Born on June 27, 1963 in Omaha, Nebraska, Jay Karnes is an actor best known for his role as master detective Holland "Dutch" Wagenbach on the FX police drama The Shield. Karnes went to the University of Kansas and graduated 1989. Prior to his acting career, Karnes took up Theatre and Political Science at Kansas University. He developed his theater work after college, working with groups such as South Coast Repertory and Missouri Repertory Theatre. Married to actress Julia Campbell, Karnes has twin girls. He originally wanted to be a lawyer, but while studying to take the LSAT to gear up for law school, he auditioned for the Nebraska Shakespeare Festival and got in. After being cast in A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Hamlet, he decided he wanted to pursue acting after all.
Among Karnes’ movie credits include The Joyriders in 1999 and The Next Best Thing in 2000. He was also in the 2008 features Chasing 3000 and Broken Angel. As for television, Jay Karnes has made several guest appearances on a number of key shows, such as Frasier, Judging Amy, Chicago Hope, The Pretender, and Star Trek: Voyager, where he played the role of Lieutenant Ducane in a season 5 episode called “Relativity.”
Before venturing into the movies and television, Karnes was with the Oregon Shakespeare festival as a company member during the mid-1990s, during which he played major roles as Love’s Labours Lost and Arcadia.