John Glover

John Glover has spent nearly fifty years playing men who are delighted to be the worst person in the room. He can deliver a threat the way other actors offer you a drink, and the pleasure he takes in the line is the point: the character is not hiding his cruelty, he is enjoying an audience for it.

The purest version is Alan Raimy in 52 Pick-Up (1986), a grinning extortionist who is genuinely frightening because nothing about him is strained. Brother Leon in The Chocolate War is the same instrument played quietly, a teacher running a small tyranny. Daniel Clamp in Gremlins 2 is barely a villain at all, a smiling tycoon whose building is eating itself and who mostly wants to know whether it will affect the tour. Then Batman & Robin gave him Dr. Jason Woodrue, a role in a film with no interest in restraint, and he obliged.

Television made him famous twice over. He voiced the Riddler in Batman: The Animated Series, all wounded intellectual vanity, and then spent a decade as Lionel Luthor on Smallville, which is the definitive Glover part: a father whose approval is always one condition away and who is charming about withholding it. Around all of that sits an unusually varied CV, from a small part in Annie Hall in 1977 to Julia the same year, White Nights, Scrooged, In the Mouth of Madness, Payback and, latterly, Mr. Sivana in Shazam! He is one of the last great American character villains, and he has never once played the part as if it were beneath him.