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craig's personal page |
videolog |
acting homepage |
the rebecca report |
nick's news |
the connor chronicles |
the alexandra alert
My sister Taylor and I pause for the photographer during our red carpet entrance at an Emmy Awards Ceremony.
This scruffy-looking beard was for The Flintstones in which I played one of Fred and Barney's co-workers at the quarry in Bedrock. Despite my "brilliant performances" in scenes with John Goodman, Rick Moranis, Elizabeth Perkins, Rosie O'Donnell and Elizabeth Taylor, most of my scenes did not end up in the final edit of that 1993 film.
The Personal Page of Craig Richards
Friends and family visit here from time to time to catch up with what's going on in our lives. We keep pretty busy and haven't put a lot of time into maintaining this page, but here are some highlights and links that will help you to get to know us a bit better.
Among other entrepreneurial endeavors, I am the founder and publisher of FamilyReunion.com, the world's largest social networking site for families.
The Rebecca Report is where you can learn more about Craig's lovely wife Rebecca...
In Nick's News, Craig's
son Nicholas has a bunch of photos and stories that he'd love to share with you. Since Nicholas was old enough to talk, I have encouraged him to tell me stories about things that are important to him. I write down his thoughts (and, perhaps, interject a little of my own imagination) then upload them to his section of my site. Nicholas' cousins, grandparents, great-grandparents and friends enjoy going online and reading the latest installments of Nick's News...
We're very excited to share with you photos and videos of our son Connor in The Connor Chronicles...
Our baby girl Alexandra has her own section we lovingly call The Alexandra Alert where we post pictures, videos and stories of her early adventures in life...
Being Craig Richards
I've never been good at keeping a journal, so I can't imagine how to boil down my life to a few paragraphs. Perhaps the following summary will do for now.
Where to start? I am a "baby boomer" and am, like many in my generation, an aspiring adult. Nicholas, Connor and Alexandra manage to keep me young at heart while sometimes aging me rapidly with questions like, "Daddy, did you really ride dinosaurs to school when you were little?"
"No," I'll explain patiently, "schools hadn't yet been invented."
A Moving Beginning
My Dad grew up in De Pere, Wisconsin (near Green Bay) and served our country as a Marine for 22 years. Mom was raised in Banning, California (near Palm Springs). Born in Oceanside, California, in November 1955, I was the second of eight children. The oldest, my brother Dale, passed away when he was only three years old from a then-fatal heart defect. I'm told I missed him terribly and, in fact, I still think about him from time to time.
Since Dad was in the military, the whole family moved to a different state every couple of years. We lived in Anaheim, California (Dad went to Okinawa during this time); Lincoln, Nebraska; La Crosse, Wisconsin (kindergarten and first grade); Merrillville, Indiana (second through fourth grade); Triangle and Quantico, Virginia (fifth through sixth grade and part of seventh); Banning, California (the remainder of seventh through eighth grade while Dad was in Vietnam); Twentynine Palms, California (ninth and part of tenth grade) and back to Banning, California (for the remainder of tenth grade until graduation) where Dad retired and my parents established an appliance store and repair service.
A heart attack took Dad in June 1986 at only 53 years of age. Mom was whisked away from us just six years later in 1992 at 56 by a particularly progressive form of Multiple Sclerosis (MS). My two brothers (Randy and Rick) and four sisters (Jodie, Taylor, Jas and Karen) and I are learning that we have to rely on each other to keep our families close. We schedule as many as two reunions each year (usually around Easter or Christmas) – we've been taking turns hosting these family events. In 2001, we also had a wonderful impromptu gathering of family and friends for a Memorial Day barbecue at my home.
After finishing my own stint in the Marines in 1975, I pursued training and employment in illustration & graphic design and, in 1981, moved to the Los Angeles area where I remained until 2002. With our nomadic upbringing, it's no wonder I don't like moving frequently but, after more than twenty years, I came to realize L.A. had never felt like "home."
In July 2002, I moved to central Oregon where I now live with my lovely wife Rebecca, sons Nicholas and Connor and daughter Alexandra.
The Requisite Gallery
I'm six years old here in my 1962 class photo. I didn't know it at the time, but I'm pretty sure Dad wanted me to be a Marine. Why else would he brand me with this "really popular with the other kids" haircut?
