James Norman Beaver Jr. (born August 12, 1950) is an American actor, writer, and film historian. He is most familiar to worldwide audiences as Bobby Singer in Supernatural. He also played Whitney Ellsworth on the HBO Western drama series Deadwood, which brought him acclaim and a Screen Actors Guild Awards nomination for Ensemble Acting, Sheriff Shelby Parlow on the FX series Justified, and Robert "Dakota Bob" Singer on the Amazon Prime Video series The Boys. His memoirLife's That Way was published in April 2009.[1]
Although his parents' families had both long been in Texas, Beaver was born in Laramie, as his father was doing graduate work in accounting at the University of Wyoming.[5] Returning to Texas, Beaver Sr. worked as an accountant and as a minister for the Church of Christ in Fort Worth, Crowley, Dallas, and Grapevine. For most of Beaver's youth, his family lived in Irving, Texas, even while his father preached in surrounding communities.[6] He and his three younger sisters (Denise, Reneé, and Teddlie) all attended Irving High School, where he was a classmate of ZZ Top drummer Frank Beard,[7] but he transferred in his senior year to Fort Worth Christian Academy, from which he graduated in 1968. He also took courses at Fort Worth Christian College. Later, he attended Oklahoma Christian College. Despite having appeared in some elementary school plays, he showed no particular interest in an acting career, but immersed himself in film history and expressed a desire for a career as a writer, publishing a few short stories in his high school anthology.[8]
Upon his release from active duty in 1971, Beaver returned to Irving, and worked briefly for Frito-Lay as a corn-chip dough mixer. He entered what is now Oklahoma Christian University, where he became interested in theatre. He made his true theatrical debut in a small part in The Miracle Worker. The following year, he transferred to Central State University (now known as the University of Central Oklahoma). He performed in numerous plays in college and supported himself as a cabdriver, a movie projectionist, a tennis-club maintenance man, and an amusement-park stuntman at Frontier City. He also worked as a newscaster and hosted jazz and classical music programs on radio station KCSC. During his college days, he also began to write, completing several plays as well as his first book, on actor John Garfield, while still a student. Beaver graduated with a degree in oral communications in 1975.[10] He briefly pursued graduate studies, but soon returned to Irving, Texas.
Career
Beaver as his Whitney Ellsworth character in Deadwood
Beaver made his professional stage debut in October 1972, while still a college student, in Rain, from W. Somerset Maugham's short story, at the Oklahoma Theatre Center in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. After returning to Texas, he performed extensively in local theatre in the Dallas area, supporting himself as a film cleaner at a 16mm film rental firm and as a stagehand for the Dallas Ballet. He joined the Shakespeare Festival of Dallas in 1976, performing in numerous productions. In 1979, he was commissioned by Actors Theatre of Louisville to write the first of three plays for that company (Spades, Sidekick and Semper Fi), and was twice a finalist in the theatre's national Great American Play Contest (for Once Upon a Single Bound and Verdigris). Along with plays, he continued writing for film journals and for several years was a columnist, critic, and feature writer for the National Board of Review of Motion Pictures magazine Films in Review.
Moving to New York City in 1979, Beaver worked steadily onstage in stock and on tour, simultaneously writing plays and researching a biography of actor George Reeves. He continues to pursue this project between acting jobs. He appeared in starring roles in such plays as The Hasty Heart and The Rainmaker in Birmingham, Alabama, and The Lark in Manchester, New Hampshire, and toured the country as Macduff in Macbeth and in The Last Meeting of the Knights of the White Magnolia. During this period, he ghostwrote the book Movie Blockbusters for critic Steven Scheuer.
In 1983, he moved to Los Angeles, California, to continue research on his biography of George Reeves. He worked for a year as the film archivist for the Variety Arts Center. Following a reading of his play Verdigris, he was asked to join the prestigious Theatre West company in Hollywood, where he continues as an actor and playwright to this day. Verdigris was produced to positive reviews in 1985 and Beaver was signed by the Triad Artists agency. He immediately began to work writing episodes of television series including Alfred Hitchcock Presents (he received a 1987 CableACE Award nomination for his very first TV script for this show), Tour of Duty and Vietnam War Story. He also worked occasionally in small roles in films and television.
