Profile: Philip Glenister
If this year's must-have handbag was Mulberry's Mabel, the real accessory that every woman wanted was Philip Glenister. To use a musical analogy, the actor with the apparently rough manner and lived-in face has shot to prominence from the violin desk to the exposed conductor's podium in the course of the past 12 months.
He started 2007 building an audience of seven million as the politically incorrect Detective Chief Inspector Gene Hunt in the second series of BBC1's time-warp cops-and-robbers drama, Life on Mars. He finishes it as one of the corporation's most sought-after actors, urgently shooting a spin-off series, Ashes to Ashes, to be shown in early spring, meanwhile appearing on the same channel in another big hit, playing the gentle but troubled Mr Carter, the estate manager, in Mrs Gaskell's Cranford. Mr Carter could so easily have been an also-ran character who sank without notice in the hands of an actor with less sex appeal.
Glenister, 44, the product of a north London comprehensive who now lives in a four-bedroom Edwardian house in unremarkable suburbia in Sheen, south-west London, is scarcely a conventional good-looker. But the effect of his pheromones down the airwaves should not be underestimated. The message board of International Movie Database, Hollywood's top website, testifies that his chemistry has now reached across the Atlantic. "By heck he's gorgeous," observes one fan, Mrs Daydream. "The man is just brilliant," writes another. A third, hopelessly stricken, manages the plaintive sigh: "Oh to be in England."
The making of Glenister, without doubt, has been Hunt, the 1970s Cortina-driving borderline-alcoholic, sexist, homophobic Mancunian detective in a camel coat. To be sure, with good roles in TV episodes of Hornblower, State of Play, Clocking Off and Andrew Davies's adaptation of Vanity Fair (he gave an excellent Dobbin) and medium parts in a handful of films -a squire in Ridley Scott's Kingdom of Heaven and the photographer, Lawrence, in Calendar Girls - Glenister's career was on an upward curve. But he wasn't A list. With all respect to John Thaw and Inspector Morse, there comes a time in the affairs of an actor when the right TV cop turns up. But are Glenister and Hunt actually the same man?
The actor says that he doesn't mind a bit if he is associated with Hunt for the rest of his life. Beth Goddard, his actress wife - they married earlier this year after living together for a decade and producing two daughters, Millie and Charlotte, both under five - says that he is "a softie at home". But friends say that he does not suffer fools and his own pronouncements suggest a surprisingly close affinity to Hunt.
In a recent interview he proved to be free with his language and ready with a gripe about anything and everything wrong with modern society. He railed against: surveillance cameras - "it's not New Labour. It's the KGB repackaged"; stealth taxes; actors who talk about acting; the US adaptation of Vanity Fair - "when will they stop casting Americans as f***ing English aristocrats?"; MPs - "Close down the Houses of Parliament, put them all in a pre-fab in Hackney".
Such openness is rare. Actors are legendary whingers in private but publicly they mind their Ps and Qs, fearing for their next job. But not Glenister. At the start of the year, he went straight for the hand that feeds, declaring that television was run by "a lot of fools" who had "dumbed out" programmes. That outburst, some fans believe, may have contributed to the scandalous decision not even to nominate him for a Bafta for the first series of Life on Mars.
If Glenister can be chippy, the seeds may lie in his childhood. There is showbusiness in the blood because his father, John, now retired, was a cameraman of 1960s BBC cop shows such as Z Cars and Softly, Softly, before switching to the other side and becoming a director of successful TV dramas such as the Six Wives of Henry VIII series, starring Keith Michell and an adaptation of John Osborne's Look Back in Anger.
Glenister and his older brother, Roger, also an actor, were brought up in Harrow. But while Roger went to the grammar school having his talents nurtured by an inspirational English teacher, Philip was sent as a "guinea pig" to the fledgling local comprehensive - "a s**** hole", he has called it, cringing at school productions of the The Mikado. "No one knew what to expect. They promised the earth and delivered eff all," he says of his days there. The family house was in the shadow of Harrow, the public school, and the boy from the comp not unnaturally felt some ill-will towards its pupils. "You'd see them round town with their boaters, bunking off school, smoking fags. Oh, they were so posh."
Glenister had no thoughts about acting until he went to see his brother in a production called Killing Time at the Soho Poly. "Robert and two other actors were on the back wall upside down playing God Save The Queen by the Sex Pistols really loud. And the opening line was: 'Life is a s*** sandwich!" And I suddenly thought, I wouldn't mind doing that!"
But he didn't at first. Instead, he worked as a runner for the rock entrepreneur, Robert Stigwood, and then as a publicist on films until he was 23 when the actress Amanda Redman, who was then married to his brother, persuaded him to apply for Central School of Speech and Drama in London and coached him for his audition. He was a contemporary of Graham Norton and Rufus Sewell and shared a flat with fellow student Jamie Glover, son of Julian Glover and Isla Blair, and met his future wife several years later at Jamie Glover's birthday party.
Glenister has been shooting the eight-part Ashes to Ashes virtually non-stop since July. Gene Hunt is moved from Manchester and forward a decade, to the Met Police in London in 1981. Gone will be DI Sam Tyler (played by John Simm), his time-travelling sidekick from Life of Mars, to be replaced a female DI, a feisty single mother played by Keeley Hawes, who will doubtless clash horrendously with Hunt. An American version of Life of Mars is being shot in Los Angeles, but Glenister was not interested. "If I was 10 years younger, or didn't have children, I might have liked to go to Hollywood, but it's never been a burning desire and I can't be arsed now to start at the bottom of the pile. I'm too old and cynical to go cap-in-hand."
