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Clarence J. Brown III was born January 5, 1959 in Urbana, Ohio. Brown is an American actor perhaps best known for his role as The Kurgan (also known as Victor Kruger) in the original Highlander movie and as Mr. Krabs in SpongeBob SquarePants.
At 6' 3 1/2" tall and possessing a deep voice, he is often typecast in roles of villains, such as Lex Luthor in Superman: The Animated Series and later in Justice League and Justice League Unlimited. Other well-known roles include Captain Byron Hadley in The Shawshank Redemption, Viking Lofgren in the 1983 hit drama movie Bad Boys, Rawhide in The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension (1984), Career Sgt. Zim in Starship Troopers, the sinister preacher Brother Justin Crowe in the HBO series Carnivàle, and the antagonist, The Kurgan, in the first Highlander.
He has voiced the corrupt Baron Praxis in the PlayStation 2 video game, Jak II, the psychopathic Dr. Neo Cortex and destructive Uka Uka in a number of the Crash Bandicoot video games until Crash Twinsanity, Montross, rival of Jango Fett, in Star Wars: Bounty Hunter and the aggressive alien villain Gorrath in the animated series Megas XLR. Brown was also the voice of Thrall in the cancelled video game Warcraft Adventures: Lord of the Clans. In the animated series Mortal Kombat: Defenders of the Realm, Brown voiced Raiden, a character that had been played by Christopher Lambert in the 1995 Mortal Kombat movie.
Brown has also had many guest appearances on various television shows including Star Trek: Enterprise and a recent appearance on Lost as an American officer during Desert Storm who convinced Sayid, a soldier of the Republican Guard, to torture his commanding officer - and was later found to be a member of the The DHARMA Initiative stationed at "The Swan" with Desmond. His best known starring television role before Carnivàle was that of John Danzinger on Earth 2.
Brown supplied the voice of Mr. Freeze in The Batman. Beginning in 2000, he regularly played the roles of Captain Black and Ratso on Jackie Chan Adventures and occasionally took on the role of the talisman animated moose doll known as Super Moose. He has also voiced Principal Pangborn in All Grown Up, and Barkmeat in Catscratch and starred in Disney shows, playing roles such as Otto in Super Robot Monkey Team Hyperforce Go!, Alexander Paine in A.T.O.M. and the Dark Dragon in American Dragon: Jake Long. He also plays Long Feng in Avatar: The Last Airbender. He is the commercial spokesman for the Home Depot.
Brown is the son of the former Ohio Congressman, Clarence J. "Bud" Brown Jr. and is chairman of the board of Brown Publishing Company, the family-owned newspaper business started by his grandfather, Congressman Clarence J. Brown. He has served on the board since 1987.
He graduated from St. Albans School in Washington, D.C., and earned a scholarship to Northwestern University where he became a member of the Sigma Chi Fraternity. He was inspired as a youth by a neighbor who showed him Shakespeare's works.