How Lady Mary's ex fell for a VERY fiery blonde: Iain Glen on becoming a pin-up at the age of 52

PUBLISHED: 20:03 EST, 12 December 2013 | UPDATED: 20:09 EST, 12 December 2013

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TV hunk: Iain Glen as Ser Jorah Mormont on Game of Thrones

At the age of 52, actor Iain Glen has become a pin-up.

At a time when his fine features have begun to ripen, when a waffle of wrinkles has appeared on his handsome brow, when his hairline is inching north as roles as a romantic lead head south, he has found himself hot, hot, hotter than ever.

This is not because of television appearances as newspaper magnate Sir Richard Carlisle in Downton Abbey, or as Galway private eye Jack Taylor, or even his 1998 turn opposite Nicole Kidman in The Blue Room, the ‘theatrical Viagra’ play that found him doing naked cartwheels across the stage.

No, this is all because of Ser Jorah Mormont, the strong but not quite silent character Glen plays in the hit HBO television series, Game Of Thrones — a Tolkienesque adventure extravaganza that is hugely popular all over the world.

Being cast as a sweat-stained, exiled knight finds the Scottish-born actor thrashing across the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros in full hunk mode.

He wears a breast plate and a leather kilt, even on horseback. He occasionally decapitates enemies.

He says things like: ‘There is a beast in every man and it stirs when you put a sword in his hand.’ Most of all, he just gives good brood.

A huge part of Jorah’s appeal is that he bubbles with unrequited love for Daenerys, the exiled princess of the Targaryen dynasty (keep up), also known as the Stormborn Queen of the Dragons, the Breaker of Chains; she is a royal personage who is always addressed by the honorific title of Khaleesi.

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She is also a woman who gave birth, as I understand it, to baby dragon triplets. What man could resist?

She is blonde, she is doggedly boobalicious, she is beautiful — and she looks about 19 years old. So first question right there: surely she is far too young for noble but weatherbeaten Jorah The Andal?

‘Ahhh. It was a different time, a different age,’ says Glen, with a wave of his hand.

Unrequited love: Emilia Clarke as Khaleesi Daenerys Targaryen, the woman for whom Ser Jorah Mormont's heart burns

Despite being one of the most in-demand actors of his generation, Glen has never been known as a heart-throb — or really made it as a Hollywood star.

Now, for the first time in his career, he is recognised all the time, all over the world. While innocently having a coffee in Cologne airport recently, a middle-aged woman approached him.

‘Are you Iain Glen?’ she asked.

‘Yes, I am.’

‘Can you do something for me?’

‘Sure, what?’

‘Could you look me in the eyes and say “Khaleesi”?’

Glen sportingly obliged, fixing her with his piercing Jorah stare and giving his ‘Khaaaaleesi’ full, lusty timbre. ‘Thank you very much,’ she cried. ‘You have made my day.’

Although Sir Richard Carlisle, one-time fiance of Lady Mary, disappeared in series two of Downton Abbey, some think that she should have married him.

Different role: Iain as Sir Richard with Michelle Dockerey as Lady Mary and Dan Stevens as Matthew Crawley in last year's Downton Abbey Christmas Special

‘Exactly. Exactly!’ says Glen. ‘Julian Fellowes said quite sweetly he thinks they are quite suited to each other and would make a good couple. I agree.

'They are both steely, forceful individuals who tend to get their own way. I think there would be the odd argument and slap, but generally they would get on.’

Now that Mary is a merry widow, he could come back. ‘He might! I would love if that was to happen. There are different whispers, but you believe nothing until something either happens or it doesn’t.’

It is perhaps his role in The Blue Room that provided Glen’s most notorious appearance to date. Although co-star Nicole Kidman got all the attention for a coy glimpse of her right buttock, it was Glen who revealed most.

‘Well, Nicole is a movie star, I wasn’t. She is a beautiful woman, I am a man with an unattractive dongle between my legs. Who wants to see that? Still, it did make me laugh. She stood up naked with her back to the audience for a moment.

‘You might have seen a glimpse of something. I was full frontal doing cartwheels and no one seemed to notice.’

Funnily enough, he still loves getting his kit off. ‘I don’t mind being naked.

'My children and my partner see me naked a lot at home. I don’t know why, I just like it.’

Not very appreciated: Iain gets knocked out by Matthew Crawley in front of a shocked Lady Mary on Downton

We meet in the rehearsal rooms of The Old Vic theatre in London, where Glen is about to appear as Kuzovkin in the Turgenev play, Fortune’s Fool. Worryingly, the first thing I see are his hastily discarded jeans and shirt, hanging from the legs of an upended table.

This is only because he has changed into his own frayed and patched ‘rehearsal clothes’, which help him get into character.

Kuzovkin is an impoverished gentleman, down on his luck, living on the comfort of others. ‘I hope we can make people laugh and cry with it,’ says Glen.

He lives in London with his partner, actress Charlotte Emmerson. They met while working at the National Theatre and have two daughters: six-year-old Mary and baby Juliet, who was born last Christmas.
He was previously married to the actress Susannah Harker and their son Finlay, now 18, has just gone to Trinity College in Dublin. Glen did not baulk at the thought of having another family.

‘I think if a woman says “I want a child”, then if you love that person and they love you, then you have the child. If Charlotte wants children, then we will keep having them.’

That’s very emotionally generous of you, I say. Lots of slightly older men with first families don’t feel that way. ‘I know and I find that weird. Selfish — but men are much more capable of being selfish than women. Women generally are better beings all round.’

n Fortune’s Fool is at The Old Vic until Feb 22; oldvictheatre.com; box office: 0844 871 7628.