Jensen Ackles' Acting Debut Was In This Award-Winning '90s PBS Kids TV Show

Jensen Ackles may be best known for playing Dean Winchester on "Supernatural," the long-running fantasy series he starred in alongside Jared Padalecki, but the gravelly-voiced demon hunter wasn't his first role by a longshot: Ackles actually got his start on "Wishbone," an award-winning PBS kids show from the '90s featuring one of the best TV animals ever. Wishbone is the name of the show's central Jack Russell Terrier, who imagines himself as the central figure in various literary adventures. The series took on everything from Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Hound of the Baskervilles" to Homer's "The Odyssey" during its 50-episode run.

Of course, "Wishbone" would have been hard to pull off without human characters, such as the titular dog's owner Joe (Jordan Wall). In November 1995, Ackles appeared in an episode titled "¡Viva Wishbone!" as Michael Dunn, a boy navigating the loss of his mother. His story inspires the episode's tie-in, which is based on the tale of Juan Diego and Our Lady of Guadalupe. Juan Diego (the role played by Wishbone in the episode) was an indigenous peasant-turned-Saint from Mexico who encountered the Mother of God in the 1530s and was instructed by her to build a shrine.

"Wishbone" may seem like a random place for a future star to pop up, but it actually makes sense when you learn that the show was produced entirely in Northern Texas. Episodes were often shot in the towns of Allen, Grapevine, and Plano, with the primary filming location being Plano ranch, where the pooch who played Wishbone (credited as Soccer the Dog) actually lived. Jensen Ackles is from Richardson, which is less than a 10-minute drive to Plano.

Not long after making his debut in "Wishbone," Ackles made the move to Los Angeles and landed the role of Eric Brady in the long-running soap opera "Days of Our Lives," a part he would play for almost 450 episodes between 1997 and 2000. He quickly scooped a Soap Opera Digest Award for his work on the show, which turned him into a local celebrity back home. When he sat down for an interview on "Good Morning Texas" in 1998, he revealed that his biggest inspiration was his father, Alan Ackles, who is also an actor.

"He always calls me and keeps me grounded," Jensen said. "I think the biggest thing that he told me was, when I was auditioning for everything, he said to me, 'If you get it, you get it, if you don't, you don't, it's no big deal.'" Father and son would later appear onscreen together in a "Supernatural" Season 8 episode titled "Heartache." Alan Ackles played Detective Pike, a Minneapolis homicide cop who interacts with the Winchesters during their investigation into a string of murders where the victims have had their hearts torn out.