Peter Glenville (28 October 1913 - 3 June 1996), born Peter Patrick Brabason Browne, was an English film and stage actor and director.

Born in Hampstead, London into a theatrical family, Glenville was the son of Shaun Glenville (né Shaun Browne; 1884 -1968), an Irish-born comedian, and Dorothy Ward, both theatre performers much-loved for their work in that characteristically-British genre known as pantomime.

After graduation from Stonyhurst College, Peter Glenville attended Christ Church, Oxford to study Law. He joined the Oxford University Dramatic Society (OUDS) and in 1934, became its president and also made his professional stage debut. Over the next several years Glenville was active in the theatre and films as an actor, gradually developing an interest in directing, and leading to his 1944 appointment as director for the Old Vic Company.

After World War II, Glenville met Hardy William Smith. They became professional and life partners, Glenville as director and Smith as producer of plays both in London and New York.

Glenville's directorial debut on Broadway was Terence Rattigan's The Browning Version (1949). Other notable productions which followed included The Innocents (1950), the stage adaptation of Henry James' The Turn of the Screw, Tennessee Williams' Summer and Smoke (1951), Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, which starred Douglass Watson, Jack Hawkins and marked the Broadway debut of Olivia de Havilland (1951), Rattigan's Separate Tables (1954), The Prisoner (1954), and Georges Feydeau's Hotel Paradiso (1957). Glenville also directed the 1955 film version of The Prisoner, his film directorial debut. Both the play and the film starred his friend, Alec Guinness.

In the 1960s, Glenville and Smith moved from London to New York and continued to work in the theatre and in films. From that period was the musical Take Me Along (1959-60), based on Eugene O'Neill's play Ah, Wilderness!, with Jackie Gleason, Walter Pidgeon, Robert Morse, Una Merkel and Eileen Herlie. In 1960, Glenville also directed Barbara Bel Geddes and Henry Fonda in Silent Night, Lonely Night by Robert Anderson.

In 1961, he directed Jean Anouilh's play Becket which starred Laurence Olivier as Thomas Becket and Anthony Quinn as Henry II. An erroneous story arose in later years that during the run, Quinn and Olivier switched roles and Quinn played Becket to Olivier's King. Critic Howard Taubman, in his book The Making of the American Theatre, supports this story, as does a biographer of Laurence Olivier. In fact, Quinn left the production for a film, never having played Becket, and director Glenville suggested a road tour with Olivier as Henry. Olivier happily acceded and Arthur Kennedy took on the role of Becket for the tour and brief return to Broadway .

In 1962-63, he directed Quinn and Margaret Leighton in Tchin-Tchin. This was followed by the musical Tovarich (1963) with Vivien Leigh and Jean-Pierre Aumont. For Dylan, based on the life of Dylan Thomas (1964), Glenville worked once again with his frequent collaborator, Alec Guinness.

He also directed Edward Albee's adaptation of Giles Cooper's play Everything in the Garden (1967), John Osborne's A Patriot for Me (1969) with Maximilian Schell, Salome Jens and Tommy Lee Jones in his Broadway debut, and Tennessee Williams' Out Cry (1973).

He also directed the films Me and the Colonel (1958) with Danny Kaye, Summer and Smoke (1961) with Geraldine Page and Laurence Harvey, Term of Trial (1962) with Laurence Olivier, Simone Signoret and Sarah Miles, Becket (1964) with Richard Burton and Peter O'Toole, Hotel Paradiso (1966) with Guinness and Gina Lollobrigida and The Comedians (1967) with Elizabeth Taylor, Burton, Guinness and Peter Ustinov.

In 1971, Glenville began work on the film project of Man of La Mancha, but when he failed to agree with United Artists on the production, he bowed out. He retired in 1973 and eventually moved to San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.

Glenville was nominated for four Tony Awards, two Golden Globe Awards (Becket and Me and the Colonel), one Academy Award (Becket) and one Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival for Term of Trial.

He died in New York City, aged 82, from a heart attack .

A talented actor and distinguished stage director, Peter Glenville was the son of Shaun Glenville, the British music hall artist and noted pantomime dame. Born in London Glenville was educated at the Jesuit's Stonyhurst College where he appeared in a production of Hamlet in the 1930s where he was singled out by critics for his matinee idol looks. He played small roles in West End shows during the 1940s but his true talent lay as a director. He became a director at the Old Vic Theatre in 1944 and worked with some of the leading playwrights of the period including Tennessee Williams, Jean Anoilh, Terence Rattigan and Graham Greene. In 1949 he took Rattigan's The Browning Version to Broadway and later went on to direct the writer's Seperate Tables, which starred Eric Portman and Margaret Leighton. Later stage productions included The Prisoner (with Alec Guinness) and Romeo and Juliet (with Olivia de Havilland). One of his most long running commercial productions was Feydeau's Hotel Paradiso which ran on Broadway and in London starring Alec Guinness, Douglas Byng and Martita Hunt. On Broadway Byng's role was taken by Bert Lahr. In an interview about his life in the theatre and cinema Glenville said: "I believe that the director should, like a conductor, be an interpreter of a particular world of each playwright with whom he works. On occasion, the style of the play should call for the most delicate and unobtrusive staging. Sometimes other plays allow for broad and colourful strokes of direction, involving all the tricks that theatre magic can provide."