Ken Jenkins: actor's filmography

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

Ken Jenkins is an American musician and actor of film, theater and television, best known for playing the insensitive, selfish and mean head physician Bob Kelso in the popular comedy-drama television series The Clinic, about the life and work of young doctors.

Biography

The actor was born on August 28, 1940 in the city of Dayton (Ohio). While attending Wilbur Wright High School, Jenkins discovered his love for the theatre, becoming active in various high school theater productions based on the works of Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, George Bernard Shaw, and William Shakespeare. As a young man, Ken Jenkins began studying acting at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, near his hometown, and began performing on Broadway and regional theater throughout his college years.

Career start

In the late 1960s, he co-founded the prestigious non-profit Actors Theater for the Performing Arts in Louisville and spent three years as Associate Artistic Director. This institution is famous for beingthe breeding ground for some of America's finest playwrights, such as Beth Henley and Marsha Norman, and has also nurtured some of America's most famous plays. For the next nearly thirty years, Ken Jenkins averaged ten plays a year while working as an actor, writer, or director. He portrayed "Hamlet" and "Cyrano" and acted in other classics. However, one of his favorite jobs on stage was in the 1985 musical Big River, in which he starred with his son Daniel.

Films with Ken Jenkins

Since his 1974 debut on The Great Shows, Jenkins has appeared on television in a variety of roles: sheriff on the crime series The Equalizer, pilot on the sitcom Amen, captain on the soap opera Dallas”, curious Dr. Paul Stubbs in the adventure television series Star Trek: The Next Generation, Lars Durstin in the television drama Thirty-something, Mike Sloane Sr., for two seasons, in the television drama Behind the Lines, Deputy Chief Karras in The X-Files, Pastor Neal in the youth series Beverly Hills, 90210, Chick, a typical southerner, father of the main character (Courteney Cox) in the television series Cougar Town, Elder Sam in the adventure series Lemony Snicket: 33 misfortune.”

Ken has also acted in several television films such as the drama Kick for the Stands (Hilton Burberry), the biopic Cuba Libre, Shattered Dreams (Hal Witt), the thriller The Thirst (Lou Wolford) andhistorical drama "To the Very End" (Congressman Howard Smith).

On the big screen Ken Jenkins' filmography includes James Cameron's fantasy film The Abyss, an Air America comedy about the adventures of young pilots during the Vietnam War. He starred in the thriller Ordered to Destroy, the drama The Last Dance, the horror film Psycho, a remake of Alfred Hitchcock's classic thriller of the same name, and the crime film Gone in 60 Seconds, in which a car thief has to steal fifty cars in one night. Appeared in the drama "I Am Sam", about how a mentally retarded man fights for custody of his seven-year-old daughter, the thriller "The Price of Fear", the drama "Welcome to Heaven".

Jenkins is a great singer and acoustic guitar player, and he proves it in a couple of episodes of "Scrubs". He played the owner of a bar in the music video for The Blanks, performing songs without musical accompaniment.

Private life

Jenkins was married twice, in 1958 his first wife was actress Joan Patchen. The marriage produced three sons, Matthew, Joshua and Daniel Jenkins, who chose the profession of parents, appearing in a number of television shows, as well as in many plays and musicals on Broadway. Ken divorced Joan after eleven years of marriage. She passed away in 2000.

In 1970, Ken Jenkins married actress and writer Katherine Houghton, who is the niece of the brilliant, Oscar-winning Katharine Hepburn, and even starred with her in several films. Jenkins is an avid carpenter and skilled animal trainer, andhis real personality is the opposite of that of Bob Kelso, by far his most recognizable character, whom he plays in "Scrubs". He was described by his co-stars and co-stars as "the cutest guy in the world."