Beau Billingslea

Although he's appeared in countless films and television shows since the mid 1970s, Beau Billingslea is best known for his voice work--namely, the character Jet Black, from the Japanese anime series "Cowboy Bebop." Billingslea was born in Charleston, South Carolina, and it appeared as though he would be either a baseball or football player early on (as he was offered a contract by the Kansas City Athletics baseball team, as well as a football scholarship). After he attended the University of Connecticut (and served in the military), Billingslea's sports aspirations took a backseat to acting, resulting in small, one-off appearances on such late-1970s television shows as "Barnaby Jones" and "Mrs. Columbo." While Billingslea would continue landing acting roles throughout the years, it was during the late 1970s that he began doing voice work for Japanese anime television programs, the first of which was 1979's "Lupin the Third: The Castle of Cagliostro." Billingslea would continue to land anime roles, including supplying voices for such shows as 1989's "Gundam 0080: A War in the Pocket," the aforementioned "Cowboy Bebop" (from 1998 to 1999), and 2001's "JAG," among many others.