Scott Glenn Biography

Theodore Scott Glenn (born January 26, 1941), better known as Scott Glenn, is an American actor. His roles have included Wes Hightower in Urban Cowboy (1980), astronaut Alan Shepard in The Right Stuff (1983), The River, (1984), Emmett in Silverado (1985), Verne Miller, a.ka., "Gangland," (1986), Commander Bart Mancuso in The Hunt for Red October (1990), Jack Crawford in The Silence of the Lambs (1991), Roger in Training Day (2001), Ezra Kramer in The Bourne Ultimatum (2007), The Wise Man in Sucker Punch (2011), and Stick in both Daredevil (2015) and The Defenders (2017).

Early life

Glenn was born Theodore Scott Glenn in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the son of Elizabeth, a housewife, and Theodore Glenn, a business executive. He 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 United States 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 1968, he married Carol Schwartz; Glenn converted to his wife's Judaism upon their marriage. That same year, he joined The Actors Studio and began working in professional theatre and TV. An early television role was that of 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.

Career

Glenn spent eight years in Los Angeles, California 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 for the two years he lived there as a barman, huntsman, and mountain ranger, occasionally acting in Seattle stage productions. He then appeared in Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now (1979) and worked with directors like 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), 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 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 (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 and Pen (1997) and Ken Loach's socio-political declaration Carla's Song. In the late '90s 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 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 currently plays the character Stick in Netflix's Daredevil series, and will reprise the role in The Defenders.

Filmography

• The Baby Maker (1970) as Tad Jacks
• Angels Hard as They Come (1971) as Long John
• Gargoyles (1972) as James Reeger
• Hex (1973)
• Nashville (1975) as Pfc. Glenn Kelly
• Apocalypse Now (1979) as Captain Richard M. Colby
• More American Graffiti (1979)
• Urban Cowboy (1980)
• Personal Best (1982)
• The Challenge (1982)
• The Right Stuff (1983) as Alan Shepard
• The Keep (1983)
• The River (1984)
• Countdown to Looking Glass (1984)
• Wild Geese II (1985)
• Silverado (1985)
• As Summers Die (1986)
• Man on Fire (1987)
• Gangland: The Verne Miller Story (1987)
• Off Limits (1988)
• Miss Firecracker (1989)
• The Hunt for Red October (1990) as Captain Bart Mancuso
• The Silence of the Lambs (1991) as Jack Crawford
• My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys (1991)
• Backdraft (1991) as John "Axe" Adcox
• Women & Men 2 (1991)
• Shadowhunter (1993) as John Cain
• Slaughter of the Innocents (1993) as Stephen Broderick
• Extreme Justice (1993) as Dan Vaughn
• Past Tense (1994)
• Night of the Running Man (1995) as David Eckhart
• Tall Tale (1995) as J.P. Stiles
• Reckless (1995) as Lloyd
• Courage Under Fire (1996) as Tony Gartner
• Carla's Song (1996) as Bradley
• Edie & Pen (1996) as Harry
• Absolute Power (1997) as Agent Bill Burton
• Firestorm (1998) as Wynt Perkins
• Naked City: Justice with a Bullet (1998) as Sgt. Daniel Muldoon
• The Virgin Suicides (1999) as Father Moody
• The Last Marshal (1999) as Cole
• Vertical Limit (2000) as Montgomery Wick
• Training Day (2001) as Roger
• The Seventh Stream (2001) as Owen Quinn
• Buffalo Soldiers (2001) as 1SG Robert E. Lee
• The Shipping News (2001) as Jack Buggit
• A Painted House (2003)
• Puerto Vallarta Squeeze (2004)
• Homeland Security (2004) as Joe Johnson
• Faith of My Fathers (2005)
• Code Breakers (2005) as Earl "Red" Blaik
• Journey to the End of the Night (2006) as Sinatra
• Freedom Writers (2007) as Steve Gruwell
• Camille (2007) as Sheriff Foster
• The Bourne Ultimatum (2007) as Ezra Kramer, Director of the CIA
• Nights in Rodanthe (2008) as Robert Torrelson
• Surfer, Dude (2008) as Alister Greenbough
• W. (2008) as U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld
• Secretariat (2010) as Christopher Chenery
• Sucker Punch (2011) as The Wise Man/The General/The Bus Driver
• The Bourne Legacy (2012) as Ezra Kramer, Director of the CIA
• The Paperboy (2012) as W.W James
• Trigger (2014) as Eugene Van Wingerdt
• The Leftovers (2014-present) as Kevin Garvey Sr
• Marvel's Daredevil (2015-present) as Stick
• Into the Grizzly Maze (2015) as Sully
• The Defenders (2017) as Stick