David Rasche

David Rasche is an American actor born on August 7, 1944, in St. Louis, Missouri, whose career spans theater, film, and television. His father was a minister and farmer, and Rasche came from a long line of Evangelical and United Church of Christ ministers. He graduated from Elmhurst College in 1966, an institution his grandfather had also attended, and subsequently enrolled at the University of Chicago Divinity School for two years before leaving without a degree. He did earn a graduate degree in English from the University of Chicago. Rasche trained as an actor under Sanford Meisner.

Before establishing himself as a performer, Rasche worked as a writer and teacher, spending two years instructing English at Gustavus Adolphus College in Minnesota. He then spent two years performing with Chicago's Second City improvisation group and also helped fund Victory Gardens Theater in Chicago. In 1974, he appeared in Organic Theater's production of David Mamet's Sexual Perversity in Chicago, a production that helped establish Mamet's reputation for earthy, sometimes brutal dialogue. Rasche moved to New York City in 1976, where he met his future wife, Heather Lupton, who has taught acting at the University of California, Santa Barbara. The couple have three children, and Rasche owns a home in Santa Barbara.

Rasche began appearing on television and in films in 1977, making his film debut the following year in An Unmarried Woman, directed by Paul Mazursky. In 1979, he had a small part in Woody Allen's Manhattan. His Broadway career spans from 1977 to 2024 and includes starring in Getting and Spending as well as appearances in Cult of Love, A House in the Country, and To Be Or Not To Be, among other productions. Shortly after his television series Sledge Hammer! concluded, he appeared on Broadway in Mamet's Speed-the-Plow to critical acclaim, and he later performed in an Off-Broadway revival of Mamet's Edmond. In the mid-1980s, he played Petruchio opposite Frances Conroy's Kate in a production of Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew, directed by Zoe Caldwell at the American Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford, Connecticut. Beginning February 14, 2017, he played George Antrobus in Theatre for a New Audience's production of Thornton Wilder's The Skin of Our Teeth, opposite Kecia Lewis as Maggie Antrobus.

Rasche is perhaps most widely recognized for portraying the title character in the satirical television police sitcom Sledge Hammer!, which ran from 1986 to 1988. The show spoofed police dramas through the character of Sledge Hammer, a violent, chauvinistic, and somewhat clumsy police inspector with a fondness for powerful weaponry. Prior to that role, he played a terrorist in the 1983 television film Special Bulletin and appeared in the Miami Vice episode "Bushido," which first aired on November 22, 1985, as a KGB agent attempting to capture a former colleague of Lt. Castillo, played by Edward James Olmos.

Among his other screen credits, Rasche played Parnelli, one of two corrupt narcotics officers, in the 1989 Tom Selleck crime drama An Innocent Man, and was lead character Buddy Wheeler in the 1990 biker comedy Masters of Menace. He portrayed Ted Forstmann in the 1993 television film Barbarians at the Gate, which dramatized the leveraged buyout of RJR Nabisco, and had a leading role in the 1997 Columbo episode "A Trace of Murder." In Paul Greengrass's 2006 film United 93, Rasche portrayed Donald Greene, one of the passengers aboard United Airlines Flight 93. He had a major role in the 2009 satirical political comedy In the Loop as a U.S. official advocating for an invasion of an unspecified Middle Eastern country. Rasche also voiced Captain Piett in the NPR radio adaptation of The Empire Strikes Back. From 2018 to 2023, he held a main role as Karl Muller in HBO's drama series Succession, and he has also been known for his role as Alden Schmidt in the TV Land comedy series Impastor, as well as recurring and guest appearances in programs including L.A. Law, Monk, The West Wing, Veep, Bored to Death, and Ugly Betty. On February 13, 2023, he participated in an industry reading of Rob Sedgwick's play Please Leave.