Biography: Born December 15th, 1964, the son of a dairy farmer in Shafer, Minnesota (population 81), Rickaby attended Chisago Lakes High School where, as a senior, he received a letter from a professor at the University of Minnesota in Duluth encouraging him to attend their theatre program. Taking this as a sign, he enrolled at UMD and did not get cast in single production his first year. Briefly, he conside ... show all Born December 15th, 1964, the son of a dairy farmer in Shafer, Minnesota (population 81), Rickaby attended Chisago Lakes High School where, as a senior, he received a letter from a professor at the University of Minnesota in Duluth encouraging him to attend their theatre program. Taking this as a sign, he enrolled at UMD and did not get cast in single production his first year. Briefly, he considered hanging it up and becoming a tree trimmer but rededicated himself and was cast in seven full-scale productions his sophomore year. In 1987, he received a scholarship to attend New York University's MFA program with contemporaries and classmates Peter Krause ("Six Feet Under"), Camryn Manheim ("The Practice"), Marcia Gay Harden ("Pollock"), Debra Messing ("Will & Grace"), and worked on two original plays with Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and director Tony Kushner. Rickaby performed in numerous New York and regional theatre productions including The New York Shakespeare Festival, The Roundabout, and The Actors Theatre of Louisville. In 1995, he was hired by Nicholas Hytner ("The Madness of King George") to play Jigger Craigin in the National Tour of "Carousel". In front of the camera, Rickaby has demonstrated a wide range of looks and sensibilities: A hitman, a beatnik, a practicing Ba'hai who perpetually loses his composure, a straight-laced airplane mechanic, a bumbling necrophiliac coroner, a know-it-all janitor, an abusive husband, a jailhouse snitch, a carnival barker, a clueless ex-boyfriend, a European modern dance choreographer, Steinbrenner's right-hand-man, Hefner's right-hand-man, a pedophile, an FBI agent, a dopey commercial fisherman, and an aphrodisiac smuggler round out a fair sampling of his diversity.
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