Richard Raphael

Richard was first-born in a family of five, to a Jewish father and a Costa Rican mother. While he was born and raised in New York, his family traveled to various countries a great deal during his childhood. His first love was not acting, but music. He began piano lessons at age 8, as well as karate classes, and continued with both for years to come. Before he began his senior year in high school, Richard's father made the decision to move the family to Rancho Mirage, CA. Although he wanted to remain in New York, Richard had no say in the matter. After graduation, he enlisted in the United States Air Force, to get out on his own. In the USAF, he was a combat engineer, and part of the honor guard, for four years active and four years of reserve. During that time, he played keyboards and harmonica (lead and backing vocals as well) in a cover band called Flashback, on his free weekends. After his military service, he went on to attend San Diego State University, and earned a B.S. in civil engineering, graduating in 1994. Despite his class-load, Richard still had time to be on the fencing team. Throughout all of this, Richard never stopped his martial arts training, which now includes several different disciplines, his specialty being Kali -- a Phillipine form of stick and knife fighting. His new passion for martial arts led him to the discovery of the Dog Brothers organization, founded by Mark Denny, through his best friend, Christian "True" Clifton -- a fellow Dog-Brother. Richard would be come to know as Hellhound amongst his Dog-Brothers. Even though he went on to work as an engineer for the next 15 years in several states, he found himself involved with acting. This first began as a desire to use his martial arts knowledge to choreograph stunts and fight sequences for independent movies. However, after seeing him instructing the actors, directors would often give him a role of his own. His very first role was that of a mental patient in the movie, Breaking Dawn. This was just the beginning of being type-cast as a "bad guy." Future roles would include a biker, a pirate, a lynch-mob leader, a thug, a bounty hunter, a zombie, and many more along those types. Ironically, Richard is nothing like the characters he plays, even though children often ask him if he is a pirate, and adults think he is either a biker or a mobster. One of the movies he played in, Death Valley: The Revenge of Bloody Bill, was originally released on DVD, and then picked up by the Sci-Fi channel. Richard recently completed his role as a zombie and militia survivor in Zombie Apocalypse, and looks forward to being part of the sequel. He continues to play "bad-guy" roles for several independent projects.