Clancy Brown plays Hollywood's scariest villains and also voices Mr. Krabs
The same deep voice that barked at inmates as the brutal guard captain in The Shawshank Redemption has, since 1999, belonged to SpongeBob's penny-pinching boss Mr. Krabs. Clancy Brown has built a four-decade career out of menace and authority, and a second one behind the microphone.
He was born Clarence James Brown III in Urbana, Ohio, on January 5, 1959. His mother was a concert pianist, composer and conductor; his father ran the family newspaper company and, from 1965 to 1983, sat in Congress in the same seat his own father had held. Brown studied at St. Albans School in Washington, where he acted in The Crucible, and at Northwestern University.
His first mainstream role came opposite Sean Penn in Bad Boys in 1983. Three years later he was the savage Kurgan, Connor MacLeod's nemesis in Highlander, a flop in cinemas that thrived on home video. Tough-guy parts followed: a sergeant in Starship Troopers, a soldier of fortune for Walter Hill, a detective for Kathryn Bigelow. Curiously, he has played prison officers in three films about wrongful convictions, ranging from Shawshank's tyrant to a sympathetic lieutenant in The Hurricane.
Television gave him some of his richest material. As the sinister preacher Brother Justin Crowe in HBO's Carnivàle, he earned critical praise and a cult following despite the show lasting only two seasons. He later played an attorney general in Billions, a leading role in Dexter: New Blood and a mob boss in The Penguin. More recently he appeared as the Harbinger in John Wick: Chapter 4 and in Promising Young Woman.
His voice work is just as prolific. He has played Lex Luthor in DC animation since 1996 and lent his rumble to Avatar: The Last Airbender, Star Wars: The Clone Wars and Thor: Ragnarok. Gamers know him as Doctor Neo Cortex in the Crash Bandicoot series and as Lieutenant Hank Anderson, whom he both voiced and performed through motion capture, in Detroit: Become Human.
Source: Clancy Brown
