Veteran character actor Richard Robichaux, a native of Channelview, remembers workshopping material for his first public performance, a talent show for adults at Cooter’s bar in nearby Houston, at the age of 6. “It was a comedy monologue and impressions of Jimmy Carter and some local politicians,” he says. “I still have the physical sensation of my knees shaking.” He won the talent show and returned the following week to defend his victory. His family wondered what took him so long to get to the stage.
Robichaux rhymes with “show,” as in show business, which is what the young entertainer pursued indefatigably, earning a theater degree at Stephen F. Austin State University and an MFA at Rutgers University in New Jersey. Having worked professionally in New York and Los Angeles, he’s compiled an enviable career’s worth of film and TV appearances by vanishing into memorable characters like the guidance counselor George Pappas on Disney+’s Big Shot and military scientist Carl Jenkins on Hulu’s Paradise.
It was in 2010, when he returned to Texas with his growing family, that things got big for the actor. Robichaux began working with Austin-based filmmaker Richard Linklater on his movie Bernie, followed by the widely celebrated Boyhood. The two have been making films together ever since, including 2023’s Hit Man starring Glen Powell.
Now permanently based in Austin, Robichaux has taught drama at some of the country’s most prestigious theater programs. He’s currently professor of acting at Texas State University in San Marcos, listed among the “25 Best Drama Schools” by The Hollywood Reporter last year.
It’s not only a fulfilling position but it gives him time and flexibility for Hollywood productions, which are increasingly coming to the Lone Star State. Last summer, he filmed close to home with Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick for their upcoming comedy-horror film, Family Movie.
This spring, Robichaux appears in the new MGM+ crime series Spider-Noir, a dark version of Spider-Man starring Nicolas Cage. Robichaux plays Harold Walters, editor of The Bugle. “He’s described as a ‘sensationalist vulture,’” Robichaux says. The black-and-white film noir is a long journey from Channelview.
Texas Highways: How would you describe your childhood?
Richard Robichaux: Channelview could produce a lot of chaos. My parents split up not that long after I was born but were both very supportive of me. I moved houses a lot and knew the neighborhoods could be scary and that you had to be tough. When I started hanging out with older kids, they recruited me to steal booze before school from a convenience store. No one would ever believe a little boy like me was stealing.
TH: Who was the first person to push you toward acting?
RR: I had an acting teacher at Stephen F. Austin, Allen Oster. I remember feeling very, very good about a performance and proud that he’d seen it. I saw him on Monday and he said, “I saw your performance. Nice routine.” It was such a hard note. I’d never had a teacher say, “That wasn’t good. That was cheap.” He became the teacher who really pushed me.
TH: Is “character actor” the right term for what you do?
RR: I think it is, especially for someone my age. I don’t think younger people would like the term as much because a lead has not traditionally been a character actor, though I think that’s changed. Nic Cage is a leading man who’s been acting like a character actor his whole life.
TH: You’ve been making movies with Richard Linklater since 2010. Did he influence your decision to return to Texas?
RR: Before I got back here, I was a fan of his. The fact that he could make it in Hollywood without being Hollywood or living there was what I was going for. I wanted to be living the life of an artist, and I wanted to be doing it while eating a Fredericksburg peach.
TH: How soon after moving back did you get cast in Bernie?
RR: We had just moved here from Los Angeles, and we’d just had a baby. I ended up meeting an Austin-based talent agent, Heather Collier, and a month later she had me audition for Bernie. A month after that I got the call, and then I found myself in a rehearsal room with Rick Linklater, Matthew McConaughey, and Jack Black, about to work with Shirley MacLaine.
TH: Following Bernie, Linklater’s Boyhood was quite celebrated. Your character has some powerful scenes with the lead character. How did you get the part?
RR: Linklater created that role for me. He called and said, “My kid’s gonna be 16, which means he needs a car. And if he needs a car, he needs a job. And if he needs a job, he needs a boss. And if he’s gonna have a boss, it needs to be Richard Robichaux.”
TH: How does it feel now to be in that movie?
RR: It’s so meaningful to me. I thought of the Godard movie, Breathless, and that question, “What is your greatest ambition in life?” The answer was, “I just want to be immortal and then die.” And when you’re in Boyhood, you sort of feel immortal. That movie is going to be seen for years.
TH: After teaching at Juilliard, Penn State, and the University of California San Diego, you joined the faculty of Texas State in 2023. What’s the unifying theory behind your teaching?
RR: More butter. I am unapologetically artistic, and I want my students to be as well. I like the kind of acting that looks like it costs something. I want it to be rich, but it has to be extroverted somehow. That is the hardest part. That is where you need an educator to learn how to extrovert those ideas.
TH: What hard lessons have you learned from the industry that are important to get across?
RR: I’m asking students to lean in, to be more themselves. Sometimes you have to know whether you’re Batman or Robin, and I’m Robin. And that’s OK. Robin lives in a nice house too. Even though I have the imagination to play Batman and I’m actor enough to play it, it’s too much distraction. That takes maturity to accept.
TH: Is there an enduring myth about show business that you dismantle in class?
RR: It’s not like athletics, where if you run the fastest they’ll charter a plane to come get you and give you a shoe deal. In our business, there’s something else going on. It’s slightly less understood. I once thought that talent would win the day. Now I realize tenacity is critical. Talent might give you a burst of attention, but then again so would a grand demonstration of stupidity. Longevity is the goal.
TH: Texas had a massive increase in government funding for film productions. Where do you think the state’s “Hollywood” is going to be located?
RR: I think it’s Dallas first, then Austin. Dallas is cheaper space-wise. But one of the big questions is whether they need so much square footage with AI. They’re slowing down and reevaluating whether they need storage for so many sets if sets are all going to be digital sooner than we think.
TH: When you look back on your career, what stands out?
RR: People say I’m lucky because I haven’t stopped working. I always thought it was luck you needed in this business, but it turned out it was the work that got me here. The work became the luck I needed.
