Julian Glover

Personal life

Glover was born in Hampstead, London, the son of Honor Ellen Morgan, née Wyatt – a BBC journalist and Claude Gordon Glover, a BBC radio producer. His younger half-brother is the musician Robert Wyatt. Glover has been twice married to actresses: Eileen Atkins and Isla Blair, with whom he has a son, actor Jamie Glover.

Career

Glover attended Bristol Grammar School, where he was in the same class as actor Timothy West and the actor who played Darth Vader, David Prowse. He also attended Alleyn's School in Dulwich, London and then trained at the National Youth Theatre, performing with the Royal Shakespeare Company. In the early 1950s, he appeared in several shows at Unity Theatre, London before becoming a regular in 1960s and 1970s British television series such as The Avengers, The Saint, Strange Report, Doctor Who and Blake's 7.

In 1967, Glover featured as Professor Quatermass' nemesis Colonel Breen in the Hammer Films production of Quatermass and the Pit, an adaptation of Nigel Kneale's 1958–59 BBC TV original. He has also appeared twice in Doctor Who: as Richard the Lionheart in the 1965 serial The Crusade; and, in 1979, as the villain Scaroth, last of the Jagaroth, in one of the original run's most popular serials, City of Death. Glover later recorded DVD commentaries for The Crusade episode "The Wheel of Fortune" (Lost in Time set) and for City of Death.

In the 1980s, Glover made some of his most notable appearances, such as the Imperial General Maximilian Veers in The Empire Strikes Back (1980), the ruthless Greek villain Aristotle Kristatos in the James Bond film For Your Eyes Only (1981) and the deceptive American Nazi Walter Donovan in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989).

On television, he played the leading role of Sir Martin Lacey in the BBC English Civil War drama series By the Sword Divided, and played the guest role of surgeon Arnold Richardson in a 1989 episode of the BBC medical drama Casualty (he made a second guest appearance as a different character in 2011, and also appeared as a different character again in the sister series Holby City in 2014). He has also played a leading role in the British film Brash Young Turks.

In the 2002 film version of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Glover voiced the giant spider Aragog.

Glover has been associated with the Anglo-Saxon epic poem Beowulf since the 1980s and has delivered staged interpretations in various forms, often taking the role of an Anglo-Saxon gleeman or traveller poet, delivering an abridged version of the tale while stood around a mead hall hearth and rendering selected passages in the poem's original Old English. This adaptation has been shown in documentaries on both the English language and Anglo-Saxon England and was also used for historian Michael Wood's documentary on the poem broadcast during the BBC Poetry Season in 2009.

In 2009, Glover played the role of Mr. Brownlow in the West End revival of the musical Oliver! at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. In the short film Battle for Britain (2010), Glover played a 101-year-old Polish veteran Royal Air Force pilot.

Glover portrayed the character of Grand Maester Pycelle in the HBO series Game of Thrones between 2011 and 2016 appearing in a total of 31 episodes across the first six seasons of the show.

In 2013, Glover played the role of General Beauvilliers in the BBC Four drama series The Spies of Warsaw. In May 2014, he played the character Joe Goodridge in two episodes of the BBC TV medical drama series Holby City ("My Name is Joe" and "No Apologies"). In the same year, he portrayed an old man in Nazism horror thriller Backtrack.

Glover is an Associate Member of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.

Awards

In 1993, Glover was awarded the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role for his title role in the Royal Shakespeare Company's 1992 production of Henry IV, Part 1 and Part 2. (More recently, theatre critic Michael Billington has called his portrayal of the king in that production "superb".)

Honours

Glover was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire by The Queen in the 2013 Birthday Honours "for services to drama".