A Touch of Evil Before becoming Superman’s arch enemy, Lex Luthor took a masterclass in evil from his father, Lionel. John Glover takes Abbie Bernstein inside the increasingly ruthless mind of Smallville’s principal villain... dreamwatch magazine, Issue 112

As charming as he is ruthless, Lionel Luthor is one of Smallville’s most intriguing characters. He is also the most devious. Played with both charisma and menace by veteran stage and screen actor John Glover (Gremlins 2, Payback, Scrooged), this scheming billionaire is used to getting what he wants and his calculating behaviour has proven to be a constant thorn in the side of Clark Kent, not to mention Lion’s estranged son Lex.
Yet despite his character’s scheming ways, Glover feels that there’s far more to Lionel Luthor than meets the eye. dreamwatch catches up with the actor in his hometown of Salisbury, Maryland, where he’s participating in the Jack Glover Memory Walk, an event held in honour of his late father which benefits the Alzheimer’s Association...

dreamwatch: Lionel’s relationship with Lex has become increasingly strained since the start of Smallville. Does he really have his son’s best interests at heart?
Lionel, whatever you say about him, is trying to do what’s best for his son. He’s trying to make him a stronger person. He’s trying to help Lex as much as he can — he’s not trying to anything to hurt him. His skills are much different from Jonathan Kent’s.

Are there any differences in Lionel in Smallville’s third season?
I think you’ll find out some things about him that may make you not like him as much! [Laughs] There are some things in his past that come up that might horrify you.
The writing this year is very exciting to me. There’s a whole arc starting that I’m able to play. What I’m noticing is that the episodes all link together — whereas, especially in the first season, we had what we would call the “Freak of the Week.”

Do the writers tell you in advance where the character is going — for instance, when Lionel was pretending to be blind, did you know he was faking it?
No, I didn’t know.

Would you have played it differently if you had?
I don’t know. But I’m glad it happened the way it did, because as far as I was concerned, Lionel was blind, and he is brilliant, isn’t he? It took a while to figure out how to portray blindness, because I found that the way an actual blind person focuses was not working on film. It took a few scenes before we could find a way to show that I was not seeing people that read on screen.

What have been some of the highlights of the last two years of Smallville, both for your character and for yourself as an actor?
Life to Lionel is a big adventure — the bigger the challenge, the more exciting it is for him. I think that’s how he lives his life. Lionel loved hiring Martha Kent. That was exciting. It was such a wonderful time.
I enjoyed working with Blair Brown in Lineage — we’ve done tons of stuff together. Blair had just finished doing A Little Night Music in Washington and we were talking on the phone, and she was saying that she didn’t have anything to go to quite yet. And I knew that this character of Lionel’s mistress was coming in, with the child. I told her about it — I said, “Would you be interested, Blair, to come to Smallville?” She said, “I’d love to,” so I called Al and Miles, and they had her up. We had the best time.
I love Allison Mack [Chloe]. Allison and I are having a grand time together. There’s a lot of stuff this year that you’ll see between Chloe and Lionel. It’s very, very interesting. Chloe has a conscience — but remember how strong Lionel is. All I’m saying is this could make for very good drama.

When you were originally cast as Lionel Luthor, you were having to deal with some real-life issues of your own, now-deceased, father...
It was a little more than three years ago that I first contacted the Alzheimer’s Association, and I got involved with them on this Memory Walk, which is a fundraising event. Actually, I pushed my dad in a wheelchair in the 2001 Memory Walk, and then he died in January, so last year, it was the Jack Glover Memory Walk in his memory, and that’s the way it is this year.
The Alzheimer’s Association has set up a web-age, so I’ve bought a page in my dad’s name and [the Smallville web-sites] Planet Krypton and Devoted to Smallville have both put little things in there about JackGlover.org. It’s an amazing time for me in my life.

Do your feelings about your own father affect how you play Lionel?
They come up all the time when I’m dealing with scenes with or about Lex. And I never know when they’re going to come up or how and in what way, but they’re there — they just inform what I do and I can’t be more specific than that. They’re a huge source of how I attack Lionel.

How difficult is living in Los Angeles and making Smallville in Vancouver, Canada?
It’s all right. I do it. I love the work. The work is magnificent, so that’s the main thing. I think the writers are learning about the characters through the cast and what we bring to the characters. So everybody’s kind of coming together in a wonderful serendipitous way.
There’s an amazing spirit on the set, there really is. I think it’s what every person who works on a series hopes that it would be — that kind of spirit and the camaraderie and the humour. It’s just quite wonderful.

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