This is a short version of my biography. I’ll expand it after I get the site customized and working well. I’m in my early fifties, living in North Hollywood (the “Valley”, as it’s commonly referred to) with my partner Lisa Morton and three very different, but very neat cats; Roxie, Buster and Sylvia. Of course, we have a million books, posters, Halloween art, dvd’s, and books (did I mention books?) all piled in to one small apartment. I work at the Iliad Bookshop during the day (a job I love, btw) and spend a good amount of time reading, watching films and working on a wide variety of projects that interest me.

I grew up in Arizona where I attended college at Northern Arizona University (N.A.U.) for a year and a half, then transferred to Arizona State University (A.S.U.) where I graduated with a BFA in Directing in 1977. I was accepted to the graduate program in Acting at the Yale School of Drama in 1979 and spent three years of training there until I graduated in 1983 with an MFA in Acting. After that, I lived in New York for a time, doing plays and trying to make ends meet. Eventually, I settled in Aspen, Colorado for a couple years and worked at the Snowmass Repertory Theatre.

In 1990, the wanderlust was on and I kicked around Los Angeles, Seattle and Chicago for several months (by car) until I finally decided to come to Los Angeles and try my hand a film acting. I was very successful initially, appearing in several films (Army of Darkness, Point Break) and lots of TV (LA Law, ER and Lois & Clark) until late in 1990 when I dropped out of film to work exclusively in the Theatre. I spend several years working with an experimental Theatre company called City Garage. Eventually, I decided to quit the company and work exclusively on my own documentary films and various machinima projects. Machinima has become a passion for me and I’ve worked as an actor and as a sound designer on several well-known machinima films (Edge of Remorse, The Snow Witch).

At present, I’m hoping to branch out into directing for machinima and have several projects in development. I’ve also begun to do a good deal of writing and was recently hired by Renderosity.com as one of their front page news writers where I’ve written essays and reviews on films, books and software. I very much like working for Renderosity and hope to continue there as long as I can. My job at the Iliad Bookshop is a pleasure.

I’m very fortunate to have a wonderful partner in Lisa Morton, herself a professional writer of screenplays, short stories and several non-fiction works. She is an ideal partner in every respect and I owe a good deal of my growth as an adult to her. She designed my first personal web-page and I thank her for that!

If you have comments, please feel free to leave them on the blog or you can contact me via email at rgrove2@rgrove.com or rgrove@iliadbooks.com