Richard Jenkins

After decades of work in regional theater and made-for-television movies, American character actor Richard Jenkins began to attract the attention of critics and audiences in the late 1990s with quiet but engrossing performances in a wide variety of feature films. Equally capable at both broad comedy and drama, he frequently essayed tightly controlled men of authority, including judges, government agents, detectives and medical professionals. Occasionally, his characters spun wildly out of control - a DEA agent who experiences a spectacular LSD trip in "Flirting With Disaster" (1996), or staid funeral director Richard Fisher, whose sudden death reveals a long-hidden secret life on the acclaimed series "Six Feet Under" (HBO, 2001-05) - which was often the highlight of the project. He was also a favorite performer of the Coen Brothers, appearing in "The Man Who Wasn't There" (2001), "Intolerable Cruelty" (2003) and "Burn After Reading" (2008). While mainly a character actor, Jenkins finally graduated to leading man status in the independent film "The Visitor" (2008), for which he received excellent notices, while also appearing in "Eat Pray Love" (2010) and "The Rum Diary" (2011). Though not quite a household name, Jenkins remained a busy actor who landed prominent parts in some of Hollywood's biggest movies.