Jim Beaver

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 heritage; the family name was originally de Beauvoir, and Beaver is a distant cousin of author and philosopher Simone de Beauvoir and Pennsylvania governor General James A. Beaver.

Beaver's mother has Cherokee, German, and Scottish ancestry, and is a descendant of three-time U.S. Attorney General John J. Crittenden.

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.

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.

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, and Sheriff Shelby Parlow on the FX series Justified.

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, 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.

Fewer than two months after his graduation from high school, Beaver followed several of his close friends into the United States Marine Corps.

Following basic training at Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego, Beaver was trained there as a microwave radio relay technician.

He served 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 in 1970.

He served as a radio operator at an outlying detachment of the 1st Marine Regiment, then as supply chief for the division communications company.

He returned to the U.S. in 1971 and was discharged as a Corporal (E-4), though he remained active in the Marine Reserve until 1976.

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 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 16 mm film rental firm and as a stagehand for the Dallas Ballet.

Beaver graduated with a degree in oral communications in 1975.

He briefly pursued graduate studies, but soon returned to Irving, Texas.

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.

His memoir Life's That Way was published in April 2009.