Richard Zampella (SAG/AFTRA) spent an idyllic childhood growing up on the grounds of 100 acre estate in Northwest New Jersey under the watchful eye of his father who was a physician. For many years his father owned and operated a 48 room former Resort hotel and ran it as a nursing home from 1954 until 1972.
Zampella who is the middle of three siblings, was motivated early by the urge to act. After he finished high school he auditioned for and was accepted into Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University. While there, he studied acting under William Esper. Esper was a graduate of the Neighborhood Playhouse School of Theatre, where he was trained by Sanford Meisner. After heading to Manhattan, Zampella appeared on a number of daily television serials including Ryan’s Hope, Another World and All My Children. He spent one season appearing on The Guiding Light for CBS as rookie police officer Vince Lupone. He made film appearances in re-make of The Thomas Crowne Affair, A Beautiful Mind, Six Degrees of Separation and several other movie roles. Zampella spent one season on the HBO television series 'Oz' and appeared in several episodes of 'Sex and the City'. He was Timothy Hutton's stand-in for A&E's 'Nero Wolf'. He has appeared in a number of commercials and advertisements for Levis 501 Jeans, Frangelico, Macys, Maybelline and Coca Cola. Between auditions, Zampella worked under the restaurant impresario Joe Baum for many years at The Rainbow Room as well as other noted restaurants including Le Cirque with Sirrio Maccione and Aureole with Charlie Palmer.
In 1987 Zampella enlisted in the United States Army and completed basic training with Alpha Company, 4th US Training Batallion of the 39th Infantry Regiment at Fort Dix, NJ. He went on to Ft. Huarchuca where he completed training as a Miltary Intellegence Analyst(96B) and served an additional 16 years in the Army reserves serving on the General's Staff (G2) of the 50th Armored Division. He retired with the rank of Staff Sergeant.
In 1999 Zampella was offered a position at the Plaza Hotel on Central Park South where he ran the Oak Room and Oak Bar. While working at The Plaza, he was recruited by the Vice President of Sheraton Hotels who offered him the position of Food & Beverage Director at The Essex House Hotel where he remained for several years.
In 2006 Zampella gave up his role in the hospitality industry to work as a Producer & Editor for Writer/Director John Mulholland on the documentary Cooper & Hemingway: The True Gen. The film was reviewed by The New York Times film critic Andy Webster on October 11, 2013, and was named an NY Times Critics' Pick by Manohla Dargis, A. O. Scott and Stephen Holden. Webster said the picture was proof that the work of these two men "endures and so does what they stood for”.
History has always been a keen interest of mine. In my own small way, producing documentaries is a way to preserve those stories that might otherwise be lost to time. I am a preservationist by nature and a proponent that history can teach us about our collective past. Also, by preserving historic structures as I do -filmmaking has become a natural extension of my interest in preservation as a whole.
Mulholland and Zampella followed up with several projects for Paramount Pictures, Liongate Entertainment and Warner Home Video. In 2023 they created programing for American Public Television including: Inside High Noon, narrated by Matthew Rhys and Elmore Leonard: But Don’t Try to Write narrated by Campbell Scott. Both air regularly on PBS nationally and in Europe on PBS America. Zampella also produced and edited Sergeant York: Of God and Country for Warner Home Video which is narrated by Liam Neeson.
Other production credits include: The 110th anniversary birthday celebration of jazz legend Duke Ellington in conjunction with the Mayor's Office of New York City and the MTA when Mayor Michael Bloomberg designated "Duke Ellington Day" to celebrate the anniversary of the jazz legend's birth. On September 11, 2015, Zampella received an Editor's Pick from CNN for his photo essay on the 14th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attack.
In the 2010s Zampella opened several businesses in the sleepy hamlet of Point Lookout, NY which is located on the South Shore of Long Island. In 2017 & 2018 Skiperdees Ice Cream Shop was voted as the Best Ice Cream Parlor on Long Island with 780,243 votes cast and tabulated. In 2018, he designed, built and re-opened The Food Mill which Nicholas and Carmela Merola opened as a market in 1930.
As the Creative Director of Transmultimedia Entertainment, Zampella has worked with numerous clients in all areas of media including marketing, graphic design, digital cinema package production, sound design, motion graphics, lighting and cinematography. Well rounded in all aspects of production, he also produces broadcast compliant files for network television and for major streaming platforms including Hulu, Netflix, Amazon Prime and Apple TV.
As a preservationist, Zampella owns and operates Idylease which is a Historic Landmark Hotel that was erected in 1902. Thomas Edison was a guest of the hotel in the 1900s. Idylease is a historically significant example of early 20th century resort architecture in Northwest, New Jersey. It remains the only surviving example of resort facilities in the region and recalls the popularity of the area as a vacationland for the middle class in the early twentieth century.