Early Life and Career
Rasche was born in St. Louis, Missouri. His father was a minister and farmer. Rasche started in theatre, but also has appeared on numerous movies and television series. He became a member of the Chicago Second City, after John Belushi moved on to Saturday Night Live. He is perhaps best known for his portrayal of the title character in the cult television classic, Sledge Hammer!.
Rasche has a scholarly background (graduate degree from the University of Chicago) and also worked as a teacher and writer before going into show business full-time. After Second City, he starred in the Organic Theater's 1974 production of David Mamet's Sexual Perversity in Chicago, which established the playwright's characteristic blend of earthy, sometimes brutal dialogue. He later played to critical acclaim in the Broadway production of Mamet's Speed-the-Plow, and an Off-Broadway revival of Mamet's Edmond. He was Petruchio to Frances Conroy's Kate in a production of Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew directed by Zoe Caldwell at the American Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford, Connecticut in the mid-1980s.
In 1974, he fronted $1,000 to help start Victory Gardens Theater in Chicago. He began appearing on TV and films in 1977, making his film debut in 1978 in An Unmarried Woman, directed by Paul Mazursky. The following year, he had a small part in Woody Allen's Manhattan. Later, he appeared on the Miami Vice episode "Bushido" (first aired November 22, 1985) as a KGB agent attempting to capture a former colleague of Lt. Castillo (Edward James Olmos). Ironically, during his subsequent starring role on Sledge Hammer! his character would often makes jokes about Miami Vice, the show Rasche himself had guest starred on. Rasche is married to Heather Lupton with whom he has three children and who made a guest appearance in the series Sledge Hammer as Hammer's ex-wife.
Read more about this topic: David Rasche
Famous quotes containing the words early, life and/or career:
“The shift from the perception of the child as innocent to the perception of the child as competent has greatly increased the demands on contemporary children for maturity, for participating in competitive sports, for early academic achievement, and for protecting themselves against adults who might do them harm. While children might be able to cope with any one of those demands taken singly, taken together they often exceed children’s adaptive capacity.”
—David Elkind (20th century)
“This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of Nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. And also the only real tragedy in life is being used by personally minded men for purposes which you recognize to be base.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“I’ve been in the twilight of my career longer than most people have had their career.”
—Martina Navratilova (b. 1956)