Sam
McMurray

Sam McMurray is the son of actors Jane Hoffman and Richard McMurray. He grew up in the New York theatre world and after college entered that world himself as a dues paying Equity member. He has too many New York theater credits to list here, but is particularly fond of the original productions of Translations, The Taking of Miss Janie, Kid Purple, Comedians, and Gray Spades. He spent six months as Lt. Byrd in the Negro Ensemble Company's original production of Charles Fuller's A Soldier's Play.

He is a long time member of Ensemble Studio Theater and a veteran of nine summers at the Eugene O'Neill Playwrights Conference between 1983 and 2000, where he debuted works by John Patrick Shanley, James Yoshimura and Adam Rapp, among others, as well as a regular contributor to the Seven Devils in McCall, Idaho. He has twice won the Drama-Logue Award, for Savage in Limbo and for Tom and Jerry.

Sam moved to LA in 1986 to raise a family. Notable film credits are Raising Arizona, L.A. Story, Drop Dead Gorgeous, Stone Cold, The Mod Squad, Slappy and the Stinkers, Americons, and Jenny's Wedding. In 2019 he voiced the Postmaster General in Klaus — the man who exiles his own son to Smeerensburg and sets the whole thing in motion.

TV credits abound with The Tracey Ullman Show, Likely Suspects, A League of Their Own, Matt Waters, Medicine Ball, Stand By Your Man, and his favorite, Dinosaurs. He recurred on The King of Queens, Friends, Freaks and Geeks, and Breaking Bad, then on Scandal, The Fosters, Masters of Sex, and Mom. In 2015 he starred in a new series for ABC on Friday nights called Cristela, which deserved a better fate, but network people are just as obtuse now as they ever were.

The theatre never quite let go. In 2019 he went to the Alabama Shakespeare Festival to play a gravedigger in the world premiere of Susan Ferrara's Buzz, directed by Carrie Preston. Six years later Preston cast him as Coach Willoughby on her series Elsbeth.