{"id":888772,"date":"2026-10-20T11:20:12","date_gmt":"2026-10-20T11:20:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/888772\/"},"modified":"2026-10-20T11:20:12","modified_gmt":"2026-10-20T11:20:12","slug":"richard-riehle-dead-office-space-actor-was-78","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/888772\/","title":{"rendered":"Richard Riehle Dead: \u2018Office Space\u2019 Actor Was 78"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tRichard Riehle, the very busy character actor known for his bushy mustache and quirky turn as the laid-off Initech product manager Tom Smykowski in Mike Judge\u2019s Office Space<\/a>, has died. He was 78.<\/p>\n

\n\tRiehle died Thursday of natural causes in Los Angeles, TMZ reported<\/a>. His reps at Artists & Representatives and Wright Entertainment confirmed his death \u201cthis past weekend\u201d in a statement without providing details.<\/p>\n

\n\tRiehle also portrayed the guard who allows Harrison Ford\u2019s Richard Kimble to escape custody in Andrew Davis\u2019 The Fugitive (1993), a racist quartermaster in Edward Zwick\u2019s Glory (1989), a banker for mobsters in Martin Scorsese\u2019s Casino (1995) and the father of Rob Schneider\u2019s character in Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo (1999).<\/p>\n

\n\tRiehle played Walt Finnerty (Donal Logue\u2019s father) on all five seasons of the 2001-05 Fox-WB sitcom Grounded for Life, guest-starred on the Star Trek series The Next Generation, Voyager and Enterprise and was the go-to guy to play Santa Claus; he was the jolly guy in 2011\u2019s A Very Harold & Kumar Christmas and in lots of other projects.<\/p>\n

\n\tOn social media, Logue wrote<\/a>: \u201cRichard Riehle was an amazing human being. A consummate professional, he was an actor\u2019s actor \u2014 humble, kind and incredible at his craft \u2026 and I loved every minute I got to spend with him.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHe had more than 430 acting credits on IMDb alone.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn Office Space (1999), Tom survives a hit-and-run accident and uses his big financial settlement to build a \u201cJump to Conclusions\u201d mat<\/a>, fulfilling a lifelong dream.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn one memorable scene, Tom appears with a medical halo around his head while in a wheelchair. \u201cThey didn\u2019t have a special effects person there, so they hired an EMT to come and put me in all of that. Now, he didn\u2019t screw the halo in, thank God,\u201d Riehle recalled in a 2017 A.V. Club interview.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cBut he put all these casts on me, and I was stuck in the wheelchair and the casts for, oh, about eight or nine hours! And he\u2019d left the cast cutter with one of the P.A.s, who got me out of it eventually at the end of the day.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAsked if he got to keep the mat, he said: \u201cNo one knows where it is \u2026 and that\u2019s including Mike Judge! I saw him when he brought me in for [the 2009 film Extract \u2026. We had a nice chat, and that\u2019s one of the things I asked him: \u2018Where\u2019s the Jump to Conclusions mat?\u2019 He said, \u2018It disappeared.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tOne of seven kids, Riehle was born on May 12, 1948, in Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin. His mother, Mary Margaret, was a nurse; his father, Herbert, who worked for the post office, died when he was 2.<\/p>\n

\n\tHe graduated in 1970 from the University of Notre Dame, where he acted in plays, built sets and served as a stage manager, then studied German abroad.<\/p>\n

\n\tRiehle gained acting experience at the Academy of Dramatic Art at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan, then did lots of regional theater in the Pacific Northwest. That got him work as an extra in Rooster Cogburn (1975), starring John Wayne<\/a> and Katharine Hepburn<\/a>, and his first big-screen speaking part as a bartender in Joyride (1977), starring Desi Arnaz Jr. and Melanie Griffith.<\/p>\n

\n\tRiehle made it to Broadway in 1986 with a role in the Emily Mann drama Execution of Justice, which centered on the trial of Dan White, who assassinated San Francisco mayor George Moscone and city supervisor Harvey Milk in 1978.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn 1999, he returned to Broadway to star as the corrupt ex-cop Pat McGloin alongside Kevin Spacey in a revival of The Iceman Cometh, nominated for five Tony Awards.<\/p>\n

\n\tRiehle\u2019s film r\u00e9sum\u00e9 included Black Rain (1989), Fried Green Tomatoes (1991), Shadows and Fog (1991), Free Willy (1993), Body of Evidence (1993), Stuart Saves His Family (1995), Executive Decision (1996), Ghosts of Mississippi (1996), Lethal Weapon 4 (1998), Mercury Rising (1998), The Fluffer (2001), Bridesmaids (2011) and The Cowboy Killer (2026).<\/p>\n

\n\tHe also portrayed Principal Ed Rooney on the 1990-91 NBC adaptation of Ferris Bueller and showed up over the years on The West Wing, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Golden Girls, Boston Legal, ER, NCIS, Modern Family, L.A. Law, NCIS, The Middle, Maron and Barry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Richard Riehle, the very busy character actor known for his bushy mustache and quirky turn as the laid-off…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":888773,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[236,88,140338,2339,10756,61944],"class_list":["post-888772","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-john-wayne","tag-katharine-hepburn","tag-obituaries","tag-office-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/888772","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=888772"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/888772\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/888773"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=888772"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=888772"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=888772"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}