Glyn Owen Biography

Glyn Griffith Owen (6 March 1928 – 10 September 2004) was a British stage, television and film actor, best known to British TV viewers for two roles: that of Dr Patrick O'Meara in the long-running ITV hospital drama Emergency - Ward 10, and that of Jack Rolfe, the headstrong director of the Mermaid Boatyard in the mid-1980s BBC series Howards' Way.

Biography

Born in Bolton, Lancashire, the son of a Welsh railway guard, Glyn Owen left school aged 14 and worked in a telegraph office. He completed his compulsory military service in 1946-1948 during which time he acted in the War Office's amateur dramatic company. For the next five years he was a police officer in London's Paddington district, while continuing in amateur dramatics and receiving acting training at the Actors' Studio in St John's Wood.

By 1955 he was performing with the George Mitchell Singers in Blackpool, with the impresario Lew Grade as his agent. His television debut was in 1956 in The Trollenburg Terror. His other television roles included Coronation Street, The Brothers, Doomwatch, The Adventures of William Tell, The Rat Catchers, Doctor Who (episode: "The Power of Kroll", 1978), All Creatures Great and Small, "Take The High Road", The Capone Investment, Ennal's Point, Survivors, Oil Strike North and Blake's 7. He appeared in a 1978 episode of The Professionals, "Rogue", in which he played a corrupt CI5 agent. His short career as a policeman stood him in good stead to play the role of Wally, an alcoholic ex-policeman, in an episode of the fourth series of the Sweeney called "Money, Money, Money". In 2003, he appeared with his former Howards' Way co-star Ivor Danvers in the Doctor Who tie-in audio play Nekromanteia.

He appeared regularly on the West End stage and in fringe theatre. He appeared at Edinburgh with Tom Courtenay in Hamlet, and made numerous appearances at Hampstead between the late 1960s and the 1980s. He appeared in musicals and pantomime, including The Four Musketeers with Harry Secombe at Drury Lane, Dick Whittington with Ken Dodd at the Manchester Palace and Roll on Four O'Clock for Colin Welland at Wythenshawe (which transferred eventually to the Palace, Shaftesbury Avenue). He toured Canada and North America with the RSC, finishing at the Palace, New York, in London Assurance. He joined The National Theatre Company to appear as the father in Equus, and won an award for his portrayal of the father in Spring and Port Wine.

Owen was married twice, his first marriage having been to the actress Patricia Mort. His two children, Lloyd and Cathy Owen, are also actors. He was survived by his second wife, Carrie Clifton Owen.

He died of cancer in 2004, aged 76.