Sam Brent Riegel

Samuel Brent Oscar Riegel was born on October 9, 1976, in Washington, D.C., the son of Lenore and Kurt Riegel. His father works as a radio astronomer, environmental executive, and sailor, and his mother later married author Jerome Charyn. Riegel is of Jewish descent, with his grandmother being a Holocaust survivor. He is the older brother of actress Eden Riegel and the younger half-brother of filmmaker Tatiana S. Riegel. Growing up in Northern Virginia, he began performing in local theater at the age of six.

Riegel's stage career began in earnest during childhood. He was cast in the touring production of Les Misérables at age eleven, and his Broadway tenure with the production ran from 1987 to 1988. Three years after Les Misérables, he performed in The Sound of Music. As a teenager he also appeared on the television series Guiding Light and Another World, but chose to prioritize stage work over screen acting, preferring the live response of a theater audience. Following his college graduation, he joined the Upright Citizens Brigade.

Beyond the stage, Riegel built an extensive career as a voice actor. He is recognized for voicing Donatello in the 2003 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles animated series, Phoenix Wright in the Ace Attorney video game franchise, and Teddie in Persona 4. He also voiced Riven in the revival of Winx Club and worked for Nickelodeon as voice director on Fresh Beat Band of Spies and Sanjay and Craig. In 2018, he received the Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Directing in an Animated Program for his work on Danger & Eggs.

Since 2015, Riegel has been a regular cast member of Critical Role, a web series in which he and fellow voice actors play Dungeons & Dragons. The show won both the Webby Award and the People's Voice Award in the Games category at the 2019 Webby Awards, and received both a Finalist designation and the Audience Honor at the 2019 Shorty Awards. In early 2019, the cast departed the Geek & Sundry network and established Critical Role Productions. A Kickstarter campaign originally targeting $750,000 to fund an animated adaptation of the show's first campaign raised over $11 million. Amazon Prime Video acquired the streaming rights to the resulting series, The Legend of Vox Machina, announced in November 2019, with Riegel reprising his role as Scanlan Shorthalt. The series premiered in 2022. Riegel also co-hosts the All Work No Play podcast and its companion web series alongside Critical Role cast member Liam O'Brien.

Riegel lives in Los Angeles with his wife, cinematographer Quyen Tran, and their two children. On September 11, 2001, the couple witnessed the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City and were caught in the dust cloud produced by the collapse of the South Tower before reaching Battery Park, where they witnessed the North Tower collapse as well. Video footage Riegel recorded that day has appeared in multiple documentaries. The two subsequently relocated to California when Tran was accepted to UCLA. In July 2024, Riegel disclosed that he had been diagnosed with oropharyngeal cancer earlier that year and had undergone six weeks of radiation therapy as well as surgery to remove his tonsils and portions of his tongue and soft palate, leaving a seven-inch scar across his throat.