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 (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), 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. Through intense training in boxing, wrestling and tang soo do, he recovered from his illnesses, although he would limp for a 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. In 1962, he joined the United States Marine Corps Reserve as an artilleryman and served for three years."Kenoshans in the Service", Kenosha News, Kenosha, Wisconsin, volume LXVIII, number 226, July 17, 1962, page 10. 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.
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, 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. They have two daughters.
Filmography Film Year Title Role Notes 1970 The Baby Maker Tad Jacks 1971 Angels Hard as They Come Long John 1973 Hex "Jimbang" 1975 Nashville Pfc. Glenn Kelly 1976 Fighting Mad Charlie Hunter 1979 She Came to the Valley Bill Lester Apocalypse Now Captain Richard M. Colby More American Graffiti Newt 1980 Urban Cowboy Wes Hightower 1981 Cattle Annie and Little Britches Bill Dalton 1982 Personal Best Terry Tingloff The Challenge Rick Murphy 1983 The Right Stuff Alan Shepard The Keep Glaeken Trismegetus 1984 The River Joe Wade 1985 Wild Geese II John Haddad Silverado Emmett 1987 Gangland: The Verne Miller Story Verne Miller Man on Fire Christian 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 My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys H.D. Dalton Backdraft John "Axe" Adcox Also performed stunts in the film 1992 The Player Himself 1993 Extreme Justice Dan Vaughn Slaughter of the Innocents Stephen Broderick 1995 Night of the Running Man David Eckhart The Spy Within William B. Rickman Tall Tale J.P. Stiles Reckless Lloyd Buftalofty 1996 Edie & Pen Harry Courage Under Fire Tony Gartner Carla's Song Bradley 1997 Absolute Power Agent Bill Burton Lesser Prophets Iggy 1998 Firestorm Wynt Perkins Larga distancia Senor Grem 1999 The Virgin Suicides Father Moody The Last Marshal Cole 2000 Vertical Limit Montgomery Wick 2001 Training Day Roger Buffalo Soldiers 1SG Robert E. Lee The Shipping News Jack Buggit 2004 Puerto Vallarta Squeeze Clayton Price 2005 Magnificent Desolation: Walking on the Moon 3D Charles Duke Voice; Documentary film 2006 Journey to the End of the Night Sinatra 2007 Freedom Writers Steve Gruwell The Bourne Ultimatum Ezra Kramer, Director of the CIA Camille Sheriff Foster 2008 Surfer, Dude Alister Greenbough Nights in Rodanthe Robert Torrelson W. U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld 2010 Secretariat Christopher Chenery 2011 Sucker Punch The Wise Man / The General / The Bus Driver Magic Valley Ed Halfner 2012 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 2026 Greenland 2: Migration Dale Ehrlich, David ‘Greenland 2: Migration’ Review: Gerard Butler Searches for Life in a Timely but Tedious Sequel IndieWire, January 8, 2026
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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