Growth Industry

While other 4-year-old boys dreamed of being firefighters and police officers, Kai Cofer fantasized about having a beard like the one on Mr. French in “Family Affair,” a popular TV show during the late ‘60s.

It wasn’t just a phase. “Around first grade I saw an episode of ‘Adam 12’ on TV, featuring a guru character with a very long beard,” says Cofer, 41, an actor and Van Nuys resident who recently competed in the Freestyle Beard category at the World Beard and Moustache Championships in Carson City, Nev. “I didn’t know until then that beards could get long, and I thought, ‘Oh, wow, that’s fascinating.’ ” By fourth grade, Cofer was doing prep work. “I went to the library and looked up books and periodicals about the history of beards and read biographies of guys with beards.”

Cofer performed in community theater as a boy and graduated to professional dinner theater after high school in Washington, D.C. Cast in his first production, “Shenandoah,” he happily obliged when asked to grow a beard. He shaved when the show ended, only to get a role in “Oliver!,” with another request to grow a beard. Subsequent Cofer beards appeared in productions of “Brigadoon” and “The Unsinkable Molly Brown.”

“I thought, ‘Obviously there’s a pattern going here,’ so I kept the beard, but fairly short,” he says. Then he went to work at a paint store whose owner, a beard aficionado, asked all male employees to grow beards and paid extra for every inch of beard. “So I grew the beard to where it was just touching my chest,” Cofer says, noting that the average beard grows a quarter-inch per month.

Cofer went on to Indiana University for a master’s in fine arts in theater, where his beard grew to mid-chest length. “After school I figured I had to go into the real world, so I shaved,” he says. “I hadn’t seen my face in five years, and then immediately I got into another show and they said, ‘Can you grow a beard?’ ”

At this point Cofer resolved to make shaving a thing of the past. His beard turned 10 and hit waist length in October. Somewhere along the way, Cofer’s facial hair became a career niche. He played a hippie protester in “Forrest Gump” and did a season as a homeless man in NBC’s “Homicide: Life on the Street.” He has played Rasputin, St. Peter, Judas and Moses and frequently appears on the History Channel in biblical roles. He will be seen in the spring in a recurring role on “Deadwood,” a new HBO series. “For me it’s like they are going to pay me for something I would have done anyway.”

The Internet linked Cofer with an international beard subculture. There was the (now defunct) pen pal group based in England. There’s www.beardcommunity.com, a popular chat site. There’s also the National Beard Registry, www.nationalbeardregistry.org (“All beards are beautiful and worthy of registration”). For his appearance at the Carson City competition this year, Cofer wore his beard in 20 small braids (resulting knotting necessitated a trim to its current mid-chest length).

Over the years, Cofer says, his family (parents and younger sister) have come to accept his beard. As for the rest of the world, “Little kids stare, guys come up and say it’s a really great beard, and then you have all the women who ask to touch it.”