Please Rewind Talent Wall

Bill Moseley

Bill Moseley has built a career around characters who rarely enter a movie quietly. Born in Stamford, Connecticut, in 1951 and raised in Barrington Hills, Illinois, he graduated from Yale University and worked as a journalist, writing for Omni, National Lampoon and Psychology Today, before acting became his focus. Moseley landed his first film role at 29, playing a cab driver in Alan Rudolph's Endangered Species. His defining early turn came as Chop Top in Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, a role he secured after Hooper saw him in the independent short The Texas Chainsaw Manicure. The performance established the kind of unnerving, darkly comic screen presence that would become central to Moseley's horror work. He went on to appear in the 1988 remake of The Blob and played Johnny in Tom Savini's 1990 remake of Night of the Living Dead. A small role as the Deadite Captain in Army of Darkness added another genre favorite to his filmography. In 2003, Moseley found a second signature character in Otis B. Driftwood, the maniacal member of Rob Zombie's House of 1000 Corpses. He returned as Otis in The Devil's Rejects and contributed a voice cameo as the character to The Haunted World of El Superbeasto. His other work with Zombie includes Halloween and the Werewolf Women of the SS segment created for Grindhouse. Moseley's career has also made room for the futuristic genetic opera Repo!, in which he played Luigi Largo, and for voice work, music videos and recording projects. He fronted Cornbugs as Chop Top alongside guitarist Buckethead and drummer Pinchface, released music with Rani Sharone as Spider Mountain, and collaborated with Philip Anselmo on Bill & Phil: Songs of Darkness and Despair. That overlap between actor and musician suits a performer whose work has often found its rhythm in horror's loudest, strangest corners.