Scott Wilson (born March 29, 1942) is an American film and television actor. Wilson has more than 50 film credits from the 1960s to the 2010s, including In the Heat of the Night, The Great Gatsby, Dead Man Walking, Pearl Harbor , and Junebug. In 1980, Wilson received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Supporting Actor – Motion Picture for his role in The Ninth Configuration. More recently, Wilson joined the second season cast of the AMC television series, The Walking Dead, in 2011. He plays veterinarian and Greene family patriarch, Hershel Greene. Wilson is a native of Atlanta, Georgia. He hitchhiked from Atlanta to Los Angeles with a friend in 1961 when he was 19 years old. His friend eventually returned to Georgia, while Wilson enrolled in an acting class and pursued the craft as his profession. Wilson made his screen debut portraying characters suspected of murder in his first two films. In his debut film, Wilson played a murder suspect in 1967's In the Heat of the Night, which starred Sidney Poitier and Rod Steiger. His follow-up role, in the same year, was in In Cold Blood, based on the book of the same name by Truman Capote.