Lance Henriksen (born in New York in 1940) is an American actor best known for his role in the Alien franchise, for the series Millennium, and for science fiction, horror and B-movie action films. His filmography includes almost two hundred films. Besides acting, he is an accomplished painter and ceramicist, a side of his work that is less known to the public and that he has pursued alongside his career.
The son of a Norwegian boxer and a mother who worked as a model, waitress and dance teacher, he trained at the Actors Studio and made his debut off-Broadway in Eugene O'Neill's Three Plays of the Sea. His school years were marked by his parents' early separation and by reading difficulties that he overcame as an adult, when he had to read a great many scripts.
His film career began with Dog Day Afternoon, directed by Sidney Lumet, followed by Network and Prince of the City, both also directed by Lumet. He appeared in Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind and in Philip Kaufman's The Right Stuff, where he played astronaut Walter Schirra. James Cameron hired him for Piranha II: The Spawning, his first film as a director. He then appeared in The Terminator and in Aliens, where he played the android Bishop, a role he reprised in Alien 3.
In 1996 Chris Carter cast him as the lead of Millennium, a series broadcast by Fox in which he played Frank Black, a retired FBI agent who can get inside the minds of killers. The role earned him three Golden Globe nominations in consecutive years. The series was praised by critics, but it lost viewers and quality in its third season, which turned out to be its last. Henriksen has continued to defend it for more than a decade after its cancellation.
Other notable titles include Near Dark, by Kathryn Bigelow; Jennifer 8, by Bruce Robinson; Powder; Dead Man, by Jim Jarmusch; and Alien vs. Predator. His deep voice also led him to voice work, including the role of Kerchak in Tarzan, and to video games, where he voiced Admiral Hackett in Mass Effect and Lieutenant General Shepherd in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.
His legacy is split between genre cinema and television, and his ties to the Alien and Terminator franchises are what most people remember him for. As a painter and ceramicist, he has built an artistic practice that goes well beyond acting.