Personal Life
Breathed is a fan of outdoor activities such as powerboating and motorcycling. In 1986, he broke his back in an ultralight-plane crash, later incorporated into a "Bloom County" storyline in which Steve Dallas breaks his back after being attacked by an angry Sean Penn. Breathed also nearly lost his right arm to a boating accident.
Breathed, his wife and two children live in Santa Barbara, in southern California. He is reportedly a very private person, and although he has given interviews to online magazines such as The Onion and Salon, he rarely gives face-to-face or telephone interviews and resists talking about himself. He and his wife support animal rights, and his book, Flawed Dogs: The Year-End Leftovers at the Piddleton 'Last Chance' Dog Pound, promotes animal adoption. Breathed befriended humorous fantasy author Douglas Adams when Adams moved to Santa Barbara in 1999. Adams was also very keen on wildlife preservation.
During the middle of September 1990, while visiting a factory in England, Mr. Breathed noticed he received odd, humorous looks from the workers upon hearing his name. After inquiring about the reason for their strange looks, he learned that his nickname, "Berke," is a homophone with "Berk", a vulgar term for a vagina in Cockney rhyming slang ("Berkeley Hunt").
Breathed once stated he is an atheist.
On May 18, 2008, in his comic strip Opus, he announced he was suffering from a condition known as spasmodic torticollis.
Read more about this topic: Berkeley Breathed
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