Photo: Mater Dei High School (Santa Ana, California) / Public domain (source: Wikimedia Commons)
My Take
Bob Gunton is, for my money, one of the great unsung weapons of American cinema. Warden Norton in The Shawshank Redemption is a masterclass in quiet menace, the hypocrisy of a man who quotes scripture while running a racket, played without a single wasted gesture. What I admire most is his stage-trained discipline: a Drama Desk winner who treats supporting villainy as serious craft, not a paycheck. Character actors like him set the moral temperature of a film while the leads collect the praise. Every time he appears on screen, I sit up a little straighter, because I know the story just got more dangerous.
Overview
Robert Patrick Gunton Jr. (born November 15, 1945) is an American character actor of stage and screen. He is known for playing strict authoritarian characters, including Warden Samuel Norton in the 1994 prison drama The Shawshank Redemption, Chief George Earle in 1993's Demolition Man, Dr. Walcott, the domineering dean of Virginia Medical School in Patch Adams, and Secretary of State Cyrus Vance in Argo.
Summary adapted from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
1. Profile
- Name (English)
- Bob Gunton
- Name (Japanese)
- ボブ・ガントン
- Reading
- ぼぶ・がんとん
- Born
- November 15, 1945 (age 80)
- Zodiac / Chinese zodiac
- Scorpio / Rooster
- Origin
- Santa Monica, California, United States
- Blood type
- Private
- Height
- Private
- Agency
- Private
- Occupation
- voice actor / military personnel / stage actor / film actor / television actor
2. Background
- Elementary school
- Private
- Junior high
- Private
- High school
- Mater Dei High School
- University
- University of California, Irvine
Awards & achievements
- 1980 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Featured Actor in a Musical
- Clarence Derwent Awards
3. Relationships
- Spouse
- Private
- Children
- Private
- Parents
- Private
- Siblings
- Private
4. Personality
Motto
Private
6. Links
Voice actor — see all → · Military personnel — see all → · More people from United States →
7. About this entry
Tags
- Last updated
- 2026-06-10
Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public items are marked "Private / Unknown". English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.