Jim Beaver

James Norman Beaver Jr. (born August 12, 1950) is an American actor, playwright, screenwriter, and film historian. He is most familiar to worldwide audiences as the gruff but tenderhearted Bobby Singer in Supernatural. He also played Whitney Ellsworth on the HBO Western drama series Deadwood, a starring role which brought him acclaim and a Screen Actors Guild Awards nomination for Ensemble Acting after three decades of supporting work in films and TV. He also portrayed Sheriff Shelby Parlow on the FX series Justified. His memoir Life's That Way was published in April 2009. 2Early life Beaver was born in Laramie, Wyoming, the son of Dorothy Adell (née Crawford) and James Norman Beaver, Sr. (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 Wyomin