Here’s where else you may have seen The Walking Dead’s Jeffrey Dean Morgan. Starring with a villainous role as pimp Sharkey in 1991’s Uncaged, Jeffrey Dean Morgan spent the first few years of his career jumping between low-budget films and television. This includes an episode of Sliders and 1995 erotic thriller Undercover Heat. He played a lead role in short-lived sci-fi series The Burning Zone, but his character was unceremoniously kicked off the show when it was abruptly retooled after eleven episodes.
In the 2000s Jeffrey Dean Morgan would regularly appear on hit shows, making guest appearances in Walker, Texas Ranger, ER, and Angel. He played a major role in Supernatural season 1 playing John Winchester, the missing father of lead characters Sam and Dean. John taught them all they know about hunting nasty creatures and demons, and Morgan made regular appearances throughout the season before departing. The actor later joined the cast of Grey’s Anatomy as Denny Duquette, a patient who forms a romance with Katherine Heigl’s Izzie. Denny’s death is considered one of the show’s saddest moments and the actor later thanked showrunner Shonda Rhimes for changing his life with the part.
Jeffrey Dean Morgan soon became a familiar face in film and TV, co-starring with Uma Thurman in romantic comedy The Accidental Husband and heading up the cast of 2010 comic book adaptation The Losers, alongside Zoe Saldana and Chris Evans. One of his signature parts is The Comedian in Zack Snyder’s Watchmen, where he made a real impression despite the character’s limited screentime. Sadly, most of the film projects Morgan signed up during this period, including The Losers, Jonah Hex, and Red Dawn underperformed critically and commercially, which did little for his movie career.
Jeffrey Dean Morgan headed back to TV for detective series Magic City, which co-starred Olga Kurylenko and Danny Huston, and lasted for two seasons. Following this, he appeared in harsh western The Salvation with Mads Mikkelsen and Eva Green, the poorly received thriller Solace – which at one time was a proposed sequel to Seven – and made a cameo appearance in 2016’s Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice as Thomas Wayne.
Undoubtedly Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s most famous TV role would be Negan in The Walking Dead. Negan made his debut in the finale of season 6 and was later responsible for the nightmarish execution of two beloved characters. He’s since evolved from a villain into more of an anti-hero. Morgan’s charisma made the character oddly likable, however, despite his tendency to commit horrifying acts of violence. The Walking Dead has taken up most of his time in recent years, though he appeared in a supporting role in Dwayne Johnson blockbuster Rampage in 2018 and made a special guest appearance on Supernatural’s 300th episode “Lebanon.”
