Moosie Drier

Moosie Drier
Born (1964-08-06) August 6, 1964
Chicago, Illinois, United States
Occupation Actor, voice-actor, director
Years active 1972–present

Moosie Drier (born August 6, 1964) is an American television and film actor. His career began as a child actor. Drier had regular appearances on Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In, The Bob Newhart Show and Kids Incorporated, and has also done work as a voice actor and as a director.

Life and career

Drier was born in Chicago, Illinois. He was enrolled at U.S. Grant High School in Van Nuys, California. His first role was as a deaf boy in two 1972 episodes of Lassie. He began his television career as a recurring performer on Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In from the middle of season three to the final season in 1973, hosting a "Kid News for Kids" segment. During this period, Drier had movie roles in the 1972 Jack Lemmon comedy, The War Between Men and Women, the 1972 Barbra Streisand comedy Up the Sandbox, The Toy Game in 1973, and the made-for-TV comedies Here Comes the Judge (1972), Roll, Freddy, Roll! (1974), and All Together Now (1975). A notable movie role from this period includes his appearance as Adam Landers in 1977’s George Burns comedy Oh, God!.

Drier then began voice acting as a regular character in ABC’s 1974 These Are the Days. Other recurring television roles included "Howie Borden" on The Bob Newhart Show, the son of Howard Borden.

In 1976, on CBS’s short-lived series Executive Suite, Drier played a recurring character, B.J. Koslo. Throughout the 1970s, Drier also played a variety of one-shot roles on such TV shows as The Barbara Eden Show (1973), The Waltons (1973), Adam-12 (1973), Apple's Way (1974), Police Story (3 episodes, 1974, 1975), Emergency! (2 episodes in 1975), Doc (1975), and Little House on the Prairie (1976). During this period, Drier appeared in several ABC Afterschool Special episodes, including: Runaways (1974) Hewitt's Just Different (1977) and Andrea's Story: A Hitchhiking Tragedy (1983).

Hewitt’s Just Different, an Emmy winner, was a lead role for Drier, as the developmentally disabled title character's friend, advocate and defender, wherein he must choose whether to remain friends with Hewitt, despite pressure by family and friends to break off the friendship, even after Hewitt’s knuckleball coaching has allowed Drier to qualify for the school team.

Drier's late 1970s and early 1980s roles included 1977’s ants-on-the rampage TV thriller It Happened at Lakewood Manor, 1978 real-story based courtroom murder thriller When Every Day Was the Fourth of July, and Peter Benchley scripted sea thriller Hunters of the Reef in 1978. Other roles from this period were in 1978 biographical dramas; Drier played a young Mickey Rooney in the 1978 Judy Garland biography Rainbow, while in the Alan Freed bio American Hot Wax, Drier played Artie Moress, the head of a Buddy Holly fan-club, who gives a tearful on-the-air memorial just after the famous plane crash. Driers’ performance received by far the warmest comment from the subsequent, somewhat mixed New York Times review. That same year saw the filming, but not the release of the made-for TV Jack Albertson vehicle Charlie and the Great Balloon Chase saw Drier play the fatherless grandson of Albertsons’ character. Drier’s character encourages Albertson to take a late-life but long-dreamed-of balloon trip despite the reservations of most of the others around them—and ends up accompanying the old man despite on-ground pursuit of the balloon by the mother, the police, and the FBI. Charlie and the Great Balloon Chase was not actually shown until 1981, the year of Albertsons’ death; which perhaps by accident sharpens the frequent theme in Drier’s early work as the son-figure of estranged father figures.

In 1980, Drier played a character also called Moosie in The Hollywood Knights. In the 1980s made-for-TV movie, Homeward Bound, he played the terminally ill Bobby Seaton, who seeks over a last summer vacation to repair his relationship with his father Jake, played by David Soul.

Drier’s one-shot appearances included: CHiPs (1980), Family Ties (1983). Between 1984 and 1988, Drier played Riley, one of the original non-musical cast members on Kids Incorporated. In 1988, he made his director debut with episode 84, "Kahuna Kids". He also acted in the 1985 made-for-TV movie Student Court. This period also saw an increase in Drier's 1-spot appearances, including Diff'rent Strokes (1986), The A-Team (1986), Highway to Heaven (1986), Blacke's Magic (1986), Cagney & Lacey (1986), Hunter (1986) and Just the Ten of Us (1988). TV and movie acting work by Drier became much more sporadic, seeing only an appearance on The Munsters Today (1990), and ten years later on an episode of Jack & Jill (2000), and no known movie acting during the first half of the 1990s.

The late 1990s saw Drier in minor roles in sci-fi space-ship hijack thriller Velocity Trap (1997), and Storm Trackers (1999), a thriller about a secret military weather control machine gone awry. Since this period, as mentioned above, his career has emphasized voice-over work on a 1989 episode of The Burbs, and on such films as Teaching Mrs. Tingle (1999), American Beauty (1999), What Lies Beneath (2000) Shrek (2001), 40 Days and 40 Nights (2002), The Shape of Things (2003), Jungle Book 2 (2003), the Lion King 1½ (2004), The Chronicles of Riddick (2004), Hauru no ugoku shiro (Eng: Howl's Moving Castle) in 2004, and Madagascar (2005). Drier also directed television episodes, including Reba (2005) and Too Late with Adam Carolla (2005). He directed a well-received children's musical, Precious Piglet and Her Pals at the Whitefire Theatre in Sherman Oaks, as well as the critically acclaimed Love Like Blue in 2007, also at the Whitefire Theatre. Drier directed "The Peacemaker" (TV pilot 2009).

Filmography

Television (actor)

Filmography (actor)

Filmography (director)

Theater (director/producer)

References

Notes

    External links

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