Thomas Francis Murphy was born in Dayton, Ohio in 1953. Early in his adult life he made his living in dairy barns and on factory floors. He has trained as a hard hat diver, worked as an EMT, as a social worker, and freelance theatre critic. For a great many years he made his living as a house painter. In his thirties, while living in Little Rock, AR, Murphy decided to take an acting class. The class changed his direction in life. He spent the next 20 years on the East Coast with a paintbrush in one hand and a script in the other while pursuing a career in the theatre. He trained with Shakespeare& Co of Lenox, MA and spent years performing in off off Broadway houses in New York where his work in the plays of Sam Shepard garnered high praise in the New York Times and several other publications. Murphy moved to New Orleans in 2013 and has since worked across from many of Hollywood's A-list actors including Tom Hanks in News Of The World directed by Paul Greengrass, Woody Harrelson in True Detective, Chiwetel Ejiofor in 12 Years a Slave, and Keanu Reeves in The Whole Truth. Murphy also had principle roles in Free State Of Jones, opposite Mathew McConaughey and Same Kind of Different As Me, with Greg Kinnear and Renee Zellweger. He was in Season 1 of Mindhunter and was a somewhat series regular on Salem as the deeply repressed Reverend Lewis. More recently he played the Lord's appointed assassin on on the Fox series Filthy Rich and spent two seasons as Brion, one of the Scavengers on The Walking Dead. He has appeared on American Horror, and a host of other projects.