Richard Bischoff was born in Massachusetts and graduated from Emerson College with a degree in Mass Communications. At Emerson, he acted and wrote numerous student television projects, worked at Emerson's two radio stations, and drank beer at Crossroads. He interned with CNN, and worked in television production in the Boston area. Wanting to do more writing, he got a corporate job as a marketing communications writer with a major financial software company.

When that company merged, and the urge to move to Atlanta and work as a corporate monkey-boy down there failed to excite him, he bailed to exciting San Jose, CA for a PR job — a career move that proved to be disastrous in the first ten seconds, when he realized his misake in ever thinking he'd fit in in a corporate PR environment. Realizing that the time to step up and make a mature adult decision was upon him, Bischoff face two or three seconds of introspection and signed up for acting lessons. That proved to me more challenging, infuriating and fun than PR. The PR company agreed and laid him off. Good times.

Suddenly unemployed, Bischoff found himself doing extra work for $40/day while whittling through his severance pay and unelployment insurance. For some reason he was signed by a talent agent and started being sent out on auditions. He also began performing in plays in the San Francisco Bay Area's thriving theatre scene, none of which involved nudity, but he did have to wear latex underwear in one show, played a bear in another, and a cranky old man in yet another play. Oh, and there was the suicidal mouse. That was excellent. He has been a member of the Screen Actors Guild since 1994. He can be seen in The Pursuit of Happyness, starring Will Smith. He is also appearing in, and co-writing, an independent short film with director/editor Orestes Cross.