Riley Novak

Birthday: 1 November 1973, Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, USA

Height: 188 cm

Born at Hollywood Community Hospital, this local boy began his career acting opposite Gena Rowlands, Martin Landau and Jon Voight in Three Plays of Love and Hate, directed by John Cassavetes. He has s ...Show More

Born at Hollywood Community Hospital, this local boy began his career acting opposite Gena Rowlands, Martin Landau and Jon Voight in Three Plays of Love and Hate, directed by John Cassavetes. He has since acted in thirty-two more plays in Los Angeles, New York City, London, Paris and Amsterdam.During a stint as a child actor in Hollywood, he did commercials, television and film, most notably acting opposite John Stamos on General Hospital in the recurring role of Jimmy.As an adult, he moved to New York City and graduated magna cum laude from New York University, earning a degree with honors in Psychology and a degree with honors in Acting from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts' Experimental Theatre Wing.During his tenure in New York, he acted in over twenty plays and wrote and directed eight plays on Broadway, Off Broadway and Off-Off Broadway.As an actor, his first professional New York gig was the role of Raul in the Sam Shepard play, Seduced, at Richard Foreman's Ontological-Hysteric Theatre. Some other New York highlights were performing in Machinal, directed by Moisés Kaufman, the Rainer Werner Fassbinder play, Bremen Freedom, directed by Paul Lazar and Annie-B. Parson, Anton Chekov's The Seagull with Andre Gregory and as the Tithe Collector in Bill Talen's initial run of Church of Billy at St. Clement's Church.His first professional directing gig in New York was an industry showcase entitled Toxic Sushi, featuring comedians Will Arnett and Rick Shapiro. He then directed Mr. Shapiro in the solo show, Man in Progress. He later co-founded No Explanation Comedy with Rick Shapiro and had a sold out 4 month run on the Lower East Side of New York City.Following that, he became a member and a project director for chashama, a theater collective, acting in Junior Black's Office, Disease Machine and writing and directing their production, Grey Language, featuring actors Tony Torn and Michael McCartney, among others. Grey Language was his last creative enterprise in New York. The play occurred in a vacant sporting goods store in Times Square on five stages with thirteen actors, sixteen televisions, in eight languages and with over 500 light and sound cues in an hour.He left New York to work as a writing assistant for Academy Award-nominated screenwriter, Eric Warren Singer, on screenplays for Universal, Dreamworks, Sony, Newline and Tristar.His last theater piece, a solo show he wrote, performed and directed in Los Angeles at The Third Street Theater, was about the Jerusalem Syndrome and patterned after the medieval Feast of Fools. Entitled Fool's Final Folly, it was based on the psychiatric research he conducted at Bellevue Medical Center while writing his Honors Thesis in college. The highlight of the show's month-long run for him was hearing Bud Cort laugh in the audience. Regarding the show, LA Weekly wrote, "There's no denying this guy's got talent."He has acted in Mystery Mansion (1983), Finding Graceland (1998), Faces on Mars (2003) (European Release only), The Notebook (2004) and countless AFI films.After 9/11, he enlisted in the United States Army Infantry to be of service to his country in a time of war. He has subsequently spent over 40 months in combat over the last ten years. Hide