John Bunny was born in New York City, Bunny was raised in Brooklyn where he attended high school and worked as a grocery clerk before joining a small minstrel show touring the East Coast. He went on to jobs as stage manager for various stock companies and performed in vaudeville before being drawn to the fledgling motion picture business. By 1909, Bunny was working at Vitagraph Studios where the happy-go-lucky, rotund man quickly became an international star of silent film comedies. At Vitagraph he starred in a series of over one hundred popular comedies with the comedian Flora Finch that were popularly called “Bunnyfinches”. The popularity of Bunny can be attributed to the succulent fun of the music hall and the circus, not the dry wit of sophisticated comedies. He was jolly, boisterous, and broad in his acting, and because of this style, he connected strongly with early nickelodeon audiences. Unfortunately, John Bunny was strongly disliked by most of his fellow actors at Vitagraph, including Finch. Interviews of former Vitagraph personnel conducted by Anthony Slide in the 1960s and 1970s revealed that his co-workers found him arrogant, bad-tempered, and difficult to work with, an image very much at odds with his genial on-screen persona.

John Bunny married Clara Scallan on January 23, 1890 with whom he had two children, George and John, Jr. who later became an actor. His brother George also became an actor. John Bunny never drank or smoked. His so-called Rum Nose was not from drinking according to Moe Howard. John Bunny had been acting in films for only five years when he died from Bright’s disease at his home in New Rochelle on April 26, 1915. He was interred in the Cemetery of the Evergreens in Brooklyn, New York. Because silent film had no language barrier, Bunny’s popularity was such that his death was front-page news in Europe as well as the United States.