Rob Riggle admits he joined the Marines after hearing an offhand comment from an FBI agent

Actor Rob Riggle had a surprising reason for joining the Marines.

During a recent appearance on the "Club Random with Bill Maher", the 55-year-old actor discussed his career as a Marine, explaining he joined the military at the age of 19, and while he "wanted to serve," he would not have "put it as a top priority."

"I had dreams of maybe being an FBI agent. And I called the FBI—this is back when you had to call people, there was no internet—and I called the local office and said, 'What do you guys look for?' he said. Some nice special agent had some time to kill, I guess, and he said, ‘Well, we like lawyers. We like accountants.’ And then he goes, ‘Oh, by the way, we also like Marine officers. We tend to hire a lot of those guys.’"

After thinking it over, Riggle knew he "wasn't going to be a lawyer or accountant" and thought, "Well, maybe I could do the Marine thing."

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While he never made it to the FBI, Riggle served in the Marines for 23 years, reaching the rank of lieutenant colonel and serving deployments in Afghanistan, Albania, Liberia and Kosovo.

Elsewhere in the interview, Riggle explained that while in school he was a theater and film major, and although he enjoyed it, he "just didn't see a path to becoming an actor."

"What was interesting was that as I went through the Marines, I got more confidence. I got more confidence, I got more confidence," he explained. "This is what I thought my limits were. Then they showed me my new limits, right? I said, 'You know what? Maybe I could be an actor. Maybe I could be a comedian.'"

Riggle later had a short stint as a cast member on "Saturday Night Live" from 2004 to 2005, and later got his breakthrough as a correspondent for "The Daily Show."

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He later appeared in numerous comedies, including "New Girl," "Arrested Development," "The Office" and "Modern Family," in which he played Ty Burrell's character, Phil Dunphy's arch nemesis, Gil Thorpe.

"I have done many adventurous things in the Marine Corps, you know, even flying planes, doing barrel rolls and splits'," Riggle said about the transition from the military to acting during an appearance on "The View" in November 2025.

"It wasn’t until the first time that I stepped on stage at The Comic Strip Live on the Upper East Side to do my first five minutes that I really had been vulnerable and completely terrified. It was a different kind of terror. That kind of terror is a very emotional terror."

He later spoke to Fox News' Eric Shawn for a new Fox Nation series, "Courage & Commitment: USMC 250" about earning the title of a Marine, saying, "You get humbled very quickly" and develop a "thick skin."

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"You have to earn the title [of] Marine," Riggle told Shawn. "You don't sign with a recruiter and show up to boot camp, and you're a Marine. No, you have to finish boot camp."

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