Jim Beaver - A "Super Natural" Guy

Photo taken by Michael Helms
© Jim Beaver 2008

As Whitney Ellsworth on the HBO series Deadwood
Photo by Michael Helms
© HBO 2005

Beaver says of playing Ellsworth on the show that, "the character was the closest thing to a perfect part for me I'd ever seen."
Photo courtesy of HBO © 2005

Ellsworth and Alma (Molly Parker) sharing a scene together in Deadwood.
Photo courtesy of HBO © 2005

Beaver stars in Supernatural as Bobby Singer, a family friend of the Winchesters and a hunter of all things supernatural.
Photo courtesy of The CW © 2007

Dean Winchester (Jensen Ackles) taking advice from Bobby in the season two finale, "All Hell Breaks Loose 2" of Supernatural.
Photo courtesy of The CW © 2007

Dean (Jensen Ackles), Sam (Jared Padalecki) and Bobby put their heads together as they try to figure out how to save Dean from going to hell in the season three finale of Supernatural, "No Rest For The Wicked".
Photo courtesy of The CW © 2008

Bobby in a scene from this season's episode of Supernatural, "Sex and Violence".
Photo courtesy of The CW © 2008

"I really enjoy meeting the fans. I've only been to four conventions, so I'm not jaded yet, I guess but I've had a really wonderful time every time I've gone," he tells me.
Jim Beaver and Jared Padalecki at the breakfast of the Supernatural Creation Convention in Dallas, June 8 2008.
Photo courtesy of Lynda L at Flickr.
© Lynda L, 2008

It's been said that without wonder and insight, acting is just a trade; however with it, it becomes creation. If that's the case, then Jim Beaver is one heck of an actor and has proved to be a creative artist throughout his life whether it is on stage or on screen.

Born James Norman Beaver Jr., in Laramie, Wyoming, he was the eldest of three younger sisters and grew up in Irving, Texas, a suburb of Dallas where his father a minister encouraged him to learn, read and build on his speaking skills. "I always thought it was because he wanted me to follow him into the ministry, but he said in later years that he'd only wanted me to be well-spoken."

Beaver served in the US military shortly after high school and says of the whole transition to be fairly shocking. "It was one of the hardest things I ever did, getting through basic training but it's one of the best things I ever did, too. High school was tough but none of my teachers ever hit me or made me stand on my toes and knuckles for an hour!" He reminiscences that there was quite a bit he enjoyed about serving in the Marines but admits it was very different and it was a difficult experience compared to his years in high school.

Going from the Marines to the stage for Beaver came briefly after having conversations with a friend of his in the service who spoke about doing plays in high school and the fun he had doing them. "We use to hang out at his mom's house in Long Beach on weekend liberty," Beaver recalls. "[And] read Shakespeare out loud." When Beaver was in Vietnam, he was certainly not foreign to Shakespeare and tells me that he read most of the famous writer's plays there but never thought once about acting for a living.

After he got out of the Marines, he pursued his studies and went to college where he reveals when he first really and truly fell in love with acting. "My very first play, I realized that I'd never experienced anything so rewarding and enjoyable."

"When I got to college, my roommate asked me to help him with an audition for the drama club. We both got in, and I loved it right off," he beams. "I think I might have auditioned for a professional play at the Theatre Three in Dallas right before I left for college, but I don't remember much about that except that I didn't get the part. But I came back a few years later and did a few shows there."

While studying tirelessly in college, Beaver did his fair share of theatre work, exclaiming he had starred in a lot of plays from the likes of Shakespeare, Chekhov, Moliére, Neil Simon and some avant-garde works. "I made my professional debut while as a student playing a Marine in the play version of Somerset Maugham's Rain," he cheers. "I made twenty-five bucks for six weeks work but I was now a pro!"

Beaver wasn't the type of person at an early age who had been attracted to films and acting and says he never really thought about it until high school but admits he did enjoy going to the movies and watching TV, just as much as any other kid. "I was a big John Wayne fan as a kid," he tells me. "I would watch anything he was in, over and over again. I began to notice that there were a lot of people in his movies that kept reappearing in other movies and started trying to figure out these other actors' names, and then I started watching anything I could find that they were in. I remember thinking I ought to have a hobby and I thought maybe old movies would be a good hobby."

