Richard Schiff

Richard Schiff (born May 27, 1955) is an American actor.

He is best known for playing Toby Ziegler on The West Wing, a role for which he received an Emmy Award.

Schiff made his television directorial debut with The West Wing, directing an episode titled "Talking Points".

He is on the National Advisory Board of the Council for a Livable World.

He had a recurring role on the HBO series Ballers.

Schiff was born on May 27, 1955, in Bethesda, Maryland, and was raised in New York City.

He is the second of three sons of Charlotte, a television and publishing executive, and Edward Schiff, a real estate lawyer.

His brothers are producer Paul Schiff and talent manager David Schiff.

His parents divorced, and Charlotte later married Clarence B. Jones, Martin Luther King Jr.'s lawyer.

In the mid-1980s Schiff decided to try his hand at acting and landed several TV roles.

He directed several off-Broadway plays, including Antigone in 1983 with a just-graduated Angela Bassett.

In 1995, Schiff portrayed a lawyer in Se7en.

In 1996, he guest-starred on the TV series ER (Season 2, Episode 17), and appeared in NYPD Blue the following year.

In 1996, he portrayed a corrupt probation officer in City Hall along with Al Pacino and John Cusack.

He was seen by Steven Spielberg in an episode of the TV drama High Incident and was cast in The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997) which led to being cast more frequently and eventually to the role as White House Communications Director Toby Ziegler in the television series The West Wing.

Schiff became known for his reclusive and intense approach to his craft as well as his low-key delivery style.

Schiff portrayed a doctor alongside Eddie Murphy in the 1998 Dr. Dolittle remake.

He also portrayed Col./Brig.

Gen. Robert Laurel Smith in the 1998 HBO TV movie The Pentagon Wars, based on the real-life development of the US Army's Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicle.

The same year, Schiff appeared in the movie Deep Impact.

Schiff appeared in one episode of Becker during its first season.

In 2001, he acted in the movie What's the Worst That Could Happen? starring Martin Lawrence and Danny DeVito.

He played the part of the tough lawyer Mr. Turner in I Am Sam opposite Sean Penn and Michelle Pfeiffer and co-starred in People I Know with Al Pacino.

Schiff appeared in Ray as Jerry Wexler, shaving his beard for the role.

After working on The West Wing for six seasons, Schiff chose to leave the series, fulfilling his contractual obligations by appearing in half of the final season's episodes.

That same year, he starred alongside Peter Krause in Civic Duty.

Schiff had a cameo appearance as himself in the second-season finale of the series Entourage.

The scene has Schiff at lunch with his agent Ari Gold, where he declares a desire to act in action movies.

In February 2007, he appeared in the West End production of Underneath the Lintel in the Duchess Theatre in London, England, and appeared on BBC Radio Five Live and talked at length to Simon Mayo about his experiences acting in The West Wing and his new West End production.

In 2007, he appeared as Philip Cowen in the season finale of Burn Notice.

His early jobs before acting included driving a taxi in New York City and cleaning buses in the Greyhound terminal on 11th Avenue.

"It was a Teamster job, from 11pm to 7am. ... We cleaned the grease off bus wheels with diesel fuel. I also laid cable for Manhattan Cable Television. I was a Teamster in the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers".

Schiff and his family are Jewish.

His grandfather had alleged connections to the Jewish Mafia of New York.

He studied acting at the William Esper Studio.

Schiff initially studied directing.

He appeared again as a fictionalized version of himself in Entourage (2015).

He also starred in the premiere run of Underneath the Lintel, a one-act, single-character play by Glen Berger, at the George Street Playhouse in New Brunswick, New Jersey.

Since September 2017 he has had a leading role in ABC's medical drama The Good Doctor, as Dr. Aaron Glassman, president of a fictional teaching hospital in San Jose, California.

He also provided the voice and motion-capture for Odin in Santa Monica Studio's God of War: Ragnarök, released in 2022.