Richard Moll

The most profitable shaved head on NBC

Richard Moll stood six feet seven inches tall. That height shaped every contract he signed in Hollywood after he arrived in Los Angeles in the late seventies. He was not an easy actor to cast, because his imposing presence intimidated casting directors looking for everyday types.

In 1982, he had to shave his head to play a mystic warrior in the film The Sword and the Sorcerer. It was a purely aesthetic decision for that B-movie shoot. But when he auditioned for a new legal comedy shortly afterward, producer Reinhold Weege was left speechless at the sight of him.

That show was Night Court, and his role was Bull Shannon. The producers required him to keep his head shaved for the nine seasons the show ran. So the look Moll hated became his biggest source of income until 1992.

It was a very profitable aesthetic curse.

Moll never wanted to be a funny giant making faces on camera. Before turning to television, he had studied history and psychology at the University of California. But his square jaw and enormous hands kept pushing him toward genre films and brutish villain roles.

A refuge in the voice booth

In the early nineties, the actor grew tired of being offered only roles built on his muscular frame. His voice was a natural thunder that needed no studio equalization. So he looked to animation to show he had range beyond physical comedy.

In 1992, he voiced Harvey Dent in Batman: The Animated Series. His take on Two-Face is still considered the most balanced blend of tragedy and madness. He needed no makeup or prosthetics to scare viewers because his voice did all the dirty work.

His voice was as big as his body.

He took on all kinds of projects to pay the bills at his home in Big Bear Lake. In 1994, he appeared in The Flintstones, and in 1996 he worked alongside Arnold Schwarzenegger in Jingle All the Way. He never turned down a paycheck, no matter how small the role (sometimes it was just two lines in a bar scene).

But his relationship with the cast of Night Court was always distant. Moll skipped cast reunions and tribute events, preferring the solitude of the California mountains. In 2001, he accepted a role in Scary Movie 2 simply to poke fun at his own image as a horror-movie giant.

A retreat far from the spotlight of Los Angeles

During the first decade of the 2000s, he voluntarily scaled back his work. In 2010, he appeared in the film Thomas Kinkade’s Christmas Cottage, and a year later in Scooby-Doo! Curse of the Lake Monster. He was no longer chasing critical acclaim, but the peace of a schedule without early mornings on set.

Despite his fierce on-screen presence, those close to him always highlighted his passion for ornithology and the outdoors. He spent his final years surrounded by nature, steering clear of the nostalgia events that generate so much money in the United States. He had no interest in returning as Bull Shannon, not even for an astronomical fee.

He died on October 25, 2023 at his home in Big Bear Lake at the age of 80. The coroner's office confirmed that death was due to natural causes while he was sleeping. He left an estate managed by his two children and a filmography of more than 170 titles across film and television.