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Scott Glenn

b. 1941

American actor

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About Scott Glenn

Born 1941. Scott Glenn is an American film actor, actor, military personnel, reporter, television actor and film producer.

Theodore Scott Glenn (born January 26 between 1939 and 1941 ) is an American actor. His roles have included Bill Lester in She Came to the Valley, Pfc Glenn Kelly in Nashville (1975), Wes Hightower in Urban Cowboy (1980), astronaut Alan Shepard in The Right Stuff (1983), Emmett in Silverado (1985), Captain Bart Mancuso in The Hunt for Red October (1990), Jack Crawford in The Silence of the Lambs (1991), John Adcox in Backdraft (1991), Bill Burton in Absolute Power (1997), Roger in Training Day (2001), Ezra Kramer in The Bourne Ultimatum (2007), and Chris Chenery in Secretariat (2010).

On television, he played Kevin Garvey Sr. in the HBO television series The Leftovers (2014–2017), Stick in the Marvel Cinematic Universe television series Daredevil (2015–2016) and The Defenders (2017), and Jim Hollinger in The White Lotus (2025), for which he received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination.

Early life Glenn has Irish and Native American ancestry. During his childhood, he was regularly ill, and for a year was bedridden, including having scarlet fever.

After graduating from a Pittsburgh high school, Glenn entered the College of William & Mary, where he majored in English and graduated in 1961. In 1962, he joined the United States Marine Corps Reserve as an artilleryman and served for three years. He then worked for about seven months in 1963 as a news and sports reporter for the Kenosha News in Kenosha, Wisconsin. He tried to become an author, but found he could not write dialogue that satisfied the readers. To learn the art of dialogue, he began taking acting classes taught by William Hickey. and began working in professional theatre and TV. Two of Glenn's early television roles were as Hal Currin in the 1966 crime series Hawk, starring Burt Reynolds, and Calvin Brenner on the CBS daytime serial The Edge of Night. In 1970, director James Bridges offered him his first movie role, in The Baby Maker, released the same year.

Glenn spent eight years in Los Angeles, acting in small roles in films and doing TV stints, including a TV movie Gargoyles. In 1978, Glenn left Los Angeles with his family for Ketchum, Idaho, and worked as a barman, huntsman, and mountain ranger, occasionally acting in Seattle stage productions. He appeared in Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now (1979) and worked with directors such as Jonathan Demme and Robert Altman.

In 1980, he appeared as ex-convict Wes Hightower in Bridges' Urban Cowboy. After that, he starred in the World War II horror film, The Keep (1983), and action films such as Wild Geese II (1985) opposite Laurence Olivier, Silverado (1985), and The Challenge (1982), and drama films such as The Right Stuff (1983), TV film Countdown to Looking Glass (1984), The River (1984), and Off Limits (1988) as he alternately played good guys and bad guys during the 1980s. He returned to Broadway in Burn This in 1987. That same year, he tried his hand at gangster movies when he starred as the real-life sheriff turned gunman Verne Miller in the movie Gangland: The Verne Miller Story, which was given a theatrical release only in Finland and went straight to video in the US.

In the beginning of the 1990s, Glenn's career was at its peak as he appeared in several well-known films, such as The Hunt for Red October (1990), The Silence of the Lambs (1991), Backdraft (1991), and The Player (1992). He played a vicious mob hitman in a critically acclaimed performance in Night of the Running Man (1995). Later, he gravitated toward more challenging movie roles, such as in the Freudian farce Reckless (1995), tragicomedy Edie & Pen (1997), and Ken Loach's sociopolitical declaration Carla's Song. In the late 1990s, Glenn alternated between mainstream films (Courage Under Fire (1996), Absolute Power (1997)), independent projects (Lesser Prophets (1997) and Larga distancia (1998), written by his daughter Dakota Glenn) and TV (Naked City: A Killer Christmas (1998)). He was also cast in a supporting role in Training Day (2001). Glenn was cast in the FX drama Sons of Anarchy (2008), as Clay Morrow, but he was replaced after an early pilot episode by Ron Perlman. He portrayed Eugene van Wingerdt in a leading role in the thriller film The Barber. Glenn acted in the 2011 film Sucker Punch as Wise Man.