And it was a good hobby. He started keeping records of just about everything he saw and wrote down all the actors' names and soon enough began reading about various actors and got hooked on the whole subject of film history. "That was my biggest draw! By the time I got to college, I was pretty much the campus know-it-all about movies." Beaver came upon a realization and wanted to study film history but unfortunately was unable to because there were no courses available at his school. He says though because of that result it only seemed natural then to sign up for theatre classes since that was in a way related to film history and admits that once he got into the drama club, he was completely hooked.

Beaver has done his fair share of work on the big screen, starring in such feature films like Geronimo: An American Legend, Magnolia and The Life of David Gale along with TV shows like Six Feet Under, Deadwood and most recently Supernatural. He tells me of all the people he's worked with, he'd definitely like to work again with Mark Harmon, Ed Asner and his cast mates from Deadwood who are amongst his favourite actors to work with.

However he keenly says there are many others as well he'd like to work with. "I blew my chance to work with Peter O'Toole and Jared Padalecki last year and O'Toole is someone I'd just kill to work with. Most of my idols as actors are no longer alive, the ones I grew up wishing I could meet or work with, [like] John Wayne, Laurence Olivier, Robert Mitchum, Humphrey Bogart, Toshiro Mifune and Groucho Marx."

When I asked him if there are any people in the business that he looks up too, he exclaims, "Many!" and goes on to name those he greatly admires such as Sir Ian McKellan, Vanessa Redgrave, Rickey Gervais, Robert Duvall, Al Pacino, Meryl Streep and directors such as Clint Eastwood, Spike Jonze, Paul Thomas Anderson, Martin Scorsese just to name a few. "The fact is, there are people I admire all over the business. Chief among them are the crews I've worked with, the guys who are there an hour before I get there at 6 a.m. who never sit down except maybe for lunch, and they're there an hour or two after I go home at ten or eleven that night," he says. "In almost every case these guys work rigorous jobs and do it with great spirits. The Supernatural crew is one the best examples of that I've ever seen."

Unlike some actors in the business, Beaver comes off genuine and frank in his attitude and responses saying, "I'd like to work with people who are better than me. It makes me better. And yes, like every other actor in the world, I'd like to do a picture with Scorsese." He still admits that those he's worked with over the span of his career are amazing people, whether they're famous or not and says that as long as they're good in a scene with him, he's happy.

And just because he's an actor in the business doesn't mean he does not get starstruck when meeting someone he greatly admires. "I don't get weak in the knees like I did the first time I met John Wayne as a kid. I'm comfortable meeting big stars I admire but I still love it [and] still get a thrill out of meeting some hero of mine."

Something that a few may not already know about Beaver is that he's a screenwriter too but that doesn't mean with all that he knows it comes easy. "Writing is very, very hard but at least you don't have to get up at 5 a.m. to do it. I have some screenwriting projects that, if I ever finish them, I wouldn't mind being involved in producing them but mainly I'd like to stick to acting and writing. The other stuff would give me ulcers, I think" he jokes.

When he's acting, he's not inclined to just any one genre, rather being more diverse and admits that he enjoys doing comedy and drama very much. "I do love Westerns," he says. "They're great fun to make [but] I just like everything, as long as it's good. A bad project isn't much fun even if it's a genre you like."

A lot of TV viewers recognize Jim Beaver from his days as Mr. Ellsworth on the highly praised HBO series, Deadwood, an American Western drama set in the Black Hills of South Dakota during the end of the nineteenth century. The show which garnered much critical and award acclaim from the Screen Actors Guild, the Emmys and the Golden Globes ended nearly three years ago but still remains a fan favourite.

"I auditioned for [Deadwood] and had worked for David Milch, the creator once before on NYPD Blue though I didn't think he remembered me. And I'd done Geronimo for director Walter Hill, so it was relatively comfortable going in to meet them," he tells me. "And the character was the closest thing to a perfect part for me I'd ever seen. I felt I knew exactly how to play it and that I would love playing. Turns out I was pretty much right at least about loving it," he grins.

With the show set in such an era and out of the norm from the regular mild Westerns most are accustomed to, one has to wonder if it was difficult getting into a character in a show that is raw in its plotlines and dialogue. "That part fit me like a lavender mitten! I don't have any trouble slipping into a character like that," he tells me. "I've read a great deal from the period and understand that kind of expression. And the material in Deadwood was so well written that it plays quite easily, even when it's complex. It was the best part I've ever had and one of the most comfortable," he reveals.

Beaver still keeps in touch with several of his Deadwood co-stars and some of them have become his very close friends, particularly Paula Malcolmson, Sean Bridgers and some were friends before the incarnation of the show like W. Earl Brown, Dayton Callie and Leon Rippy. "We [all] don't see each other as much as I'd like but we stay in touch as best as we can."

The difference between Deadwood and Supernatural isn't just plotlines. Beaver says the biggest difference in a show like Supernatural with a small-cast compared to a large-cast like in Deadwood is that you don't get many days off. There were often times on Deadwood when he'd go two weeks without working because so many characters had storylines that had to be addressed but with Supernatural, it's a bit different. "It's usually just one storyline," he shares. "If Bobby is a part of it, he's often deeply involved. The real difference is for the leads, Jared and Jensen [who] work virtually every day on Supernatural because it's a show with two leads. Deadwood had about twenty or so leads, so the work was spread among them, and no one in the cast worked every day."

Supernatural, a popular horror television program on The CW introduced Jim Beaver near the end of the show's first season in the episode titled "Devil's Trap", where the leads Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki as the tough and all guns-blazing Winchester Brothers sought help from Bobby Singer in order to save their father. Since then, Bobby has become a fan favourite and a sort of father figure to the two Winchesters and has so far starred in sixteen episodes.

"I was just finishing up Deadwood when I got to the call to audition for Supernatural. I'd never been in for the show before [and] I didn't know much of anything about the show," he admits. He auditioned on tape for his old friend and the show's casting director, Robert Ulrich. Ulrich had sent the tape to Vancouver where the show is shot for Robert Singer and Eric Kripke. Beaver worked on a series with Robert Singer in the early 1990s but never thought he'd be involved with Supernatural

"As I understand it, Robert Ulrich called Bob Singer and told him the tape was on it's way, Singer [had] asked who was on the tape [and] Ulrich mentioned my name and Singer said, 'Oh, just give the part to Jim'. So if my information is correct, they never actually looked at my audition tape. Maybe that's a good thing," Beaver jokes.

When I asked him what attracted him to the role of Bobby, you can't help but grin at his sparkling humour. "They offered me money to play it," he says. "That's what attracted me at first. Of course, after I got into it, I realized what a great, colourful [and] rich character he was and that he had humour and warmth and sarcasm, which I love to play."

You'd imagine since Bobby plays a father figure to both Dean and Sam Winchester on screen, that a bit of that trait rubs off when Beaver is just hanging out with Ackles and Padalecki, but that's not the case. Off-camera, Beaver tells me that it's like acting with his two friends and doesn't get a sense of being older, either from them or even himself. "We're just three actors who work together and enjoy it. That's my perspective, at least. It would never occur to me to treat them paternally off-camera. I'm more likely, in fact to go to them for advice than offer my own."

There's an aspect off-camera of the show that fans love hearing about and that is the pranks pulled behind the scenes by the two lead actors on unsuspecting crew members and fellow actors. "They've pulled a couple of mild pranks on me, mainly trying to get me to laugh during serious scenes but I'm pretty good at keeping it together, so I'm probably not much fun for them. I haven't pulled anything on them yet, but the day ain't over," he jokes. "[But] they're great, warm, loving and fun-loving guys. They're both a lot wilder than I was at that age. They're also much more confident and self-assured than I was then [and] they love jokes and pranks and childish stunts."

He discloses that he generally stands to the side and watches them with "a mature, bemused air" while the two mischievous young men victimize the camera crew and the show's beloved director, Kim Manners as they unload stink bombs or dump water on people. "They don't seem to pull much of that stuff on other directors, at least not comparatively," he tells me.

"I love working with the JJs," he says. "They're really good guys, really hard workers and genuinely nice people. I don't see much of myself in them because they've reached a level of success I wasn't anywhere near when I was their ages. They achieved an enormous amount in the time they've been in the business and they see the business and the business sees them in a totally different light than it has ever seen me."

He confesses that it's hard for him to look at them and think, "Oh, I remember when I was in their shoes," but truly believes they are dedicated actors who've worked hard on their own craft and he sees a bit of himself in that perspective. "I don't look for myself in them though. I just relish the chance to work with them and hang around with them. Even though I am occasionally with them, where I am, I feel like one of the Three Musketeers and they encourage that, I think. Sometimes it's more like the Three Stooges but still..." he trails off.

Screenwriting and teleplays have been taken more seriously in the last year from March due to the infamous Writer's Strike and even though some actors improvise from their scripts, Beaver states that he does his absolute best to follow the script of the show as much as possible. He says his job is to give the best performance he can of the words he's been given to say and not second-guess the writers. Sure, he admits that there are some questions about the validity, the grammar, the accuracy of a line or sometimes it's just plain old hard to say but there will always be a discussion about whether it need be altered or not. "I try never to arbitrarily change the words I'm given. Some actors feel differently about that but I came from the theatre where the writer's word is just about sacrosanct."

As audiences watch Beaver week after week as Bobby Singer, they become acquainted with his character and often mistaken Bobby Singer for Jim Beaver. And that's alright to him. "I think Ellsworth and Bobby have a great deal of me in them. On an ongoing series, if the honchos like what you're doing, they often end up writing some of your own traits into that character. I know that happened on Deadwood where David Milch even wrote aspects of my personal life into that show." Although with Supernatural, Beaver says it doesn't go all that far and thinks it would be impossible to take Jim Beaver out of Bobby as they've grown from the same roots.

Fans of Bobby Singer will be pleased to know that not only will you see a bit more of him this season but that there is definitely more than meets the eye to his character. "Well, there's that thus-far- unrevealed triple-ripped torso, but I can't think of anything else," he quips. "If you mean are there any secrets Bobby has that haven't been revealed, [well] there probably are but they haven't been revealed to me, either. So if they show up, I'll be surprised as anybody."

He does hope that the writers could develop more on Bobby's background and whether he actually knows anyone besides Sam and Dean. "I'd like to see him in something resembling an attempt at a relationship with a woman, even if it went to pieces in one episode." Beaver does validate that he has no complaints about the development of the character and that these notions are just idle thoughts, nothing he really frets over. "They do pretty well with Bobby as it is and after all, it's not the Bobby Show so if Bobby doesn't get any more developed than he is, that's okay with me. I won't gripe if he does, though."

With the show's much success has come an array of sci-fi conventions where fans have the opportunity to meet and greet their favourite stars. Beaver says he enjoys meeting his fans and though he's only been to four conventions, he says he always has a wonderful time. He does think it's strange though when people come up to him and start telling him how cool they think he is and finds it hard to imagine ever getting weirder than that but does admit that a few occasions it has gotten quite odd. "I don't think I ever had my butt pinched by a girl before I was on Supernatural, not that I'm complaining. I just don't experience that sort of thing as typical. I'm not used to being thought of as particularly interesting to people I don't know, so it's all a little peculiar."

He does enjoy it, each and every moment of it and tells me he doesn't take any of it for granted. "I feel great warmth from everyone I've met at conventions and I look forward to do more of them."

Beaver also expresses his admiration and love for Vancouver, where the show is shot. "I wish it were a little sunnier in the winter but except for that, it's just a great place. If it weren't for my little girl, I would be happy to be here for months on end", he says. "I need to see her pretty frequently so I need to get back to L.A. as often as I can." He mentions how the lovely city is more than just a great place to work and hopes that he always gets to go back and visit.

With all that he's achieved, I wondered if he had any regrets.