The 1988 Writers Guild of America strike fundamentally altered the freelance television writing market, and Beaver's television writing career came to an abrupt halt. A chance meeting led to his being cast as the best friend of star Bruce Willis in Norman Jewison's drama about Vietnam veterans, In Country, and his acting career began flourishing where his writing career had faltered. Beaver was the only actual Vietnam veteran among the principal cast of In Country.
In 2002, Beaver was cast as one of the stars of the ensemble Western drama Deadwood in the role of Whitney Ellsworth, a goldminer whom he often described as "Gabby Hayes with Tourette syndrome".[11] Ellsworth went from being a filth-covered reprobate to marrying the richest woman in town and becoming a beloved and stalwart figure in the community. Originally Ellsworth did not have a first name, but when it became necessary to provide one, Beaver requested he be named Whitney Ellsworth, after the producer of George Reeves's Adventures of Superman. He continued his long research for the Reeves biography, and in 2005 served as the historical and biographical consultant on the theatrical feature film about Reeves's death, Hollywoodland.
Beaver joined the cast of the HBO drama John from Cincinnati in 2006, while simultaneously playing the recurring roles of Bobby Singer on Supernatural and Carter Reese on another HBO drama Big Love, appearing at least once a season on Supernatural.[12] He then took on the role of Sheriff Charlie Mills in the CBS drama Harper's Island. He recurred as the gun dealer Lawson on Breaking Bad and its prequel Better Call Saul, and played Sheriff Shelby Parlow for three seasons on FX'sJustified.
Following his acclaimed work in Justified, Beaver had a starring role in Guillermo del Toro's gothic ghost story feature film, Crimson Peak, in a part del Toro wrote for him. He also had roles in the feature films The Frontier and Billy Boy.
His memoir about the year after his wife's 2003 lung cancer diagnosis, titled Life's That Way, was purchased in a preemptive bid by Putnam/Penguin publishers in the fall of 2007.[13] Prior to publication in April, 2009, it was chosen for the Barnes & NobleDiscover Great New Writers program for 2009.[1]
His performance in The Silence of Bees won him the Best Actor Award at the 2010 New York Film and Video Festival.[14]
Beaver was nominated for Best Guest Performance in a Drama by the Broadcast Television Journalists' Association Critics' Choice Awards in 2013, for his performance as Sheriff Shelby Parlow on Justified.
He wrote and directed the short film Night Riders (2013), based upon his play of the same title.
Since 2018, Beaver has portrayed Secretary of Defense/U.S. presidential candidate/U.S. President Robert "Dakota Bob" Singer on the Amazon series The Boys, produced by Eric Kripke, creator of Supernatural. Beaver's characters on The Boys and Supernatural share the same name.[18]
In March 2023, he reprised his role as Bobby Singer in The Winchesters spinoff series.
In addition to his film and television work, Beaver has, as of mid-2025, appeared in over 110 stage productions.[20]
Personal life
For several years after his 1983 move to California, Beaver shared a house with character actor Hank Worden, whom he considered a close friend and surrogate grandfather. He became friends with Worden as a child, after writing him a fan letter that sparked a lengthy correspondence between them.[21]
During college, Beaver married a fellow student, Debbie Young, in August 1973. They separated four months later but did not divorce until 1976.
In 1989, after four years of dating, Beaver married actress and casting director Cecily Adams, daughter of comic actor and voiceover artist Don Adams. Their daughter Madeline was born in 2001. (She now portrays the lead character in the video game Ava.) Adams, though a non-smoker, died of lung cancer on March 3, 2004.[16]
Beaver began a relationship in 2016 with actress and singer Sarah Spiegel. They were married on June 20, 2019.[22] Beaver filed for divorce from Spiegel on August 24, 2022, citing irreconcilable differences. Their divorce was final on January 23, 2024.[23]
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