Julian Wyatt Glover (born 27 March 1935) is an English actor. He began acting on the stage in the 1950s and began appearing on television regularly in the 1960s. He has appeared twice in Doctor Who, playing King Richard the Lionheart in the 1965 story The Crusade and the alien Scaroth in the 1979 story City of Death. He guest-starred in the science-fiction series Space: 1999 (as did fellow cast member Roy Dotrice), and also chalked up genre appearances in shows such as The Avengers and Blake's 7 as well as continuing his stage career.

In the 1980s he played three memorable movie roles: as Darth Vader's trusted subordinate General Maximilian Veers in The Empire Strikes Back; as Aris Kristatos in the James Bond movie For Your Eyes Only; and as Walter Donovan in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. More recently he appeared as King Triopas in Troy and as the Duke of Wellington in Young Victoria. He also did a voiceover role as Aragog the giant spider in the Harry Potter films.

Since the 1980s, Julian Glover has given various stage performances of the epic Anglo-Saxon poem, Beowulf. His adaptations have been shown in documentaries on Beowulf, the Anglo-Saxons, and the English language.

In Game of Thrones Glover plays Grand Maester Pycelle. Roy Dotrice had been previously cast in the role but had to drop out shortly before filming began due to health problems. Glover stepped in at short notice to pick up the role and was announced on 28 July 2010. He initially appeared as a guest star in the first season and returned in this role for the second season.

After three episodes in the role of Pycelle, Glover noted to the writers that he is quite spry for his age and they could incorporate this to make the character more interesting. The writers agreed and wrote a new scene in the final episode of the first season showing Pycelle faking his infirmity so others would not consider him as a threat.[1][2]

Glover also said that he intentionally doesn't read the books until a corresponding season of the TV series is finished. Glover stated that this has been a conscious choice he has followed throughout his long career, in which he will actually heavily research roles based on real-life historical figures, but avoid reading a fictional novel when he is working on a film adaptation. In Glover's view, adapting a book to screen is the job of the writers, and he doesn't want to waste time and be a nuisance to the writers by second-guessing them. His suggestion that Pycelle is only pretending to be an infirm dotard is not an exception to this, because it isn't from the books, but was invented on the set when the crew noticed how easily he could shift into pretending to be physically infirm, then shift back to being his normally quite spry self as soon as the cameras stopped rolling.[3]

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Credits

Guest starring

Season Three credits Valar Dohaeris Dark Wings, Dark Words Walk of Punishment And Now His Watch Is Ended Kissed by Fire The Climb The Bear and the Maiden Fair Second Sons The Rains of Castamere Mhysa

See also