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I was 13 and in the 9th grade in this shot. I have a vague memory of Mom taking me to buy this suit... I think the CIA was having a garage sale.
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Well, Dad, you had your influence on me after all, didn't you? Here I am at age 17 feeling very proud in my Marine Corps bootcamp graduation photo.
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In 1979 after landing a few lead roles in theatre and a couple tiny parts in films, my new agent Sonja Warren Brandon of Commercials Unlimited picked this headshot from a series of pictures taken by my dear friend Waunnell Marlar.
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One of my "hey, here's a serious actor" headshots from 1992 during my second foray into "the biz." Hollywood surprised me by actually keeping me working.
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This shot was also taken in 1992 as part of a "Craig Richards, hunky leading man" series of pictures.
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"Cyberspace ain't big enough for yer kind, partner..." This 1993 picture was taken while on the set of Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman. (More below.)
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Just after moving from L.A. to Oregon in 2002, I had some new headshots taken for my new agent at Ryan Artists in Portland.
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In 2004 after a decade of bad hair days, I started shaving my head. So that meant I needed new headshots again. Here's one of the pictures from that series taken by John Dotson.
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New headshots were taken in 2008 by photographer Bonnie Kamin.
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You'll see lots more pictures along with directing and acting information in the Film and Television section of this site at www.CraigRichards.com/act
visit my Facebook page at Facebook.com/producer.director
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A Dual Career Path
Since Nicholas' birth in 1993, Connor's birth in 2004 and Alexandra's arrival in 2006, they are a BIG, exciting chunk of my fullfilled life along with my beautiful bride Rebecca. Naturally, work fills up much of the remaining part. Here are some highlights of my career experiences... My career in graphic arts began back in 1975 when, while in college studying marketing and graphic design, I opened a small design studio in the Palm Springs area serving local businesses with illustrations, signs, logos, stationery, business cards, and ads for the local newspapers, magazines and yellow pages. I also wrote, produced (and did voiceover) for a few clients' radio commercials and television spots.
Computers Are In
In 1979 while at the in-house ad agency for Millers Outpost (a regional fashion retailer) in Ontario, California, I first began working with computers to produce type and graphics. At that time, we thought we were "cutting-edge" creatives performing magic that amazed even us! In addition to concept, design and pasteup production, I operated a "cold type" phototypographic contraption from Compugraphic called a Comp IV, in case you remember those.
The Curtain Also Rises
The late '70s also saw my first effort to break into show biz, starring in and directing theatre, and appearances in televsion and film. Click here to see my theatre, film and television credits.
In 1981, I moved to Los Angeles doing in-house advertising and public relations for what was then a new concept – Pizza Time Theatres (home of spokesrodent Chuck E. Cheese), the giant frenetic arcade / entertainment / eating complexes "where a kid can be a kid" started by Nolan Bushnell, the inventor of the first videogame title Pong and the founder of Atari.
Advertising Design Gets More Serious
I then accepted an offer from a great designer and one-time mentor, Jim Price, who owned a progressive design boutique in Woodland Hills, California. There, I continued my typographic career operating a Comp IV and mastered an even newer dedicated typographic computer, the Compugraphic EditWriter 7770. Eventually, I got my hands on its state-of-the-art (but short-lived) successor, the Compugraphic PowerView. Until the PowerView, WYSIWYG was an unheard-of concept and we coded "blind" not knowing if the type looked good until we printed to photopaper and processed it in a chemical bath.
Ever the Entrepreneur
From 1983 through 1991, I was the owner of Los Angeles-based agency Capital Ideas Advertising and its typography division Typehaus Pacifica. I quickly harnessed the power of Compugraphic's latest technology, the Integrator.
In 1984, Compaq released its first "desktop" computer, the Desktop Pro, and I loaded mine with two 51/4" floppy drives, a whopping 10-megabyte hard drive (a 5-mb drive was standard), and ordered the upgrade from 126k of RAM to 256k. The salesperson was confounded and amazed that anyone would want such a powerful system! Armed with an internal Hayes SmartModem 2400-baud internal modem card, I gave Compuserve a shot, as well as Bank of America's HomeBanking service. While Compuserve seemed boring to me, the more useful HomeBanking was clearly too expensive at $8.00 per month on top of their regular monthly service fees. In addition to bookkeeping, correspondence and mailing-list management, I also used the Compaq for keying in book manuscripts for publishing clients (using WordStar). I'd import the files into the Integrator, run them through "translation" tables that I wrote for the task and output them to photopaper for waxing and pasteup on boards called "mechanicals."
