Patrick Muldoon, the actor who brought Austin Reed to life on Days of Our Lives and made Richard Hart one of Melrose Place’s most compelling villains, has died. He was 57. His death came suddenly on April 19, 2026, the result of a heart attack, cutting short a career that had never stopped moving forward and a creative life that was, by every indication, just hitting its stride.
Born William Patrick Muldoon III on September 27, 1968 in San Pedro, California, he arrived in the world with Irish roots on his father’s side and Croatian roots on his mother’s, attended Loyola High School, played tight end for the USC Trojans, and graduated in 1991 before the entertainment industry pulled him in a direction that would define the next three and a half decades of his life.
His early television work included Who’s the Boss? and Saved by the Bell, but it was Days of Our Lives that made him a household name, specifically in the households of the devoted daytime audience that adopted him as Austin Reed from 1992 to 1995. He returned to the role in 2011 and 2012, proof that some characters and some actors are simply impossible to separate from each other. Melrose Place followed, where he played the villain Richard Hart from 1995 to 1996, and demonstrated something that the best soap actors always know, that the audience loves a compelling antagonist just as much as a hero, sometimes more.
His film career stretched wide and kept stretching. Starship Troopers in 1997, directed by Paul Verhoeven, gave him his most iconic big screen moment as Zander Barcalow, and the decades that followed saw him move through an enormous range of projects, from Lifetime and Hallmark films to crime thrillers, holiday movies, horror, and family fare. He was not an actor who waited for the perfect role. He was an actor who worked, consistently and with evident commitment, across every format the industry offered.
What distinguished the later chapter of his career was the pivot toward producing. Through his Storyboard Productions company he worked on films including The Tribes of Palos Verdes, Arkansas, Marlowe, The Card Counter, and Riff Raff. Just two days before his death he posted on Instagram about his excitement over an upcoming role in Kockroach, a film starring Chris Hemsworth, Taron Edgerton, Zazie Beetz and Alec Baldwin, currently filming in Australia. That post, full of genuine enthusiasm, is now an accidental farewell, a reminder that he was someone who never stopped looking forward.
His final acting role was in Dirty Hands, a crime thriller with Denise Richards and Michael Beach, set for release later this month. He was also a musician, fronting the band The Sleeping Masses, whose song The Woman is the Way appeared in the 2009 film Powder Blue and on the television series The Hills.
He is survived by his partner Miriam Rothbart, his parents Deanna and Patrick Muldoon Sr., his sister Shana and brother-in-law Ahmet Zappa, and his niece Halo and nephew Arrow Zappa.