# Scott Glenn

Theodore Scott Glenn (born January 26 between 1938 and 1942) is an American actor. His roles have included Bill Lester in She Came to the Valley (1979), 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), Chris Chenery in Secretariat (2010), Kevin Garvey Sr. in the HBO series The Leftovers (2014–2017), and as Stick in the Marvel Cinematic Universe series Daredevil (2015–2016) and The Defenders (2017).

## Early life

Glenn has Irish and Native American ancestry. During his childhood, he was regularly ill, and for a year was bed-ridden, including having scarlet fever. Through intense training in boxing, wrestling and tang soo do, he recovered from his illnesses, although he would have a limp for the next couple of years.
After graduating from a Pittsburgh High School, Glenn entered the College of William & Mary, where he majored in English and graduated in 1961. He joined the United States Marine Corps for three years, 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.

## Career

Glenn made his Broadway debut in The Impossible Years in 1965. 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 joined The Actors Studio 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, 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 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 U.S.
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 & Morena Baccarin-- an apocalyptic thriller about a comet destroying most of Earth.

## Personal life

He wed Carol Schwartz in 1968 and upon their marriage, Glenn converted to Judaism, his wife's faith, from Catholicism. They have two daughters.

## Filmography
### Film

| Year | Title | Role | Notes |
| 1970 | The Baby Maker | Tad Jacks | |
| 1971 | Angels Hard as They Come | Long John | |
| 1972 | She Came to the Valley | Bill Lester | |
| 1973 | Hex | Jimbang | |
| 1975 | Nashville | Pfc. Glenn Kelly | |
| 1976 | Fighting Mad | Charlie Hunter | |
| 1979 | She Came to the Valley | Bill Lester | |
| 1979 | Apocalypse Now | Captain Richard M. Colby | |
| 1979 | More American Graffiti | Newt | |
| 1980 | Urban Cowboy | Wes Hightower | |
| 1981 | Cattle Annie and Little Britches | Bill Dalton | |
| 1982 | Personal Best | Terry Tingloff | |
| 1982 | The Challenge | Rick | |
| 1983 | The Right Stuff | Alan Shepard | |
| 1983 | The Keep | Glaeken | |
| 1984 | The River | Joe Wade | |
| 1985 | Wild Geese II | John Haddad | |
| 1985 | Silverado | Emmett | |
| 1987 | Gangland: The Verne Miller Story | Verne Miller | |
| 1987 | Man on Fire | Creasy | |
| 1988 | Off Limits | Colonel Dexter Armstrong | |
| 1989 | Miss Firecracker | Mac Sam | |
| 1990 | The Hunt for Red October | Captain Bart Mancuso | |
| 1991 | The Silence of the Lambs | Jack Crawford | |
| 1991 | My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys | H.D. Dalton | |
| 1991 | Backdraft | John "Axe" Adcox | Also performed stunts in the film |
| 1992 | The Player | Himself | |
| 1993 | Extreme Justice | Dan Vaughn | |
| 1993 | Slaughter of the Innocents | Stephen Broderick | |
| 1995 | Night of the Running Man | David Eckhart | |
| 1995 | The Spy Within | William B. Rickman | |
| 1995 | Tall Tale | J.P. Stiles | |
| 1995 | Reckless | Lloyd | |
| 1996 | Edie & Pen | Harry | |
| 1996 | Courage Under Fire | Tony Gartner | |
| 1996 | Carla's Song | Bradley | |
| 1997 | Absolute Power | Agent Bill Burton | |
| 1997 | Lesser Prophets | Iggy | |
| 1998 | Firestorm | Wynt Perkins | |
| 1998 | Larga distancia | Senor Grem | |
| 1999 | The Virgin Suicides | Father Moody | |
| 1999 | The Last Marshal | Cole | |
| 2000 | Vertical Limit | Montgomery Wick | |
| 2001 | Training Day | Roger | |
| 2001 | Buffalo Soldiers | 1SG Robert E. Lee | |
| 2001 | The Shipping News | Jack Buggit | |
| 2004 | Puerto Vallarta Squeeze | Clayton Price | |
| 2006 | Journey to the End of the Night | Sinatra | |
| 2007 | Freedom Writers | Steve Gruwell | |
| 2007 | The Bourne Ultimatum | Ezra Kramer, Director of the CIA | |
| 2007 | Camille | Sheriff Foster | |
| 2008 | Surfer, Dude | Alister Greenbough | |
| 2008 | Nights in Rodanthe | Robert Torrelson | |
| 2008 | W. | U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld | |
| 2010 | Secretariat | Christopher Chenery | |
| 2011 | Sucker Punch | The Wise Man / The General / The Bus Driver | |
| 2011 | Magic Valley | Ed Halfner | |
| 2012 | The Paperboy | W.W James | |
| 2012 | 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 | |
| TBA | 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 |
| 1972 | Gargoyles | James Reeger | Television film |
| 1972 | 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" |
| 1975 | Baretta | Dave | Episode: "A Bite of the Apple" |
| 1984 | Countdown to Looking Glass | Michael Boyle | Television film |
| 1986 | As Summers Die | Willie Croft | Television film |
| 1988 | Intrigue | Crawford | Television film |
| 1989 | The Outside Woman | Jesse Smith | Television film |
| 1991 | Women & Men 2 | Henry | Television film |
| 1993 | Shadowhunter | John Cain | Television film |
| 1994 | Past Tense | Gene Ralston | Television film |
| 1998 | Naked City: Justice with a Bullet | Sgt. Daniel Muldoon | Television film |
| 1998 | Naked City: A Killer Christmas | Sgt. Daniel Muldoon | Television film |
| 2001 | The Seventh Stream | Owen Quinn | Television film |
| 2003 | A Painted House | Eli "Pappy" Chandler | Television film |
| 2003 | American Experience | Narrator | Voice 2 episodes |
| 2004 | Homeland Security | Joe Johnson | Television film |
| 2005 | Gone, But Not Forgotten | Martin Darius / Peter Lake | Television film |
| 2005 | Faith of My Fathers | Jack McCain | Television film |
| 2005 | 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 | The Defenders | Stick | 6 episodes |
| 2018 | Castle Rock | Alan Pangborn | 8 episodes |
| 2024 | Bad Monkey | Jim Yancy | 5 episodes |
| 2025 | The White Lotus | Jim Hollinger | |