent choice," he recalled.

If you didn't even make the connection that a young David Krumholtz played Bernard in "The Santa Clause," that might be because he's a character actor. In fact, GQ referred to him in a 2024 profile as "Zelig-like" for just how well he could dive into a character without audiences recognizing him from past work. 

There's an understatement. The actor went viral in early 2026 after a news outlet pondered whatever happened to Krumholtz, and claimed he had quit acting altogether after "The Santa Clause." The actor responded on Instagram Threads by joking, "I did not tire of Hollywood ... I AM HOLLYWOOD! The personification! The Unicorn!" He did add, "I write this on break from my day job as a pedicurist, but I recently had a substantial role in one of the most critically and commercially successful films ever, 'Venom 3: The Last Dance!'" Krumholtz actually wasn't in "Venom 3," but he notably was in "Oppenheimer," and has countless other credits in a number of very big productions. 

Despite clearing up the fact that he was indeed still an actor, Krumholtz has hinted at not wanting to be more recognizable in his day to day life. Far from it — he's even taken a conscious decision not to be on X (formerly Twitter) where he grew a pretty sizable following, specifically because he didn't want the whole world to know his every thought. "If everybody knows everything about me, the next job I do, they think they know what they're seeing when they see it, and it's hard to separate me from the character," he told GQ. Well, we might not always know what the "Santa Clause" cast member looks like in theory, but he's certainly booked and busy, and we love that for him.