Born: December 2 1953
Where: DeKalb, Illinois, USA

The popular character is probably best known as funeral parlour patriarch Nathaniel Fisher in the US TV series Six Feet Under.

However, he has also won acclaim on the big screen in roles ranging from The Visitor and various Coen Brother movies to Hank Aimes in North Country.

After studying theatre at Illinois Wesleyan University, Jenkins worked extensively in regional theatre including 15 years at Rhode Island's Trinity Repertory Theatre.

He made his movie debut in 1975 in the TV outing Brother to Dragons but did not begin working regularly until Lawrence Kasdan's Silverado.

Subseqeunt support work included Woody Allen's Hannah and her Sisters, The Witches of Eastwick and the thriller Sea of Love with Al Pacino.

Bigger roles followed in the 1990s, including that of a gay FBI agent in Flirting With Disaster and opposite Ben Stiller in the Farrelly's gross-out There's Something About Mary.

Teaming with the Farrellys, he appeared in Outside Providence, Say It Isn't So and the Farrelly-directed Me, Myself & Irene in 2000.

In 2001, he played Scarlet Johansson's father in the noirish thriller The Man Who Wasn't There with Billy Bob Thornton and Nate Fisher in the pilot of Six Feet Under.

Subsequent big screen appearances included the Roger Mitchell's thriller-drama Changing Lanes as well as the sci-fi thriller The Core.

In 2003, he re-teamed with the Coen Brothers for Intolerable Cruelty with George Clooney and starred with Steve Martin in Cheaper By The Dozen.

Two years later he starrede in the controversial drama North Country and the 2005 remake of Fun With Dick and Jane.

Roles followed in the action thriller The Kingdom and he memorably played a curmudgeonly college professor who discovers illegal immigrants squatting in his flat in The Visitor.

Recent work includes the thriler The Broken and the Coen Brothers comedy Burn After Reading.