He started 2007 building an audience of seven million as the politically incorrect Detective Chief Inspector Gene Hunt in the second series of BBC1's time-warp cops-and-robbers drama, Life on Mars. He finishes it as one of the corporation's most sought-after actors, urgently shooting a spin-off series, Ashes to Ashes, to be shown in early spring, meanwhile appearing on the same channel in another big hit, playing the gentle but troubled Mr Carter, the estate manager, in Mrs Gaskell's Cranford. Mr Carter could so easily have been an also-ran character who sank without notice in the hands of an actor with less sex appeal.
Glenister, 44, the product of a north London comprehensive who now lives in a four-bedroom Edwardian house in unremarkable suburbia in Sheen, south-west London, is scarcely a conventional good-looker. But the effect of his pheromones down the airwaves should not be underestimated. The message board of International Movie Database, Hollywood's top website, testifies that his chemistry has now reached across the Atlantic. "By heck he's gorgeous," observes one fan, Mrs Daydream. "The man is just brilliant," writes another. A third, hopelessly stricken, manages the plaintive sigh: "Oh to be in England."
The making of Glenister, without doubt, has been Hunt, the 1970s Cortina-driving borderline-alcoholic, sexist, homophobic Mancunian detective in a camel coat. To be sure, with good roles in TV episodes of Hornblower, State of Play, Clocking Off and Andrew Davies's adaptation of Vanity Fair (he gave an excellent Dobbin) and medium parts in a handful of films -a squire in Ridley Scott's Kingdom of Heaven and the photographer, Lawrence, in Calendar Girls - Glenister's career was on an upward curve. But he wasn't A list. With all respect to John Thaw and Inspector Morse, there comes a time in the affairs of an actor when the right TV cop turns up. But are Glenister and Hunt actually the same man?
The actor says that he doesn't mind a bit if he is associated with Hunt for the rest of his life. Beth Goddard, his actress wife - they married earlier this year after living together for a decade and producing two daughters, Millie and Charlotte, both under five - says that he is "a softie at home". But friends say that he does not suffer fools and his own pronouncements suggest a surprisingly close affinity to Hunt.
In a recent interview he proved to be free with his language and ready with a gripe about anything and everything wrong with modern society. He railed against: surveillance cameras - "it's not New Labour. It's the KGB repackaged"; stealth taxes; actors who talk about acting; the US adaptation of Vanity Fair - "when will they stop casting Americans as f***ing English aristocrats?"; MPs - "Close down the Houses of Parliament, put them all in a pre-fab in Hackney".
Such openness is rare. Actors are legendary whingers in private but publicly they mind their Ps and Qs, fearing for their next job. But not Glenister. At the start of the year, he went straight for the hand that feeds, declaring that television was run by "a lot of fools" who had "dumbed out" programmes. That outburst, some fans believe, may have contributed to the scandalous decision not even to nominate him for a Bafta for the first series of Life on Mars.
If Glenister can be chippy, the seeds may lie in his childhood. There is showbusiness in the blood because his father, John, now retired, was a cameraman of 1960s BBC cop shows such as Z Cars and Softly, Softly, before switching to the other side and becoming a director of successful TV dramas such as the Six Wives of Henry VIII series, starring Keith Michell and an adaptation of John Osborne's Look Back in Anger.
Glenister and his older brother, Roger, also an actor, were brought up in Harrow. But while Roger went to the grammar school having his talents nurtured by an inspirational English teacher, Philip was sent as a "guinea pig" to the fledgling local comprehensive - "a s**** hole", he has called it, cringing at school productions of the The Mikado. "No one knew what to expect. They promised the earth and delivered eff all," he says of his days there. The family house was in the shadow of Harrow, the public school, and the boy from the comp not unnaturally felt some ill-will towards its pupils. "You'd see them round town with their boaters, bunking off school, smoking fags. Oh, they were so posh."
Glenister had no thoughts about acting until he went to see his brother in a production called Killing Time at the Soho Poly. "Robert and two other actors were on the back wall upside down playing God Save The Queen by the Sex Pistols really loud. And the opening line was: 'Life is a s*** sandwich!" And I suddenly thought, I wouldn't mind doing that!"
But he didn't at first. Instead, he worked as a runner for the rock entrepreneur, Robert Stigwood, and then as a publicist on films until he was 23 when the actress Amanda Redman, who was then married to his brother, persuaded him to apply for Central School of Speech and Drama in London and coached him for his audition. He was a contemporary of Graham Norton and Rufus Sewell and shared a flat with fellow student Jamie Glover, son of Julian Glover and Isla Blair, and met his future wife several years later at Jamie Glover's birthday party.
Glenister has been shooting the eight-part Ashes to Ashes virtually non-stop since July. Gene Hunt is moved from Manchester and forward a decade, to the Met Police in London in 1981. Gone will be DI Sam Tyler (played by John Simm), his time-travelling sidekick from Life of Mars, to be replaced a female DI, a feisty single mother played by Keeley Hawes, who will doubtless clash horrendously with Hunt. An American version of Life of Mars is being shot in Los Angeles, but Glenister was not interested. "If I was 10 years younger, or didn't have children, I might have liked to go to Hollywood, but it's never been a burning desire and I can't be arsed now to start at the bottom of the pile. I'm too old and cynical to go cap-in-hand."
Original article can be found here.
Copyright @PhilipGlenisterFans. All Rights Reserved. This is a non-profit website, and all material on this site is meant for entertainment purposes only. No copyright infringement is intended and all content provided or linked to on this site is copyrighted to their respective owners, photographers, and representatives. Watermarks are meant for site promotion only and do not indicate ownership. If you come across something you would like removed, please contact us before taking further action and we will remove it.