Born in
Bolton,
Lancashire, the son of a Welsh railway guard (and an English mother, making him Anglo-Welsh), Glyn Owen left school aged 14 and worked in a telegraph office. He completed his national service in 1946–48 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, and as a traffic officer he unofficially escorted actor and director
Richard Attenborough under blue lights to a BBC recording. He continued in amateur dramatics and received acting training at the Actors' Studio in
St John's Wood. In "Colony Three", a 1964 episode of
Danger Man, he played Randall, John Drake's assigned roommate at a Soviet spy‐training facility. 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 in Man at the Top'' in 1972 in the episode "How to Make a Fortune". Owen's film appearances include feature roles in
Inn for Trouble (1960),
Attack on the Iron Coast (1968),
One More Time (1970), the crime thriller
The Capone Investment (1974) and the 1975
Children's Film Foundation movie
The Firefighters. He appeared regularly on the West End stage and in fringe theatre. He also appeared at Edinburgh with
Tom Courtenay in
Hamlet, and made numerous appearances at
Hampstead between the late 1960s and the 1980s. ==Personal life==