'Office Space' actor Richard Riehle dies at 78

Richard Riehle, the veteran character actor best known as Tom Smykowski in Office Space, has died at 78. 

Friends told TMZ that he died of natural causes at his home in Los Angeles on Thursday 15 October. The news broke on Monday.

Riehle played the unfortunate Initech employee who inspired the Jump to Conclusions mat in Mike Judge’s 1999 cult comedy. 

The prop has since disappeared, he told the A.V. Club in 2017. 

He had more than 400 film and television credits, and his last completed project was The Cowboy Killer. IMDb lists about 10 more projects in the works, some already finished but not yet released.

Born in Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin, on 12 May 1948, Riehle studied at the University of Notre Dame and earned an MFA from the University of Minnesota. 

He started in regional theatre, including Meadow Brook Theatre in Michigan, and was working in the Pacific Northwest when he appeared in the John Wayne film Rooster Cogburn. 

His first meaningful credits came in the 1980s with the soap One Life to Live and the film Black Rain, and by the 1990s he was a regular guest actor on shows such as The Golden Girls and Roseanne.

His film work included The Fugitive, Casino, Fried Green Tomatoes, Of Mice and Men, Bridesmaids and Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo. 

On television he played Walt Finnerty on Grounded for Life from 2001 to 2005 and appeared in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The West Wing, The Legend of Korra and Barry. 

He also played Santa Claus in eight different projects. No survivors or memorial plans have been reported.