(May 2, 1932–     ): American character actor who portrayed the gay assassin Mr. Wint in Diamonds Are Forever. Partnered with bald-pated Mr. Kidd (Putter Smith), Glover picks up a scorpion and kills Dr. Tynan, the motorcycle-riding diamond smuggler, in an early scene. And in the film’s concluding scene, Glover ends up going over the rail of a luxury liner with a time bomb attached to his privates.

Initially, Glover was told that he was much too “normal” for the part of Mr. Wint. As he explained, the casting director was going for a modern version of a Sydney Greenstreet / Peter Lorre type of relationship. “However,” recalled Glover, “when they went for the rather wild look of Putter Smith [as Mr. Kidd], they suddenly decided they had enough of that kind of look and felt I was fine.”[1] Interestingly, up until filming began, Glover still wasn’t sure which part he was going to play. Thus, he decided not to memorize his lines. It wasn’t until the stuntman handed him a scorpion in the middle of the Nevada desert on the first day of shooting that he realized he was to play Mr. Wint.

At first, Glover was concerned whether the gay element of Mr. Wint and Mr. Kidd’s relationship was believable. “After all,” he smiled, “I looked over at Putter’s mouth and realized that kissing that was an impossibility. He was so wild looking. Eventually, I simply decided that he was a giant teddy bear—my plaything. There were really no sexual thoughts at all. However, I was very possessive of him. After we shot the hand-holding sequence, I looked over at Putter and saw that he had turned beet red, he was so embarrassed.” Note: The hand-holding scene was initially cut from network television broadcasts of Diamonds Are Forever.

A Chicago native, Glover made his feature film debut as an uncredited stevedore in director Charles Lederer’s musical comedy Never Steal Anything Small (1959). His additional feature credits include C.C. & Company (1970), Walking Tall (1973), Chinatown (1974), Hunter’s Blood (1986), Big Bad Mama II (1987), Ghost World (2001), Simon Says (2006), and many others. He’s the father of actor Crispin Glover, best known for playing George McFly in Back to the Future (1985).

[1] Bruce Glover, interview by Steven Jay Rubin, Los Angeles, December 1, 1977.