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Michael Patrick Moran (February 8, 1944, Yuba City, California - February 4, 2004, New York City) was an American actor and playwright whose career was rooted in New York's downtown experimental theater world.1 He is best known to film audiences as Nick "the Pig" in Scarface (1983) and for his supporting role as Frank the Superintendent in Ghostbusters II (1989).1
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Moran was born in Yuba City, California. Because his father served as a United States Army officer, the family moved frequently throughout his childhood.2 He graduated from Passaic Valley Regional High School in Little Falls, New Jersey in 1962.3 While still in high school, he designed and supervised the construction of an elaborate theatrical set, an early sign of his commitment to the stage.2
He gained his first professional experience under director Gilbert Rathbun at Seton Hall University,4 and later worked with the writer Robert Ludlum at the Theater on the Mall in Paramus, New Jersey.2 Early stage roles during this period included Sir Toby Belch in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night and "Mortimer, the Man Who Dies" in The Fantasticks.4
Moran later earned an MFA from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, and moved to the Lower East Side of Manhattan in 1966.1
Once in New York, Moran became a fixture of the city's off-Broadway and experimental theater scenes. He joined both the Manhattan Project theater company and the Cooper-Keaton Group, two companies that produced original work including plays he wrote himself.2 His play Call Me Charlie featured Danny DeVito in an early stage role.5 He also performed in productions mounted by the New York Shakespeare Festival.2
Through the 1990s and into the 2000s, Moran continued to work steadily in New York theater. He appeared in multiple plays by Horton Foote at the Ensemble Studio Theatre, and critics praised what one called his "aching rendition" in Foote's The Prisoner's Song in 2002.6 His final major stage credit was Fred "Pap" Rose in the musical Hank Williams: Lost Highway, written by Randal Myler and Mike Harelik and based on the life of Hank Williams, which played first at the Manhattan Ensemble Theatre in SoHo and then transferred to the Little Shubert Theater in Midtown in 2002-2003.1
Moran appeared in more than 30 films between 1979 and 2003.7 His most widely seen film role came in Brian De Palma's Scarface (1983), where he played Nick "the Pig," a loyal, heavyset enforcer in Al Pacino's Tony Montana organization. The character is killed in the film's climactic shootout sequence.1 Further supporting and character work followed through the late 1980s and 1990s in films including Ghostbusters II (1989) and A Perfect Murder (1998).7
On television, Moran held recurring appearances on Law & Order between 1991 and 2002, and also appeared in episodes of NYPD Blue, Matlock, and The Cosby Mysteries.7
In Ghostbusters II (1989), Moran played Frank, credited in the film as "Frank the Doorman," though the character himself explicitly objects to that title throughout the scene.8 The moment appears near the film's opening: Frank is speaking with a repairman doing maintenance on the apartment building when Dana Barrett arrives and asks for help with her groceries. He corrects her (and the repairman) by insisting he is not the doorman but the building's superintendent, though he eventually assists her anyway. As Dana and Frank speak, Oscar's baby carriage is set in motion by Psychomagnotheric Slime flowing beneath the street, triggering the central peril of the film.8
The screenplay draft dated November 27, 1988 also describes the character as the superintendent, confirming the doorman credit in the final film was a production error or a deliberate joke at the character's expense.
Moran died of Guillain-Barre syndrome in a New York hospital on February 4, 2004, four days before his sixtieth birthday.1
Some content on this page was researched using the Ghostbusters Wiki on Fandom.
"Michael P. Moran," Wikipedia, accessed 2026-06-13, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_P._Moran ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6
Variety, "Michael P. Moran. Character actor also known for voiceover work" (February 15, 2004). ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5
Herald News, "287 Students to Graduate From Passaic Valley H.S." (June 18, 1962). ↩
Verona-Cedar Grove Times, "Cedar Grove Youth Is Featured In 'Twelfth Night' at Seton Hall" (April 18, 1963). ↩ ↩2
Andy Meisler, "Danny de Vito Making It Small," Daily News (July 29, 1986). ↩
Neil Genzlinger, "THEATER REVIEW; When All the Characters Are in a Sense Prisoners," New York Times (May 29, 2002). ↩
"Michael P. Moran," IMDb, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0602930/ ↩ ↩2 ↩3
Ghostbusters II (1989), dir. Ivan Reitman. Columbia Pictures. ↩ ↩2
