When an actor passes away in the middle of his career, with projects still in the works and friends still anticipating his calls, a specific type of grief sets in. That exact weight has been carried since Patrick Muldoon’s death on April 19; even after the paperwork catches up, it doesn’t end neatly.
His death certificate, recently made public, names myocardial infarction as the cause, with pulmonary embolism and hereditary coagulopathy listed as contributing conditions. It reads like a puzzle whose pieces only make sense in retrospect, as these documents always do in a clinical manner.
| Patrick Muldoon — Bio & Career Snapshot | Details |
|---|---|
| Full Name | Patrick Christopher Muldoon |
| Date of Birth | September 27, 1968 |
| Date of Death | April 19, 2026 |
| Age at Death | 57 |
| Place of Death | Beverly Hills, California |
| Cause of Death | Myocardial infarction (heart attack) |
| Contributing Conditions | Pulmonary embolism; hereditary coagulopathy |
| Breakthrough Role | Austin Reed on Days of Our Lives (1992–1995) |
| Notable Roles | Melrose Place, Starship Troopers (1997), Project: ALF |
| Final Film | Dirty Hands (2026), opposite Denise Richards |
| Upcoming Posthumous Release | Kockroach |
| Survived By | Long-term partner; close friends including Denise Richards, Lisa Rinna, Mario Lopez |
He was fifty-seven. There was nothing left to do when paramedics arrived after his partner discovered him unconscious in their Beverly Hills home’s restroom. It’s the kind of detail that lands differently when you remember the version of him from the late nineties, all jawline and confidence, climbing into a federation uniform in Starship Troopers and somehow making the absurdity of bug warfare feel sincere.
Due in part to their relationship lasting longer than most Hollywood friendships, Denise Richards has been carrying a large portion of the public grief. During a press tour for Dirty Hands, the thriller they co-shot shortly before his passing, she revealed to Extra TV’s Derek Hough that it had been nearly forty years.
She is now 55 years old, and she talked about him in the same way that people talk about someone who has been a constant since neither of them knew what their lives would turn out to be. In the 1990s, they dated. They remained near each other. She described him as family.
As I watched the interview, I was struck by how candid she sounded. There’s a sense she’s still trying to figure out how to do this part — the press, the smiling at junkets, the answering of questions about a film whose male lead is gone. “It’s very difficult,” she said, and you could tell she meant it in the smallest, most domestic way. She hasn’t yet seen Dirty Hands’ final cut. She’s seen fragments of it. scenes from time to time. But sitting down with the finished thing, watching him move through a story that he can’t see her watching — she isn’t ready.
Sami, Lola, and Eloise, her daughters, were also acquainted with him. They referred to him as Pat. Richards mentioned that none of them can watch it yet either, and she said it without dressing it up, the way a mother might mention any family fact. “One day,” she remarked. But not right now.
She also stated unequivocally that she thought this was his best performance. It’s the kind of claim that’s easy to dismiss as eulogy talk, but she pushed back against that gently, insisting she’d been telling him so during filming. There’s a version of his career where Starship Troopers is the high-water mark and everything after is supporting work and soap returns and the steady churn of an actor who kept showing up. And there’s another version — the one Richards is sketching — where he was still building, still finding new registers, and Dirty Hands was the proof.
Tributes from Lisa Rinna and Mario Lopez and others have echoed the same theme, which is that he made people feel safe on set, generous in a town that doesn’t always reward generosity. He has a posthumous release still coming, Kockroach, a project he’d been excited about as both actor and producer. It’s strange to think of him expanding his body of work after his body has stopped. But that’s how this business goes sometimes. The work outlasts the worker, and the people left behind have to decide when, or whether, to look.
