Stocky, genial looking supporting actor who was born and raised in Louisville, Kentucky, Ned Beatty has continually displayed his versatility in cinema since first appearing alongside Burt Reynolds being brutalized in the backwoods nightmare of Délivrance (1972). Beatty and Reynolds struck up a friendship together, and Ned has since been cast by Burt in several other films together including Les bootleggers (1973), W.W. and the Dixie Dancekings (1975), and the abysmal Stroker Ace (1983).
Ned's talents were also noticed by others in Hollywood and he was cast in many key productions of the 1970s turning in stellar performance, including an Academy Award nomination of Best Supporting Actor for his role in Network - Main basse sur la TV (1976). Beatty was also marvelous in Nashville (1975), under fire from a crazed sniper in The Deadly Tower (1975), an undercover FBI man in the action/comedy Transamerica Express (1976), as Lex Luthor's bumbling assistant, Otis, in the blockbuster Superman (1978)... and he returned again with Gene Hackman to play Otis and Lex Luthor again in Superman II (1980).
Beatty continued to remain busy throughout the 1980s with appearances in several big budget television productions including Les derniers jours de Pompéi (1984). However, the overall caliber of the productions in general did not match up to those he had appeared in during the 1970s. Nonetheless, Beatty still shone in films including Big Easy, le flic de mon coeur (1986), Le quatrième protocole (1987), and the delightful Hear My Song (1991). Into the 1990s, Beatty's work output swung between a mixture of roles in family orientated productions (Les voyages de Gulliver (1996), Back to Hannibal: The Return of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn (1990), etc.) taking advantage of his "fatherly" type looks, but he could still accentuate a hard edge, and additionally was cast in Radioland Murders (1994), the television series Homicide (1993) and Juste cause (1995).
Most recently, Beatty turned out a terrific performance in the popular Where the Red Fern Grows (2003).
