Moosie Drier (born August 6, 1964) is an American television and film actor. He is best known for his roles as Adam Landers in Oh, God! and Riley on Kids Incorporated. Drier had regular appearances on Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In and The Bob Newhart Show. He has also worked as a voice actor and as a director.
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Life and career
Drier was born in Chicago but raised in California. He was named after former New York Yankee Bill "Moose" Skowron, who was a friend of Drier's father. He attended U.S. Grant High School, Van Nuys, California.
Drier began his television career as a recurring performer on Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In from the middle of season three until the final season in 1973, hosting a "Kid News for Kids" segment. His first dramatic role was as a deaf boy in two 1972 episodes of Lassie. 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, and the made-for-TV comedies Roll, Freddy, Roll! (1974) and All Together Now (1975). In 1977 he was cast in Oh, God! starring John Denver and George Burns. He followed this with a prominent role in the Alan Freed screen biography American Hot Wax (1978), in which the adolescent Drier recounts his reaction to Buddy Holly's death in a broken voice.
At age 10, Drier began voice-acting as a regular character on ABC’s 1974 These Are the Days. Other recurring television roles included Howie Borden, the son of series regular Howard (Bill Daily) on The Bob Newhart Show, and on CBS’s short-lived series Executive Suite as B.J. Koslo. He made appearances on The Waltons (1973), Adam-12 (1973), Apple's Way (1974), Police Story (3 episodes, 1974–75), Emergency! (2 episodes; 1975), Doc (1975), and Little House on the Prairie (1976), CHiPs (1980), Family Ties (1983), Kids Incorporated (1984), Diff'rent Strokes (1986), The A-Team (1986), Highway to Heaven (1986), Blacke's Magic (1986), Cagney & Lacey (1986), Hunter (1986), Just the Ten of Us (1988), The Munsters Today (1990), and Jack & Jill (2000).
During his early acting career, Drier also appeared in three ABC Afterschool Specials, in one of which, Hewitt's Just Different, Drier had a lead role as Willie Arthur, the friend of the developmentally disabled title character. His late 1970s and early 1980s roles included When Every Day Was the Fourth of July (1978) and Peter Benchley's thriller Hunters of the Reef (1978). Other teen roles consist primarily of biographical dramas; most notably, Drier played a young Mickey Rooney in the 1978 Judy Garland biography Rainbow. The year 1978 also saw the filming of the made-for TV Jack Albertson vehicle Charlie and the Great Balloon Chase, which was not released until three years later. In the 1980s made-for-TV movie Homeward Bound, he played a terminally ill young man, Bobby Seaton, who spends a last summer vacation repairing his relationship with his father, Jake, played by David Soul.
During the late 1990s, Drier accepted minor roles in the sci-fi space-ship hijack thriller Velocity Trap (1997) and Storm (1999), a thriller about a secret military weather control machine gone awry. Since 2000, he has specialized in voice-over work in 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 directed episodes of such series as 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.
Selected filmography
Filmography (actor)
1972 : The War Between Men and Women: David Kozlenko
1972 : Up the Sandbox: Billy
1973 : The Toy Game: Matthew Norris
1977 : Oh, God!: Adam Landers
1978 : American Hot Wax: Artie Moress, Buddy Holly Fanclub President
1980 : The Hollywood Knights: Moosie
1989 : The 'burbs: voice
1997 : Velocity Trap: E.D. Officer
1999 : Storm: Radar Tech
2018 : Charming: Additional voices
Filmography (director)
1988 : Kids Incorporated (TV): Kahuna Kids
2005 : Reba (TV)
2005 : Too Late with Adam Carolla (TV)
2009 : The Peacemaker (TV pilot)
Theater (director/producer)
2005: Precious Piglet and Her Pals
2007: Love Like Blue
2012: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
2013: God of Carnage
2014: Hollywood Shorts, Lend Me a Tenor, Littlest Angel
2015: Hollywood Shorts, Dead Pilots Society, Hound of the Baskervilles