Theodore Scott Glenn is an American actor.
His roles have included Wes Hightower in Urban Cowboy, astronaut Alan Shepard in The Right
Stuff, Emmett in Silverado, Commander Bart Mancuso in The Hunt for Red October, Jack
Crawford in The Silence of the Lambs, Roger in Training Day, Ezra Kramer in The Bourne
Ultimatum, and The Wise Man in Sucker Punch.
Early life Glenn was born Theodore Scott Glenn in Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania, the son of Elizabeth, a homemaker, and Theodore Glenn, a business executive.
He grew up in Pittsburgh, and has Irish and Native American ancestry.
During his childhood he was regularly ill, and for a year was bed-ridden.
Through intense training programs he recovered from his illnesses, also overcoming a limp.
After graduating from a Pittsburgh High School, Glenn entered The College of William and Mary
where he majored in English.
He then joined the Marine Corps for three years and then worked roughly five months
as a reporter for the Kenosha Evening News, located in Kenosha, Wisconsin.
He then tried to become an author, but found he could not write good dialogue.
To learn the art of dialogue, he began taking acting classes.
In 1965, Glenn made his Broadway debut in The Impossible Years.
He joined George Morrison's acting class, helping direct student plays to pay for his
studies and appearing onstage in La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club productions.
In 1967, he married Carol Schwartz; Glenn converted to his wife's Judaism upon their
marriage.
In 1968, he joined The Actors Studio and began working in professional theatre and TV.
In 1970, director James Bridges offered him his first movie role, in The Baby Maker, released
the same year.
Career Glenn spent eight years in Los Angeles, California
acting in small roles in films and doing TV stints, including a TV movie Gargoyles.
He appeared in Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now, and worked with directors like Jonathan
Demme and Robert Altman.
In 1978 Glenn left Los Angeles with his family for Ketchum, Idaho and worked for the two
years he lived there as a barman, huntsman and mountain ranger, occasionally acting in
Seattle stage productions.
In 1980, he appeared as ex-convict Wes Hightower in Bridges' Urban Cowboy.
After that he appeared in a gothic horror film The Keep, action films such as Wild Geese
II opposite Laurence Olivier, Silverado, The Challenge and drama films such as The Right
Stuff, TV film Countdown to Looking Glass, The River and Off Limits 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 only given
a theatrical release in Finland and went straight to video in the U.S.
In the beginning of the 1990s his career was at its peak as he appeared in several well-known
and/or blockbuster films such as The Hunt for Red October, The Silence of the Lambs,
Backdraft and The Player.
He played a vicious mob hitman in a critically acclaimed performance in Night of the Running
Man.
Later he gravitated toward more challenging movie roles, such as in the Freudian farce
Reckless, tragicomedy Edie and Pen and Ken Loach's socio-political declaration Carla's
Song.
In the late '90s Glenn alternated between mainstream films, Absolute Power), independent
projects and Larga distancia, written by his daughter Dakota Glenn) and TV).
He was also cast in a supporting role in Training Day.
Glenn was cast in the FX drama Sons of Anarchy as the leader of an outlaw biker gang, but
he was replaced after an early pilot episode by Ron Perlman.
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.
Filmography
References
External links
Scott Glenn at the Internet Movie Database Scott Glenn at the Internet Broadway Database
Scott Glenn at the Internet Off-Broadway Database Scott Glenn at AllMovie
Scott Glenn at the TCM Movie Database