(September 25, 1912–June 29, 1982): Tough, beefy British actor who portrayed Janni, a SPECTRE henchman in Thunderball. Working for spymaster Emilio Largo (Adolfo Celi), Janni is mostly teamed with Largo’s top henchman, Vargas (Philip Locke).
A native of London, Brennan made his uncredited feature debut as a camp guard in director Leslie Howard’s adventure thriller Pimpernel Smith (1941). Nine years later, future James Bond film director Terence Young hired him to play Smoke O’Connor in the World War II drama They Were Not Divided, which also featured future Bond players Edward Underdown, Desmond Llewelyn, Anthony Dawson, Christopher Lee, and Peter Burton—all of whom would work in Young’s three Bond pictures. Brennan also appeared in two adaptations of Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe, the 1952 MGM version as Baldwin, a confederate of Prince John’s, and the 1970 BBC miniseries as villainous Norman knight Front de Beouf.