James Norman Beaver Jr. (born August 12, 1950) is an American actor, writer, and film historian. He portrayed Bobby Singer in Supernatural. He also played Whitney Ellsworth on the HBO Western drama series Deadwood, which brought him acclaim and a Screen Actors Guild Awards nomination for Ensemble Acting, Sheriff Shelby Parlow on the FX series Justified, and Robert "Dakota Bob" Singer on the Amazon Prime Video series The Boys. His memoir Life's That Way was published in April 2009.