Do you recognize this character actor with the bottomless voice?
You should, because the great Clancy Brown has been in practically everything.
“It’s always interesting, this business,” he tells EW.
Credit: Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images
“You always learn something new.
When you figure out how to do it just right, it’s quite fun.”
“I think they had cast a young man before me who was a devout Christian.
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His parents didn’t like the jail rape that was going on in the movie.
I kind of thought better of it.
I wonder who I thought I was at the time.
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So I decided to go do it.
There was an actor [on it] named Jeffrey Josephson, who was thug No.
1, so I played thug No.
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He really knew the show.
He knew what to do.
I followed him around like a puppy dog.
Clancy Brown in ‘The Shawshank Redemption’ (1994).Everett Collection
That was the directorial debut of my college pal Roland Mesa.
He said to me, ‘Come and do this.’
I said, ‘Okay, but I don’t want to get credited.
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Just put me as Clarence.’
So it was just the three of us goofing around, eating pork rinds and putting on funny accents.
“Shawshankwas a script that made its way around Hollywood that everybody was falling in love with.
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[Casting director] Deborah Aquila thought of me, and I’ll always thank her for doing that.
But it was one of the worst auditions I’ve ever had.
I learned all the horrible speeches I had to give, with a string of profanities and everything.
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I just couldn’t call her a f—stick or any of those other horrible things.
I’d always loved animation, but my agents at the time didn’t have a voiceover division.
They decided to do that forGargoyles.A lot of us came into the business at that time.
Paul Drinkwater/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images
I just have such a good time being in this room.'
And so they did.
I loved everything about it.
It was all brand-new.”
SpongeBob SquarePants (19992021)
He was Mr. Krabs!
All we knew was thatTom Kennywas going to be SpongeBob, and it was between me and another actor.
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Starship Troopers (1997)
Brown played Sgt.
Zim in the unsung action movie from Paul Verhoeven.
“The criticism of that book has always been it’s a very fascist view.
Michael C. Hall and Clancy Brown in ‘Dexter: New Blood’.Seacia Pavao/SHOWTIME
There were some things that didn’t work out too well.
We didn’t have the degree of CG they have now.
If we had, it would have been spectacular.
And there were some things they couldn’t translate from the book.
But I thought it was a pretty good take.”
“I certainly wasn’t going to be one of them.
I could just not say all the medical stuff fast enough.
I had a crush onLaura Innesfrom college.
She was a senior when I was a junior.
“That was kind of a fluke.
They don’t hire American actors so far down the list as [I am].
I got to work with Helena Bonham Carter, and I had a crush on her entire career.
I was a little kid when LBJ was president.
He was fun to play.The Crowndoesn’t really tell American historythey tell a sort of idealized English history.
So it was nice that Princess Margaret came over and saved the world by charming LBJ.”
“And at the end I was so mad.
She just hit a note in all of us.
It was another one of those scripts where they said, ‘We have no money.
What do you think?'”
Does that mean dear old dad might end up being just as bad as his boy?
Brown isn’t spilling… for now.
“It’s an explanation where you go, ‘Okay…’ It’s not a reason.
It’s never a good reason.
“Dexter: New Bloodpremieres Nov. 7 at 9 p.m. ET/PT on Showtime.
