Peter Glenville Biography

London-born Peter Glenville was a law student in Oxford when he surrendered to the lure of greasepaint. Becoming an actor was hardly an arbitrary decision: Glenville was the son of theatrical performers Shaun Glenville and Dorothy Ward. Among his early roles was Puck in Max Reinhardt's fabled staging of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Though he turned director at the Old Vic in 1944, his entree into British films was as a romantic lead in such pictures as Madonna of the Seven Moons (1945). Glenville would not direct a film until the 1955 Alec Guinness vehicle The Prisoner. This and many of his subsequent films--Me and the Colonel (1958), Summer and Smoke (1961), Becket (1964, which earned him an Oscar nomination) Hotel Paradiso (1966) et. al.-- were faithful adaptations of plays that Glenville had previously directed for the stage. Peter Glenville's last film, The Comedians (1967), reunited him with several old co-workers, including The Prisoner's Alec Guinness and Becket's Richard Burton. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi