Richard Dale Jenkins (created May 4, 1947) is an American stage, film, and television celebrity. He started his career in the theater and made his movie debut in 1974. He’s played supporting parts in movies nearly annually since 1985 and had lead characters in “The Cabin in the Woods” and “The Visitor”, that Richard Jenkins was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor. He played the dead patriarch Nathaniel Fisher on the HBO drama series “Six Feet Under”. Since his film debut in the television movie Feasting with Panthers (1974), Jenkins is working steadily in film. He’s also appeared in three Coen Brothers films: The Man Who Was Not There (2001), Intolerable Cruelty (2003), and Burn After Reading (2008). He’s in North Country (2005), has three memorable scenes as FBI Director James (Robert) Grace in The Kingdom (movie) (2007), and is in Step Brothers (2008). Jenkins won the International Press Academy’s Satellite Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Drama. Jenkins costarred in Dear John, as the dad of John Tyree (Channing Tatum), as well as in Joss Whedon/Drew Goddard’s horror movie The Cabin in the Woods (2012). Richard Jenkins also co starred with Julia Roberts and Javier Bardem in Eat, Pray, Love.
Satellite Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Drama
Nominations
Academy Award for Best Actor, Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role, Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series, Independent Spirit Award for Best Male Lead, Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Mal...
Movies
The Visitor, The Cabin in the Woods, Let Me In, Step Brothers, Jack Reacher, Eat Pray Love, Bone Tomahawk, Dear John, Burn After Reading, Killing Them Softly, Friends with Benefits, Hall Pass, The Rum Diary, White House Down, A.C.O.D., God's Pocket, Me, Myself & Irene, The Man Who Wasn't There, Into...
TV Shows
Olive Kitteridge, Six Feet Under, Berlin Station
Star Sign
Taurus
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Quote
1
(On his role in the 1985 film Silverado) I auditioned for this really great part, and I remember my manager called me up and said "You got it! You're Kelly." And I said "Who?" "Kelly." I searched through the script, and I was in two scenes. I said "Howdy" in the first scene, and in the second scene, I said "You can't do that," and they shot me. And I was on the set for seven weeks. It was a cover set, which means if they couldn't work outside with it snowing or bad weather, they would move inside and do that scene they were saving for bad weather, so I couldn't go anywhere. I was hanging out in the Hilton Hotel in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and everybody else was working on the movie.
2
I was at a real funeral once, around the time I was doing Six Feet Under, when a woman tapped me on the shoulder and asked "Are they filming this?" It was one of those things where you're thinking "Is she kidding, is she not kidding?" She wasn't. That was jaw-dropping.
3
(On working with the Coens brothers) Well, I audition for them, for every movie. Raising Arizona was the first one. I auditioned for Miller's Crossing, and my agent called me up and said "I've got great news, it's between you and Albert Finney." I said "Oh really, that's great. Who would you choose?" And of course, Albert Finney was wonderful. I wanted Fargo, that's the one I wanted so badly. And when I saw it, and I saw William Macy in the part, I said "Oh, no wonder. He's incredible." But I stopped going in to audition. I'd say "No, they're not going to cast me anyway." And then they called me up and asked me to do The Man Who Wasn't There. And I said "So the only way to get a part in your movie is not to come in and audition?"
4
(On filming Witches of Eastwick) My first really nice part after Silverado. And my first day of shooting, they wouldn't let me on the set, cause they didn't believe I was in it. We were shooting in Massachusetts, and I drove up from my house, and I didn't have any ID on me or anything. I just drove up to the gate, and said "I'm here to shoot the movie." The guy said "Who are you?" I said "I'm an actor," and he said "Yeah, you and everyone else in town." I said "No, no, I'm an actor." And one of the grips or crew guys was walking by, and the guard asked "Hey, do you know who this guy is?" And the guy looked at me and said "Never seen 'em before." Finally I got an assistant to say "Yeah, yeah, he's in the movie." You think it's hard getting into movie sets? It is.
5
(In response to his first starring film role in The Visitor (2007)) I would say 'I'll go back to my trailer now', and they'd say, 'No, no, you're in the next scene. It's one of those things that I didn't know if I would ever get an opportunity to try. I've been waiting my entire professional life for this experience.
He has Welsh, English, Irish, and German ancestry.
3
He worked as a summer truck driver for the father of actor John C. Reilly in Illinois. Jenkins coincidentally met Reilly when the latter was four years old. The two later worked together in Step Brothers (2008).
4
Was considered for the role of Dr.David Morgenstern on ER (1994).
5
He attended school with Larry Shue and worked with James Pickering, according to an interview of February 20, 2009. Pickering acted as the Nerd in Shue's famous play, "The Nerd," adapted as "Laus im Pelz (1987)".
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He has two grown-up children, Sarah Pamela and Andrew Dale, from his long-time marriage to wife Sharon.
7
One of several Rhode Island residents who have made films for the Farrelly Brothers. In four of their pictures, Richard even bought a house down the street from the brothers' childhood home in Cumberland, Rhode Island.
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Parents: Dale Stevens and M. Elizabeth Wheeler Jenkins.
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A member of the Trinity Repertory Company in Rhode Island for fifteen years, he appeared in such 1970s and 1980s Trinity Repertory productions as "Brother to Dragons," "Of Mice and Men," "True West," "American Buffalo" and "Waiting for Godot"; directed such later productions as "Tartuffe," "The Glass Menagerie", "The Miser" and Shekspeare's "Macbeth" and "Twelfth Night"; and was the company's artistic director for four years.
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Has a son and daughter with wife, Sharon.
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Studied theater at Illinois Wesleyan University.
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Served as an artistic director of Rhode Island's Trinity Repertory Theater.
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Frequently works with the Farrelly Brothers and the Coen Brothers.