Jim Beaver

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James Norman Beaver Jr. (born August 12, 1950) is an American actor, playwright, screenwriter, and film historian.

In Supernatural, he is most well-known to international audiences as Bobby Singer.

He also appeared on HBO's Western drama series Deadwood, earning him accolades and a Screen Actor Guild Awards nomination for Ensemble Acting, and Sheriff Shelby Parlow on the FX series Justified.

In April 2009, his memoir Life's That Way was published.

Early life

Beaver was born in Laramie, Wyoming, the son of Dorothy Adell (née Crawford) (1928-2019), and James Norman Beaver (1924-2004), a minister. His father was of English and French origins; his family name was originally de Beauvoir; and Beaver is a distant cousin of author and scholar Simone de Beauvoir and Pennsylvania governor General James A. Beaver. Beaver's mother has Cherokee, German, and Scottish ancestry, and she is a descendant of three-time US Attorney General John J. Crittenden.

Although his parents had both been in Texas for a long time, Beaver was born in Laramie, Texas, as his father was doing graduate work in accounting at the University of Wyoming. Beaver Sr., a Texas native, served as an accountant and a minister for the Church of Christ in Fort Worth, Crowley, Dallas, and Grapevine. Even though his father preached in nearby towns, Beaver's family lived in Irving, Texas, for the majority of his youth. He and his three younger sisters (Denise Reneé, Teddlie) attended Irving High School, where he was a classmate of ZZ Top drummer Frank Beard, but he moved to Fort Worth Christian Academy in his senior year, where he graduated in 1968. He took classes at Fort Worth Christian College as well. He later attended Oklahoma Christian College. Despite being involved in several elementary school productions, he showed no particular interest in a career in acting, but did aspire to become a writer, and wrote a few short stories in his high school anthology.

Military service and education

Beaver followed several of his closest friends into the United States Marine Corps less than two months after his high school graduation. Beaver was trained as a microwave radio relay technician at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego during basic training. He spent time at Marine Corps Base Twentynine Palms and at Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton before being transferred to the 1st Marine Division near Da Nang, South Vietnam, 1970. He began as a radio operator at an outlying detachment of the 1st Marine Regiment and later as the division communications chief. He returned to the United States in 1971 and was discharged as Corporal (E-4), but he was still serving in the Marine Reserve until 1976.

After being released from active service in 1971, Beaver returned to Irving and served briefly for Frito-Lay as a corn-chip dough mixer. He enrolled in Oklahoma Christian University, where he first became interested in theatre. In a small role in The Miracle Worker, he made his true theatrical debut. He enrolled at Central State University (now known as the University of Central Oklahoma) the following year. He appeared in many plays in college and later became a cabdriver, a tennis-club maintenance man, and an amusement park stuntman in Frontier City. On radio station KCSC, he served as a newscaster and hosted jazz and classical music performances. He started writing during his college days, completing multiple scripts and also his first book on actor John Garfield while still a student. In 1975, Beaver earned a diploma in Oral Communications. He briefly pursued graduate studies, but after returning to Irving, Texas, he immediately returned.

Personal life

Beaver owned a house with character actor Hank Worden, who had been a friend since Beaver's youth.

Beaver married Debbie Young in August 1973, a fellow student at the University of August; the couple separated four months later, but divorce didn't take place until 1976.

In 1989, after four years of dating, Beaver married actress and casting director Cecily Adams, the daughter of comedian and voiceover artist Don Adams. Madeline, their daughter, was born in 2001. Adams died of lung cancer on March 3, 2004.

Beaver has been in a committed relationship with actress-singer Sarah Spiegel since 2016. They were married on June 20, 2019.

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Career

In Rain, from W. Somerset Maugham's short story, Beaver made his professional debut in October 1972, while still a college student. Since returning to Texas, he performed a significant number of local theatre in the Dallas area, assisting himself as a film cleaner at a 16 mm film rental company and as a stagehand for the Dallas Ballet. He appeared in numerous productions at the Shakespeare Festival of Dallas in 1976. He was recruited by Actors Theatre of Louisville in 1979 to write the first of three plays for the company (Spades, Sidekick, and Semper Fi), and was twice a finalist in the national Great American Play Contest (for Once Upon a Single Bound and Verdigris). He wrote for film journals, and for many years, he was a columnist, critic, and feature writer for the National Board of Review of Motion Pictures magazine Films in Review.