"Not really. Most of my regrets have to do with my social life, not my career. I actually think I was pretty smart about a lot of things early on. At the end of my first year of college, I was the Big Man in the theatre department." He goes on to say that he played a couple of lead roles and the department head was pretty much prepared to do any plays he wanted done and give him the lead in the majority of them. "Somehow I knew I wasn't going to learn much if I got everything handed to me on a platter. It was tempting," he admits. "But I decided to transfer to another school that was much, much larger and to be a small fish in a big pond instead of the other way around."

He goes on to say that it all ended up really well for him and that he learned a lot from having to fight for a role he wanted most and then losing most of the roles he really wanted. "It taught me a lot about being part of a team about supporting the production even when I wasn't doing the part I wanted to do and about dealing with rejection that is a large part of every actor's life. It was painful at times to get passed over for things I desperately wanted to do but I learned so much and ended up doing a great deal that I was proud of."

Jim Beaver has worked extremely hard over the last few years to be where he is and he's helpful with words to those aspiring to succeed in a career like his. He says for anyone looking into becoming an actor in the film and television industry to learn as much as you can. He suggests reading plays and screenplays or biographies of successful people in the field that one wishes to enter and to find out from their mistakes rather than making your own. He says modestly to never consider any job too small to take and even proposes if you want to get on stage, offer to clean the bathrooms at your local theatre but emphasizes the vast power of reading.

"Reading will open doors you never knew were there. The more literate you are, the more you understand of the world and of history and how the world got to be the way it is, the easier you will fit into a spot in the world. Never stop learning," he stresses. "Most of the people who fail in this business fail because their either give up or they figure they know all they need to know. There's no such thing as knowing all you need to know!"

When advising up and comers of what he believes, he doesn't one bit forget what he's learned growing up. "The motto engraved on my senior ring was "Esse quam videris" [which means], to be rather than to seem. That's pretty good advice for an actor. Much of what I learned came from a few teachers, one of whom was my late wife Cecily Adams, an actress and casting director and one of the best acting coaches I ever encountered. She taught me a great deal about being rather than seeming as an actor, about not "showing" but "being" the character. He goes on to say how she along with notable mentors from the likes of Maximilian Schell and Clyde Ventura taught him wonderful acting and writing lessons about taking care of the specifics of a character and not just who he is and what he does but of how the character feels about the other people, the setting, the family, the shoes worn and just about every moment in the person's life and attitude. Though he goes on to say that he's learned from his mentors how to make the stakes in a scene high enough and how to create such intensity just by how important he made that character's task.

"[They're] all good lessons that serve me well. And, apart from the business, I learned from my dad that I'd feel better if I did the right thing, that there are great rewards in working hard and that it's far better to be pleasant than to be shrewd."

Apart from Supernatural, airing Thursdays on The CW, Beaver has a few more projects up his sleeve. "April will be a very busy month for me," he cheers. He will next be seen after the basketball finals on CBS's "Harper's Island" beginning April 9th right after CSI on Thursday nights. The show, a suspense thriller takes Beaver on a journey as Sheriff Charlie Mills as a group of people on an island off the Washington coast arrive for a wedding and soon, terrible things begin to happen to the people at the wedding party. Beaver says his character is very different from Bobby in Supernatural. "[He's] much more serious and mysterious. That's about all I'm allowed to say," he shares.

The show finds its premiere date a week before his much anticipated Putnam released memoir, "Life's That Way", releasing in book stores everywhere and on Amazon, April 16th 2009.

With all the success and acclaim Beaver's received over the years, the immense knowledge he's picked up, the choices he's made and the challenges he's overcome, it's only natural for one to ponder where will his career lead him next. As he so amiably puts it, "there's no such thing as knowing all you need to know!"

Catch Jim Beaver on Supernatural every Thursday at 9 p.m. ET on The CW. Check your local listings. And be sure to tune into Harper's Island debuting April 9th on CBS, after CSI.

Life's That Way releases in book stores everywhere and on Amazon and Barnes and Noble, April 16th.

Be sure to look out for part two of my interview with Jim Beaver where he discusses what's on his iPod, his favourite films and what makes him smile the most.

Check out these related articles: Q & A with Jim Beaver

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