Scott Glenn was born on January 26, 1939, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to Hope Elizabeth and Theodore Glenn, a salesman. Growing up in Appalachia, his health was poor, and he was bedridden for a year, with doctors predicting he would limp for the rest of his life. However, Glenn's determination and intense training programs allowed him to overcome his illness and eventually get rid of his limp.
After graduating from high school, Glenn attended William and Mary College, where he majored in English. He then spent three years in the Marines and later worked as a criminal reporter at the Kenosha Evening News for five months. Despite his passion for storytelling, Glenn found that he had "problems with dialogues," so he decided to overcome it by studying acting.
Glenn joined George Morrison's acting class in New York in 1966 and began working in professional theater and TV. He also became a fan of martial arts and joined The Actors Studio in 1968. His early film work included The Baby Maker (1970),followed by a period of struggling to find interesting roles in Hollywood.
Glenn eventually moved his family to Ketchum, Idaho, where he worked as a barman, huntsman, and mountain ranger for two years, occasionally acting in Seattle stage productions. His career took a turn when James Bridges offered him the role of John Travolta's rival in Urban Cowboy (1980),making him a star.
Glenn's acting abilities and physical presence allowed him to excel in both action and drama films, playing good guys and bad guys. He appeared in a wide range of films throughout the 1980s and 1990s, including The Right Stuff (1983),The Silence of the Lambs (1991),and The Hunt for Red October (1990).
In the 1990s, his career reached its peak, with appearances in films such as Reckless (1995),Edie & Pen (1996),and Carla's Song (1996). He continued to work in both mainstream and independent projects, as well as TV, throughout the 2000s and 2010s, appearing in films like Training Day (2001),W. (2008),Secretariat (2010),Sucker Punch (2011),The Paperboy (2012),and two of the Bourne films: The Bourne Ultimatum (2007) and The Bourne Legacy (2012).
