Born and raised on the East Coast, Emmy Award winner Richard Schiff began his career as a theater director in New York and later founded and served as the artistic director of the Manhattan Repertory Theatre where he directed both on-and off-Broadway productions. Reversing the usual trend, Richard eventually realized that, “What I really wanted to do was act.”
After hitting the boards in a few downtown productions, he nabbed roles in several independent feature films (including Robert Longo’s “Arena Brains” with Michael Stipe, Steve Buscemi and Ray Liotta) before moving to Los Angeles.
Keeping his ties to theater, Schiff joined Tim Robbins’ award-winning “Actors Gang” and concurrently appeared in other productions, including a starring role as Goose in the West Coast premiere of David Rabe’s “Goose and Tom Tom,” for which he received a Dramalogue Award for Best Actor. He was also awarded an Ovation Award for his role in “Urban Folktales.”
Schiff rose to prominence by landing roles in feature films such as David Fincher’s “Seven” with Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman and “City Hall” with Al Pacino. Since his film debut, Schiff has appeared in over 40 features, including Spike Lee’s “Malcolm X", Danny DeVito’s “Hoffa", Nora Ephron’s “Michael” and co-starred as the heroic Eddie Carr in Steven Spielberg’s “Jurassic Park: The Lost World". In 1998, he co-starred in two of the year’s biggest hits, “Deep Impact” and “Dr. Doolittle", and received critical acclaim for his role in “Living Out Loud” with DeVito.