Richard Sanders (actor)

Richard Kinard Sanders (born August 23, 1940) is an American actor and screenwriter. He is best known for playing a quirky news anchorman Les Nessman on the CBS sitcom WKRP in Cincinnati (1978–1982).

Biography
Sanders was born in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, the son of Thelma S. and Henry Irvine Sanders. After graduating from Leavenworth High School in Leavenworth, Kansas, he was enrolled in the Fine Arts Department at Carnegie Institute of Technology (now known as Carnegie Mellon University) as an acting major from 1958 to 1962. There he was a classmate of René Auberjonois and Aubrey Wilson, among others.

After graduation, Sanders studied Shakespearean theatre in England on a Fulbright Scholarship, and served a stint with the Peace Corps in the states of Paraiba and Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil.

Sanders joined Gordon Jump and Frank Bonner in reprising his original WKRP role on The New WKRP in Cincinnati in the early 1990s. He has guest appeared on other television shows, including Lou Grant, Kojak, The Rockford Files, Alice, Newhart, Murder, She Wrote, Designing Women, and Married... with Children, and has also acted in the mini-series Roots: The Next Generations, the animated series Inhumanoids, the horror film Lovers Lane, and the Robert De Niro/Cuba Gooding Jr. film Men of Honor.

Besides being an actor, Sanders is a screenwriter, having written, among other works, several episodes of WKRP in Cincinnati. In 1993, he starred in the computer game Day of the Tentacle as the voice of Bernard.

Partial filmography

 * Billy Jack Goes to Washington (1977) - Jerry, Dan's Friend
 * The Gypsy Warriors (1978) - German Scientist
 * Diary of a Teenage Hitchhiker (1979, TV Movie) - Mr. Fogarty
 * The Nude Bomb (1980) - German Delegate
 * Valley Girl (1983) - Drivers' Ed Teacher
 * Neon City (1991) - Dickie Devine
 * The Beans of Egypt, Maine (1994) - Lee Pomerleau
 * Black Circle Boys (1997) - Mr. Dunkel
 * Anoosh of the Airways (1999) - Burton Lloydhammer
 * Men of Honor (2000) - Donny Moor Bartender
 * Lovers Lane (2000) - Dr. Jack Grefe
 * Nowheresville (2000) - Duane (The Stalker)
 * Rose Red (2002) - Annie Wheaton's neighbor
 * Expiration Date (2006) - Municipal Cemetery Administrator