The Integrator would be Compugraphic's final input system before eventually surrendering to a massive shift by advertising agencies in the early '90s (followed by publishers and printers) toward frontend systems dubbed "desktop publishing" based on the emerging Apple Macintosh and the earliest versions of "killer applications" such as Photoshop and Illustrator from Adobe, QuarkXPress, Ventura Publisher and Aldus Pagemaker.
My reputation quickly grew in Los Angeles as my talents became sought-after by clients including the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (those nice folks behind the Academy Awards®), the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (the Emmy Awards® organization), Warner Bros., Paramount Pictures, MGM/UA, CBS, Image Entertainment and many others. I loved the creative work and they kept me busy for many years!
That Thud Was the '80s Ending
Alas, when the recession suddenly hit – coinciding with the beginning of "Desert Storm" – it was necessary for me to close the ad agency and find alternative work since the entire advertising industry (and most of the national economy) had slipped into a severe decline.
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The morning after my son Nicholas Shea Richards was born, I held him close and marveled at the miracle that he is!
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Encore Performances
Keeping busy, I found work as a personal trainer at a gym in nearby Burbank (it was sure satisfying and fun helping people get and stay fit!), continued to interview at any ad agency that would see me, began teaching advertising design and typography classes at Learning Tree University and, once again, began pursuing work as a model and actor. To my delight and surprise, I was able to get almost continuous work in show biz, so I happily gave notice at the gym and phased out my teaching obligations.
In 1992 after an interview with The Odell Group (a highly regarded Hollywood advertising agency and design studio), we struck a deal and I began working as an Art Director on an on-call freelance basis. I was excited to be back in advertising after a hiatus of more than a year.
I was able to work both in advertising and as an actor – two creative careers that I have found equally satisfying! I worked in countless television shows and films throughout the early '90s.
I faced a difficult crossroad, however, when I was offered a full-time position as The Odell Group's Senior Art Director / Production Manager.
Though I knew I would miss "the biz" very much, I opted for advertising and its stability – which had become a priority since Nicholas was by then one year old. "Acting will have to wait for me in the new millennium," I consoled myself.
Welcoming the Web
In 1994, when I had sufficiently trained myself in technologies called "new media," I co-founded CyberSite.net as a division of The Odell Group. CyberSite.net turned out to be among Los Angeles' first full-service website-development firms and, as its Vice President Operations, was instrumental in designing and producing client websites, but was also responsible for CyberSite.net's entire operations strategy and implementation as well as marketing, business development and human resources as the venture continued to grow.
A Need Is Exposed, An Idea Is Born
In November 1997 while struggling through tangled mazes of technologies and multiple layers of vendors to enable client websites for e-commerce, I asked, "Why can't online commerce be as simple and economical for Merchants and their Customers as it is in the real world?"
In the absence of a satisfactory answer, I conceived and developed a number of new proprietary technologies designed to facilitate web-based electronic commerce. In January 1998, I formed Intercheq Incorporated and continue to work to get this important service to the marketplace.
I am grateful that, after so many years of 'paying my dues,' my work is in even greater demand and that I'm able to continue making more impactful contributions toward the success of my clients.
Craig Richards on the set of
'Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman'
This particularly rugged-looking photo of me was taken on the set of Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman in which I played Swede during the 1993-1994 season.
Was it great fun to work on that show?
Yup. The directors were creative and professional and I learned a lot from them. The cast, crew and everyone quickly became like family.
Is Jane Seymour as beautiful in person?
Yup. She is truly stunning. I first fell in love with her in a wonderful 1980 movie which costarred Christopher Reeve – For me, Somewhere In Time is still one of the most romantic movies in a generation, right up there with Casablanca. If after seeing the movie, you don't get choked up whenever you hear Rachmaninov's "Rhapsody On a Theme of Paganini" (from the motion picture soundtrack), your heart must be missing!
During the season that I worked on Dr. Quinn, did Jane Seymour even know my name?
Nope. That's show business!
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