Rick Wallace

Rick Wallace has been a prolific television producer and director since the 1980s. He won multiple Emmy Awards for the dramatic series "L.A. Law," and since the late 2000s has enjoyed a lengthy connection to the acclaimed crime drama "The Closer." Wallace's career began as an assistant director on features, including the heavily-influential "Halloween" helmed by John Carpenter and released in 1978. By the beginning of the '80s, he was serving as first assistant director on "Hill Street Blues," one of the most beloved dramas of all time, and was manning the lead helmer's chair by '83 (one of the many years that the show won a Directors Guild of America prize for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Dramatic Series). Shortly after "Hill Street Blues" ended its broadcast run, Wallace was working behind the scenes of "L.A. Law," and continued on the show through the 1990s. During the late '80s, he also produced and directed the pilot episode of the popular "Doogie Howser, M.D.." The '90s and '00s brought helming work in series whose genres included legal, action-adventure, and crime, but with regards to Wallace's producing work, that slowed until the mid-'00s, at which point he became involved with a slew of new shows. Among them was the political drama "Commander in Chief" and the more successful "The Closer," which stars Kyra Sedgwick as a homicide detective who specializes in thinking outside the box.