Stocky, genial looking supporting actor born and raised in Louisville, Kentucky who has continually displayed his versatility in cinema since first appearing alongside Burt Reynolds being brutalized in the back woods nightmare of Deliverance. Beatty & Reynolds struck up a friendship together, and Ned has since been cast by Burt in several other films together including White Lightning, W.W. and the Dixie Dancekings, and the abysmal Stroker Ace.

Ned's talents were also noticed by others in Hollywood and he was cast in many key productions of the 1970s turning in stellar performance, including an Academy Award nomination of Best Supporting Actor for his role in Network. Beatty was also marvelous in Nashville, under fire from a crazed sniper in The Deadly Tower, an undercover FBI man in the action/comedy Silver Streak, as Lex Luthor's bumbling assistant, Otis, in the blockbuster Superman....and he returned again with Gene Hackman to play Otis & Lex Luthor again in Superman II.

Beatty continued to remain busy throughout the 1980s with appearances in several big budget TV productions including The Last Days of Pompeii. However, the overall caliber of the productions in general did not match up to those he had appeared in during the seventies. None the less, Beatty still shone in films including The Big Easy, Fourth Protocol, The (1987)_ , and the delightful Hear My Song. Into the 1990s, Beatty's work output swung between a mixture of roles in family orientated productions (Gullivers Travels, Huckleberry Finn etc.) taking advantage of his "fatherly" type looks, but he could still accentuate a hard edge, and additionally was cast in Radioland Murders, the TV series Homicide: Life on the Street and Just Cause.

Most recently, Beatty turned out a terrific performance in the popular Where the Red Fern Grows.
He was nominated for a 2002 Laurence Olivier Theatre Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role of 2001 for his performance in "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" at the Lyric Theatre in London. He and wife Sandra are building a home in Northern Minnesota near her family. [2004] Son (from first marriage) Charles Beatty works as a grip in Hollywood, mostly on commercials.