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Creator / Jensen Ackles

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Jensen Ross Ackles (born March 1st, 1978 in Dallas, Texas) is an American actor, director, producer, and musician. He's one of those actors where you can throw anything at him from an acting challenge point of view; you can shoot him, tie him up, torture him, dumb him down, make him all bloody and bruised, wring the emo from him, and generally have him flung against a hard, inanimate object nearly every episode and he'll eat it up with a spoon and knock it out of the park every time.

He's best known for being in shows such as Supernatural (Dean Winchester), Dark Angel (identical twins Ben and Alec) and Smallville (Jason Teague), as well as movies like Devour (Jake Gray) and My Bloody Valentine 3D (Tom Hanniger). His first big part was on Days of Our Lives, as Eric Roman Brady (Sami's twin brother). His roles following Supernatural include Soldier Boy in season three of The Boys and Sheriff Beau Arlen in season three of Big Sky.

Outside of live-action work, he's been the voice of Jason Todd/Red Hood in Batman: Under the Red Hood, Gibson in the video game TRON: Evolution, Kyle Madigan in The 3rd Birthday, and Bruce Wayne/Batman in Batman: The Long Halloween and subsequent Tomorrowverse films.

He's married to actress Danneel Ackles, with whom he has three kids: Justice Jay (JJ, born May 30, 2013) and twins Zeppelin Bram and Arrow Rhodes (born December 2nd, 2016). He's also close friends with his Supernatural co-stars Jared Padalecki and Misha Collins, and Christian Kane.

He and his family resided in Austin, Texas for seven years where they run a brewery, Family Business Beer Company. They relocated to Connecticut in 2023. He and Danneel formed a production company, Chaos Machine Productions, and signed an overall deal with Warner Bros. before moving it over to Amazon. They executive produced the Supernatural prequel The Winchesters, with Jensen reprising his role as Dean playing The Narrator.

Follow him on Twitter and Instagram.


Filmography:


Tropes associated with this actor's career include:

  • The Cast Showoff: Usually averted. Ackles is a talented singer, but Dean Winchester couldn't carry a tune to save his life, as his painful attempts at karaoke several times throughout the show clearly demonstrate, while Soldier Boy's rendition of "Rapture" can be described as Piss-Take Rap. However, Jensen did learn to play the piano in just a few days' time for the Dark Angel episode "The Berrisford Agenda" where his character Alec posed as a piano tutor, and the producers ended up not using the hand double they'd hired because Jensen was better.
  • Directed by Cast Member: Directed six episodes of Supernatural.
  • Hypothetical Casting: Ackles was Arrow producer Marc Guggenheim's personal choice to portray Bruce Wayne if Warner Bros ever allowed them access to the character, but this never materialized on the show. (The role has since been filled in the Arrowverse by Warren Christie in Batwoman.) However, he ultimately did voice Bruce Wayne in The Long Halloween.
  • What Could Have Been:
    • He was allegedly the runner-up for the role of Clark Kent in Smallville had Tom Welling turned down the part. He would later go on to portray Jason Teague in the fourth season of the series.
    • Before being cast as Dean Winchester, he originally auditioned for Sam Winchester, and was the showrunners' favorite for the role before Jared Padalecki auditioned.
    • Jared Padalecki mentioned in an interview with TV Guide that the initial plan for Walker was that he would only executive produce while Jensen would play the lead. Jared ending up playing Walker as well.
    • He was in talks to play Leon Kennedy in the fourth Resident Evil movie, before the delays and the extensive rewrites, with Leon not appearing in the new version. Leon later appeared in the fifth movie played by Johann Urb.
    • He was the showrunners' choice to play Tru's boyfriend in Season 2 of Tru Calling, but had to bow out due to his commitment to Smallville. So the character was cast with Eric Christian Olsen and actually named Jensen. The suggestion to cast him had been made by Doris Egan, who wrote the episode of Dark Angel where his character Ben was introduced, since like Ben the character of Jensen on Tru Calling was supposed to be able to show both sweetness and an eventual descent into psychosis.
    • He was originally going to cameo as Bruce Wayne in Gotham Knights (where his Supernatural castmate Misha Collins stars as Harvey Dent), but it couldn't be fit into his schedule with his work on Big Sky and The Winchesters.

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