Glenn appeared in the drama Freedom Writers, in which he played the father of Hilary Swank's character, and in The Bourne Ultimatum and The Bourne Legacy as CIA Director Ezra Kramer. He played the character Stick in Netflix's television series Daredevil and returned to the character in The Defenders series a year later. In 2020, he played the grandfather in Greenland, opposite Gerard Butler and Morena Baccarin—an apocalyptic thriller about a comet destroying most of Earth. In 2024, he joined the cast of season 3 of the HBO series The White Lotus as Jim Hollinger, co-owner of the Thailand White Lotus resort.

In September 2025, Oldenburg International Film Festival paid tribute to Glenn with a retrospective of his career. The festival opened with the world premiere of Eugene the Marine, a film directed by Hank Bedford. The movie stars Glenn in the lead role of Eugene Lee Grady, a former marine struggling to keep his life together as his son is trying to force him out of his longtime home as a series of murders occur targeting the people around him.

Personal life He wed Carol Schwartz and upon their marriage, Glenn converted to Judaism, his wife's faith, from Catholicism. Magic Valley Ed Halfner

The Paperboy W.W. Jansen The Bourne Legacy Ezra Kramer, Director of the CIA 2014 The Barber Eugene Van Wingerdt / Francis Allen Visser 2015 Into the Grizzly Maze Sully 2020 Greenland Dale 2023 The Hill Red Murff 2025 Eugene the Marine Gene Lee Grady Television Year Title Role Notes 1965 The Patty Duke Show Harry / Waiter 2 episodes 1966 Hawk Hal Currin Episode: "Wall of Silence" 1967 N.Y.P.D. Roddy Episode: "The Pink Gumdrop" 1969 The Edge of Night Calvin Brenner Episode: "#1.3490", uncredited 1971 The Young Lawyers Nick Field Episode: "The Outspoken Silence" 1971–73 Ironside Lonnie Burnett / Frank Lenox 2 episodes 1972 The Streets of San Francisco Junkie Gambler Episode: "The Thirty-Year Pin", uncredited Gargoyles James Reeger Television film The Sixth Sense Mark Hall Episode: "And Scream by the Light of the Moon, the Moon" 1973 Emergency! Forklift Driver Episode: "Seance", uncredited 1975 Khan! Episode: "Triad" Baretta Dave Episode: "A Bite of the Apple" 1984 Countdown to Looking Glass Michael Boyle Television film 1986 As Summers Die Willie Croft 1988 Intrigue Crawford 1989 The Outside Woman Jesse Smith 1991 Women & Men 2 Henry 1993 Shadowhunter John Cain 1994 Past Tense Gene Ralston 1998 Naked City: Justice with a Bullet Sgt. Daniel Muldoon Naked City: A Killer Christmas 2001 The Seventh Stream Owen Quinn 2003 A Painted House Eli "Pappy" Chandler American Experience Narrator Voice; 2 episodes 2004 Homeland Security Joe Johnson Television film 2005 Gone, But Not Forgotten Martin Darius / Peter Lake Faith of My Fathers Jack McCain Hollywood's Greatest Villains Himself Television documentary Code Breakers Earl "Red" Blaik Television film 2008 Monk Sheriff Rollins 2 episodes 2014–2017 The Leftovers Kevin Garvey Sr. 11 episodes 2015–2016 Marvel's Daredevil Stick 5 episodes 2017 Marvel's The Defenders 6 episodes 2018 Castle Rock Alan Pangborn 8 episodes 2024 Bad Monkey Jim Yancy 5 episodes 2025 The White Lotus Jim Hollinger 3 episodes

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Important facts

Birth century
Nationality
Education
College of William & Mary
Also known as
Theodore Scott Glenn

People in Scott Glenn's life

Named in this biography and alive at the same time

Contemporaries

People whose lives overlapped Scott Glenn's

Frequently asked questions

Who is Scott Glenn?

American actor

When was Scott Glenn born?

Scott Glenn was born on 26 January 1941 in Pittsburgh.

What is Scott Glenn's occupation?

Scott Glenn is a film actor, actor, military personnel, reporter, television actor and film producer.

What nationality is Scott Glenn?

Scott Glenn is American.

Sources & further reading

· Wikipedia: Scott Glenn

· Wikidata: Q114179

· DBpedia: Scott Glenn

Cite this page

APA: Biography.guide. (2026). Scott Glenn. https://biography.guide/scott-glenn/

MLA: "Scott Glenn." Biography.guide, https://biography.guide/scott-glenn/.

Chicago: "Scott Glenn." Biography.guide. https://biography.guide/scott-glenn/.

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