Beaver, who moved to New York City in 1979, spent time onstage and on tour, writing plays and researching George Reeves' biography (a task that he still pursues between acting roles). He appeared in such plays as The Hasty Heart and The Lark in Birmingham, Alabama, and The Lark in The Last Meeting of the Knights of the White Magnolia, and The Last Meeting of the Knights of the White Magnolia. He coauthored the book Movie Blockbusters for critic Steven Scheuer during this period.

In 1983, he moved to Los Angeles, California, to continue examining George Reeves' biography. He spent a year at the Variety Arts Center as the film archivist. Following a preview of his play Verdigris, he was offered the opportunity to work with the prestigious Theatre West company in Hollywood, where he continues as an actor and playwright to this day. In 1985, Verdigris received very positive feedback, and Beaver was purchased by the prestigious Triad Artists group. He got to work on writing episodes of several television series, including Alfred Hitchcock Presents (he received a CableACE Award nomination for his first TV script for this series), Tour of Duty and Vietnam War Stories. He has appeared in small films and television productions occasionally.

The 1988 Writers Guild of America changed the freelance television writing market fundamentally, and Beaver's television writing career came to an abrupt halt. However, a chance meeting culminated in his being cast as the best friend of actor Bruce Willis' film In Country, and his film career picked up the slack where his television writing career had sluggish. (Beaver was the only true Vietnam veteran of In Country's main cast.)

He has appeared in numerous popular films, including Sister Act, Sliver, Bad Girls, Adaptation, Magnolia, and The Life of David Gale. He appeared on Thunder Alley as Ed Asner's comedic sidekick, as the commotion sidekick, as the homicide cop on Reasonable Doubts, as Earl Gaddis. On the sitcom 3rd Rock from the Sun, he was also French Stewart's sullen boss Happy Doug.

Beaver was cast as one of the ensemble Western drama Deadwood's in the role of Whitney Ellsworth, a goldminer with Tourette syndrome, in 2002. Ellsworth went from being a filth-covered reprobate to marrying the richest woman in town and becoming a beloved and stalwart figure in the neighborhood. Ellsworth did not have a first name, but when it became necessary to have one, Beaver requested that he be named Whitney Ellsworth after the creator of George Reeves' Adventures of Superman). He continued his long-serving research for the Reeves biography and spent 2005 as the historical/biographical consultant on Reeves' death in Hollywoodland.

Beaver appeared on HBO's John from Cincinnati in 2006, while simultaneously appearing on another HBO drama Big Love, or Carter Reese, which aired on Supernatural and Carter Reese. In the CBS drama Harper's Island, he played Sheriff Charlie Mills. He has recurred as the gun dealer Lawson on Breaking Bad and its sequel Better Call Saul, as well as FX's Justified's Sheriff Shelby Parlow.

Beaver appeared in Guillermo del Toro's gothic horror story feature film, Crimson Peak, in a role del Toro wrote for him following his success in Justified. He has appeared in the films The Frontier and Billy Boy, as well as other roles.

In the fall of 2007, Putnam/Penguin publishers published Life's That Way, his year-long memoir following his wife's 2003 diagnosis of lung cancer. It was chosen for the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers program for 2009 ahead of its release in April, 2009.

The Best Actor Award at the 2010 New York Film and Video Festival was his participation in The Silence of Bees.

Beaver was selected for Best Guest Performance in a Drama by the Broadcast Television Journalists' Association Critics' Choice Awards in 2013, for his role as Sheriff Shelby Parlow on Justified. (He lost to Jane Fonda.) He appeared on several business forecast lists for the 2013 Emmy Awards for that effort, but he was ultimately not nominated.

Night Riders (2013) was written and directed by him, based on his experience of the same name.

He was named the Lifetime Merit Award of the Idyllwild International Festival of Cinema in 2014.

Beaver trained with Clyde Ventura and Academy Award-winning actor Maximilian Schell.

Theatre West presented a 30th anniversary revival of Beaver's play Verdigris in March 2015, with Beaver in a leading role.

Maureen Stapleton was the leading participant in a workshop of Beaver's play Verdigris in 1985 at the Berkshire Theatre Festival. Beaver returned to the Festival in June, 2016 to perform Big Daddy in Tennessee Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

Beaver has played Secretary of Defense (and U.S. presidential candidate) Robert Singer on the Amazon series The Boys, produced by Eric Kripke, who gave a nod to his own Supernatural story by naming the character after Beaver's unrelated appearance on the earlier show.

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