Office Space actor Richard Riehle dies at 78

Richard Riehle, the character actor who delivered the "people skills" monologue in Office Space, has died at 78. His representatives announced the death on Monday, saying he had died over the weekend and giving no cause.

Riehle was for decades the man Hollywood cast when a script needed a beleaguered middleman — the guard, the quartermaster, the bank officer, the functionary whose scene exists so the star has someone to get past. The bushy mustache helped make him a favorite of casting directors; the name never traveled as far as the face. His screen debut, in the 1977 road movie Joyride, was an unnamed bartender, the first of more than 400 film and television credits: a racist quartermaster in Glory, the guard who lets Harrison Ford slip away in The Fugitive, a mob banker cursed out by Joe Pesci in Casino, a kindly mechanic helping Kristen Wiig in Bridesmaids. Television ran on him too — Principal Ed Rooney on the short-lived Ferris Bueller sitcom, a police officer on The West Wing, a gruff grandfather on Grounded for Life, and most recently a prison warden on HBO's Barry.

The part that outlasted the rest was Tom Smykowski in Mike Judge's corporate satire. Smykowski, an anxious product manager raging against the prospect of being laid off, pleads his case in a speech office workers can still recite: "I have people skills! I am good at dealing with people! Can't you understand that?"

Riehle had a working theory about such parts. "The lead isn't always the best part in a play or a movie," he told Notre Dame Magazine, recalling the campus theatrical group he joined at the university. "I always wanted the role that would bring something out of me, force me to find something extra." Donal Logue, who worked with him on Grounded for Life, called him "an actor's actor — humble, kind, and incredible at his craft," and recalled having to apologize after Riehle's final network audition for the show: the performance made Logue laugh so hard he broke character and fell to the floor.

Riehle's agency said he would be remembered for "genuine goodness, boundless kindness, and unwavering generosity," particularly toward emerging actors and filmmakers. His first screen credit was a bartender with no name; his last was a prison warden.