Patrick Muldoon, the veteran actor who starred in the cult film Starship Troopers as well as on the TV shows Days of Our Lives and Melrose Place, has died. He was 57.
Muldoon died Sunday of a heart attack at the Beverly Hills home he shared with his girlfriend, TMZ reported.
Muldoon’s four-decade acting career was peppered with roles that alternated between playing heartthrobs, or cads, and sometimes even caddish heartthrobs.
Born in San Pedro, California, on Sept. 27, 1968, Muldoon attended Loyola High School in Los Angeles and then USC, where he studied English and communications, graduating in 1991. He played football in high school and for the Trojans. At college and after graduating he also did some modeling.
After being noticed by a talent scout, Muldoon won his first TV part on ABC’s Who’s the Boss? in 1990. He followed that with a brief recurring role on NBC’s popular teen sitcom Saved by the Bell in 1991. His big break came the following year when he won the part of Austin Reed on the long-running NBC soap opera Days of Our Lives.
On Days of Our Lives, Muldoon portrayed the heartthrob Reed, a nice guy who had a long-running fan favorite relationship with Christie Clark’s Carrie. He reprised the role in the Days of Our Lives telefilms Night Sins (1993) and Winter Heat (1994). After a long absence, he returned as Reed from 2011-12. (Austin Peck also played Reed in the 1990s and sporadically in the 2000s and 2010s.)
From nice guy Reed, Muldoon moved on to play the rakish criminal Richard Hart on Fox’s popular 1990s primetime soap Melrose Place. He joined the show during the third season in 1995 and was there until his character’s death in season five.
Muldoon’s most memorable film role was the cocky pilot Zander Barcalow in Paul Verhoeven’s cult 1997 sci-fi action film Starship Troopers. Zander was the obnoxious rival to Casper Van Dien’s Johnny Rico, and he openly pursued Rico’s girlfriend, Carmen Ibanez (Denise Richards). Securing his place in pop culture, Zander meets an iconic death in the film, yelling at the alien Brain Bug, “One day, someone like me is going to kill you and your whole fucking race !” before he has his brain sucked out.
Muldoon’s other film credits included Rupert Wainwright’s Stigmata (1999), John Hough’s Bad Karma (2001) and James Fargo’s Born to Ride (2011), on which he co-starred with Van Dien. On TV, he was a prolific star of telefilms, including the titles Chain of Command (2000), Project Viper (2002) and A Boyfriend for Christmas (2004).
Survivors include his partner, Miriam Rothbart, and his sister, Shana Muldoon-Zappa (she’s married to Frank Zappa’s son Ahmet).
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