Why ‘Office Space’ Actor Richard Riehle Was the Quintessential Actor’s Actor (Guest Column)

The first time I met Richard Riehle , I was making one of the first things I’d ever made. It was a Funny or Die video, and my friend Tanner Thomason and I were trying to figure out how to get an actual actor to be in it. Someone suggested Richard. “Just offer it to him. I bet he’ll be down.” So we wrote him a nice letter, offered him the enormous sum of $250, and a week later we were working with a legend.

I remember arriving on set that morning and finding Richard already there, sitting by himself, reading the newspaper and drinking a root beer. He’d beaten the crew there. He didn’t need anything, didn’t seem particularly concerned that he was an actor with hundreds of credits doing a little internet video for two guys who had never really made anything before. He was just happy to be there.

That was about 13 years ago. I spent a lot of the next 13 years trying to find reasons to work with him again. If I wrote something with a part Richard could play, I offered it to him. Sometimes I probably wrote the part because I wanted an excuse to hear his stories. We ended up acting in several other projects together, too, and over the years we became friends. Popular on Variety

He was also, without question, one of the best actors I’ve ever worked with. I know that might sound like the sort of thing people say when someone dies, but I mean it. Richard was astonishingly good. He could make a line funny just by deciding not to make it funny. He could steal a scene without seeming to do much of anything. And every once in a while he’d remind you that underneath the familiar face and the wonderful mustache was an actor with a range most people never got to see.

Years ago, we were doing a table read for a movie called “Fear, Inc.” We’d cast Richard as the funny neighbor. The actor who was supposed to read the villain couldn’t make it that night, so Richard offered to fill in. No big deal. Just reading a few extra lines. Then he started doing the role, which he had literally worked on at home. He knew the lines of a role he wasn’t even going to play for the table read. The sweet, funny neighbor we’d all been laughing at was suddenly terrifying. I remember looking around the room and seeing jaws drop. People were genuinely stunned. It was like we’d all forgotten, for a moment, who we were sitting across from.

Richard had more than 400 acting credits, which is an almost ridiculous number until you understand the man. More than anything, he just loved being on set. Student films, tiny independent movies, major blockbusters, network sitcoms. I honestly don’t think he cared all that much about the difference. If he could hang out on set instead of in his trailer, that’s where you’d find him. And if you worked with him once, you had a friend. Invite him to a screening a year later, some random improv show, or a backyard barbecue, and if he was free, he’d show up.

A couple of years ago, we were in Dallas shooting a movie called Tonic.