"Spare, lean-faced, rather fraught-looking American actor with lined jaw and light, somewhat unruly hair, who often plays characters of sweaty menace. His seaman father took him to live in Borneo for three years as a boy and they travelled around the Pacific before returning to their native New York.

Expelled from schools following a stint in a military academy, Henriksen hitch-hiked and rode freight trains across America to California, where he eventually enrolled at the Actor's Studio. On stage, thereafter, he made no films until 1971, maintaining a low profile movie career until cast as astronaut Walter Schirra in The Right Stuff. He then twice played the android Bishop in the Alien films, and has shown up prominently cast as men with a dangerous edge on either side of the law."