Jim Beaver

Jim Beaver is an American character actor, best known for his leading
roles on the TV series
Deadwood (2004) and
Supernatural (2005). Born in
Laramie, Wyoming a minister's son, he was raised in and around Irving,
Texas, a suburb of Dallas. Following high school and a year of college,
he joined the Marines and served as a radioman with the 1st Marine
Division in Vietnam. He attended Oklahoma Christian College (now Oklahoma Christian University), Edmond, OK, where he
first became interested in acting as a career. After one year, he
transferred to Central State University (now the University of Central
Oklahoma), Edmond, OK, and while a student made his professional debut in a
production of "Rain" at the Oklahoma Theatre Center in 1972. He
obtained a degree in theatre and returned to the Dallas area where he
worked for five seasons with the Dallas Shakespeare Festival. He had
written several plays in college and afterward (as well as a biography
of actor John Garfield), and in
1979 he was commissioned for the first of three plays at Actors Theatre
of Louisville. He also began to make appearances in bit roles in films
and television shows shot in the Dallas area, including
Semi-Tough (1977) and
Dallas (1978). Moving to New York in
1979, he worked in stock and in dinner theatre tours, and also
maintained a side career as a critic, columnist, and feature writer for
Films in Review, the magazine of the National Board of Review. An
assignment for an article on TV Superman
George Reeves led him to Los
Angeles. During his research there, his play "Verdigris" was produced
to solid reviews at Theatre West in Hollywood, and he was signed as a
writer by Sam Adams, partner in the prestigious Triad Artists agency.
He began a successful period as a television writer, penning episodes
for shows such as
Vietnam War Story (1987),
Tour of Duty (1987), and
Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1985),
and was nominated for a CableAce Award for an episode of the latter. He
had continued to act on stage and in small film and TV roles, and in
1988 he landed a substantial supporting role as
Bruce Willis's best friend, an alcoholic
Vietnam veteran, in Norman Jewison's
production In Country (1989). He gave
up television writing and concentrated on acting. Slowly his roles grew
larger (and more varied). He was
Mark Harmon's chain-smoking
detective partner Earl Gaddis on
Reasonable Doubts (1991)
and Edward Asner's dim-witted mechanic
assistant Leland on
Thunder Alley (1994). He was
frequently cast in Westerns
(Geronimo: An American Legend (1993),
Bad Girls (1994), among many
others) or as detectives, sheriffs, or police officers
(Sister Act (1992),
Sliver (1993),
Joy Ride (2001)). After two seasons
on
3rd Rock from the Sun (1996)
as French Stewart's sullen bar-owner boss
Happy Doug, Beaver landed his most prominent and critically acclaimed
role, that of Ellsworth, the gruff but decent and beloved prospector in
the landmark Western series
Deadwood (2004). Nominated along
with other cast members for a 2006 Screen Actors Guild Award, he found
his career in high gear following that series. From it he moved to the
popular father-figure role of demon hunter Bobby Singer on
Supernatural (2005), a part that
brought him a worldwide fan base and a secondary career making personal
appearances. He was married to and had a daughter with
Cecily Adams, the actress-casting director
daughter of
Get Smart (1965)'s Don Adams.
Following her death from lung cancer in 2004, he wrote a best-selling
memoir, "Life's That Way." He has continued to write plays and, between
acting jobs, to work on the George Reeves project, now planned as a
book. He served as biographical consultant on Reeves for the
semi-biopic Hollywoodland (2006).