Who Plays Bob Ross In Mountain Dew's 'Refreshing Opportunity' Commercial?

Thanks to a soothing public access show, Bob Ross is one of the most famous painters in recent memory. Ross and his show are so famous, in fact, that he's become a subject of trailers and parodies in recent years. In a new ad for Mountain Dew, Ross is seen painting a bottle of the soda nestled in a bed of snow near the side of a mountain to keep it cold. After he finishes adding the tiny details to his bottle, including droplets of condensation, Ross decides that he can't resist the allure of the image he's just created. 

He reaches into the painting and pulls out an actual bottle of Mountain Dew. Then, Ross takes a sip from the drink and says "Shoot, that's good." Because he was on public access, Ross was famous for keeping his language very clean. 

Ross died at the age of 52 in 1995, but his legacy has outlasted his appearances on the air, and his popularity has even grown since thanks to a dedicated channel on Twitch. Since it debuted, the ad has struck a chord with some viewers who are nostalgic for the days when Ross's show was regularly broadcast. Here's who played the beloved artist in the Mountain Dew commercial.

Although he does a convincing Bob Ross impersonation, the actor who plays the famous painter in the commercial is not well-known to most. Ross was played by Bryan Mazzarello, an actor who also works as a set decorator. Other than his performance in this Mountain Dew ad, Mazzarello Bryan is best-known for his roles in short films like Final Sprint and The Call. 

He's also starred in a variety of other ad campaigns, including ads for Github, Xfinity, and Hot Wheels. Mazzarello isn't a household name, but he could be familiar to some people who pay particularly close attention to advertising. 

Even for those people, though, Mazzarello's work as Ross may have made him unrecognizable. The actor was thoroughly transformed to take on the iconic man. Although Mazzarellos can grow a fairly impressive beard, he was forced to don a wig for the commercial, and also had to wear one of Ross's signature, basic outfits, pairing a button down with jeans. He inhabited the role thoroughly enough to make the ad work, although the convincing Mountain Dew painting that he was working on certainly helped as well.