Gerald Raymond "Gerry" Rosenthal is an American actor, voice actor, singer-songwriter, and musician who started out acting in TV commercials at the age of 7. He has starred on films and short films and has guest starred in television series such as Law & Order and Celebrity Deathmatch. He is best known for providing the voice for Jimmy Hopkins, the main playable character in the 2006 video gameBully, for which he was nominated for a 2006 Spike VGA Award for Best Performance by a Human Male. He lives in Jersey City, New Jersey and now mostly works as a guitarist, bassist, keyboardist, and singer-songwriter. He teaches private music lessons and performs in gigs professionally. He plays bass in both a Beatles cover band called Hey Bulldog, as well as the Mama Doni Band, and guitar in a wedding band called The Jersey Joint. Rosenthal also writes, records, and plays guitar with his own original bands, Big Wake and The Gerry Rosenthal Trio. He freelances with as many different projects as possible, and performs solo and duo acoustic sets all over the area.
Acting
Rosenthal was around the age of 6 years old when his mother took him into New York City to audition for an acting agent and they liked him enough to send him out on some auditions. He acted in several commercials as a child starting at the age of 7. He claims that acting was something his parents dragged him to do more or less, but around the beginning of 9th grade he realized that acting was something he truly wanted to do. Rosenthal has appeared in numerous television commercials and radio voice-overs, along with television series including TV's Law & Order and , as well as the films Liberty Heights, Finding Forrester, and Wirey Spindell. Rosenthal also provided the voice for the main playable character Jimmy Hopkins in the 2006 video game Bully, from Rockstar Games.
Music
Rosenthal's father began teaching him guitar and piano around the age of 7. Between the ages of 10–13 he attended the St. Thomas Choir School in New York City, a boarding school for young male choristers, where he sang 5–6 church services a week at St. Thomas Church Fifth Avenue with the St. Thomas Choir of Men and Boys under the direction of Dr. Gerre Hancock. While at St. Thomas, Rosenthal studied piano with concert pianist Leslie Singer and music theory with composer Scott Eyerly. He was fortunate enough to tour extensively with the St. Thomas Choir, traveling to Austria, Italy, Vienna, and Ireland. In high school Rosenthal continued his piano studies privately with Paul Salamone, a jazz pianist from Scotch Plains, New Jersey. While earning a History degree at Rutgers University, Rosenthal attended a semester at Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts where he studied guitar privately with John Marasco and John Thomas as well as music theory with Jim Stinnett While in college he also studied privately on guitar with Karl Cochran And he always played with different groups for fun in college, so within 6 months of moving home He was playing in about 4 different bands in the New Brunswick NJ music scene. It happened slowly, but over the years his focus gradually shifted more and more towards music, to the point where that's how he makes his living today. He claims he still goes on acting auditions, but music is his life at this point.
Rosenthal grew up with two brothers, also musicians. His younger brother Hank died of a drug overdose at the age of 26 on September 30, 2017. Rosenthal and his wife Megan McGrath became parents of their son James sometime in late 2018.
