Lance Henriksen

Lance Henriksen (born May 5, 1940) is an American actor.

Henriksen was born on May 5, 1940, in Manhattan, New York.

His father, James Henriksen, was a Norwegian merchant sailor and boxer nicknamed "Icewater" who spent most of his life at sea, while his mother, Margueritte Werner, struggled to find work as a dance instructor, waitress and model.

His parents divorced when he was two years old, and his mother struggled to raise him and his brother, leading to his spending part of his childhood in foster care.

During an interview, Henriksen recounted how, at the age of seven, his mother handed him his birth certificate and said, "You'll always know who you are", then pushed him out of his home.

Henriksen did not actually leave home until he was 12, saying he'd "had enough" of his home life, and that he had been physically assaulted by multiple family members: "I got bludgeoned a lot. Different people, relatives. I remember every single face from my childhood. My alcoholic uncles, whoever. I'm not having a pity party here; I'm not Quasimodo. That's just how it was".

On another occasion, two of his uncles tried to persuade him to take Methadrine and then take part in a staged car accident for the insurance money.

Growing up, Henriksen had a reputation for getting into trouble in the various schools he attended, and even spent time in a children's home.

He left school after completing first grade, and was illiterate until the age of 30.

Henriksen found work as a muralist and as a laborer on ships.

For a time, he worked in Europe.

His first theater work, around age 30, was as set designer, and he received his first acting role because he built the set for a production.

Illiterate until then, it was around this time that he taught himself to read.

For his first role, he put the entire script to tape with the help of a friend, learning everyone's part in addition to his own.

Soon afterward, he graduated from the Actors Studio and began acting in New York City.

Henriksen's first film appearance was in It Ain't Easy in 1972.

It was followed by supporting roles in a variety of films, including Dog Day Afternoon (1975), Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), and Damien: Omen II (1978).

He played Police Chief Steve Kimbrough in Piranha Part Two: The Spawning (1982), the astronaut Walter Schirra in The Right Stuff (1983), and actor Charles Bronson in the television film Reason for Living: The Jill Ireland Story (1991).

He also appeared as Hal Vukovich in The Terminator (1984), Ed Harley in the cult horror film Pumpkinhead (1988), Chains Cooper in Stone Cold (1991), and Emil Fouchon in Hard Target (1993).

When James Cameron was writing The Terminator (1984), he originally envisioned Henriksen, with whom he had worked on Piranha II: The Spawning, playing the title role, a cyborg.

The role ultimately went to Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Henriksen does appear in the film in the film as Hal Vukovich, a Detective in the Los Angeles Police Department.

Henriksen played the android Bishop in Cameron's film Aliens (1986), and as Bishop's designer Michael Weyland in Alien 3 (1992).

He portrayed gunfighters in the Westerns Dead Man and The Quick and the Dead, and appeared with British actor Bruce Payne in Aurora: Operation Intercept in 1995.

That year, he also played Sheriff Doug Barnum in the film Powder.

He is known for his works in various science fiction, action and horror films, such as that of Bishop in the Alien film franchise, and Frank Black in Fox television series Millennium (1996–1999) and The X-Files (1999).

In 1996, Henriksen starred in the television series Millennium, created and produced by Chris Carter, the creator of The X-Files.

Henriksen played Frank Black, a former FBI agent who possessed a unique ability to see into the minds of killers.

Carter created the role specifically for the actor.

He appeared with Payne again in Face the Evil (1997), and the dystopian classic Paranoia 1.0 (2004).

His performances on Millennium earned him critical acclaim, a People's Choice Award nomination for Favorite New Male TV Star, and three consecutive Golden Globe nominations for Best Performance by an Actor in a TV Series (1997–1999).

He has also done extensive voice work, as Kerchak the gorilla in the 1999 Disney film Tarzan (1999), General Shepherd in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (2009) and Fleet Admiral Steven Hackett (as well as Narl) in BioWare's Mass Effect video game trilogy (2007–2012).

The series was cancelled in 1999.

In Disney's Tarzan (1999) and its direct-to-video followup, he is Kerchak, the ape who serves as Tarzan's surrogate father.

He also played Charles Bishop Weyland, the man upon whom Bishop was based, in Alien vs. Predator (2004).

He played the vampire leader Jesse Hooker in Kathryn Bigelow's cult film Near Dark.

On television, Henriksen appeared in the ensemble of Into the West (2005), a miniseries executive-produced by Steven Spielberg.

He appeared in a Brazilian soap opera, Caminhos do Coração (Ways of the Heart) from Rede Record, aired in 2007–2008.

Henriksen guest-starred on a Season 6 episode of NCIS (2009) playing an Arizona sheriff, and appeared in a recurring role as The Major on NBC's The Blacklist.

In the years after Millennium, Henriksen has become an active voice actor, lending his distinctive voice to a number of animated features and video game titles.