Starting as a child, Russell Hodgkinson straddled between two worlds: acting and the military. He was born on Homestead Air Force Base, and grew up acting in school while his father was an Air Force man. At the end of high school, he planned to study theater, but after his high school girlfriend gave birth, he made the decision to enlist in the Army instead. Through his tenure in the Army from 1977 to 1983, he still acted, appearing on the stage often at the Fort Bragg Playhouse. After that, Hodgkinson enlisted in the Coast Guard, though he spent his free time studying acting whenever he could. Before he was done with the Coast Guard in 1991, he made his screen debut in "The Court-Martial of Jackie Robinson" (1990). After that, he moved to Louisiana, where he regularly acted in stage performances. After making a name for himself in the New Orleans theater community, he moved to Seattle with an intention to move more into TV and film. He appeared in Tim Burton's "Big Fish" (2003), thriller "Tough Luck" (2003), and Lynn Shelton's "We Go Way Back" (2006). In the latter half of the decade, Hodgkinson kept appearing in smaller projects, most notably "ZMD: Zombies of Mass Destruction" (2009). He followed that up an appearance on "Grimm" (NBC 2011-17) as well as the movies "Fat Kid Rules the World" (2012) and "21 & Over" (2013). He landed the role of Doc on the zombie-themed TV show "Z Nation" (SyFy 2014-) in 2014.