The immensely prolific actor Reinhard Glemnitz was trained at the Otto-Falckenberg-School in Munich and launched his career on Cologne's cabaret scene. He worked for Bavarian radio, then went on the stage in Wuppertal and in 1961 joined the Bavarian State Theatre in Munich as an ensemble member. Some twenty years later, he was able to celebrate his greatest theatrical success in Vienna, Berlin and Munich as Colonel Juan Peron in the musical Evita. In 1996 he scored another hit as the idiosyncratic, parsimonious Horace Vandergelder (the role played by Walter Matthau in the film) in Hello Dolly at the Komödie im Bayerischen Hof .

In films from 1954, Glemnitz began by playing soldiers, public officials and attorneys. By the mid-60s, he had segued into episodic television, making repeat appearances in the cold war espionage series Die fünfte Kolonne (1963) and in Germany's first entry into the science fiction genre on TV, Raumpatrouille - Die phantastischen Abenteuer des Raumschiffes Orion (1966). However, Glemnitz was to become most famous for his crime dramas, first as narrator of the intro for Das Kriminalmuseum (1963), and, secondly, from 1968 to 1975, as Erik Ode's logical thinking offsider Inspektor Robert Heines in Der Kommissar (1969). This role garnered Glemnitz, along with three other cast members, an impressive 5 Bambi Awards (1970, 1971, 1972, 1973 and 1975). Prior to his retirement from the screen in 2006, he made guest appearances on other diverse TV shows like Der Millionenbauer (1979), Forsthaus Falkenau (1989), Derrick (1974) and Tatort (1970). He has also occasionally portrayed historical characters like Johann Reichsgraf von Aldringen (1588-1634) in the 4-part period drama Wallenstein (1978) and General Hans Speidel (1897-1984) in the American miniseries War and Remembrance (1988) .

Few others have made a more substantial contribution to the art of voice acting. Reinhard Glemnitz has been the German dubbing voice for a multitude of stars, including Patrick Stewart, Robert Duvall, Christopher Plummer, Michael Caine, Bruce Dern and Anthony Perkins. He narrated the classic Franco-German adventure series Der Seewolf (1971) from the perspective of its protagonist (Edward Meeks). He provided the German voice for Murray Hamilton in Jaws (1975), Edward Fox in A Bridge Too Far (1977), Richard Harris in Camelot (1967), Mitch Pileggi in Stargate: Atlantis (2004) and Patrick Malahide (as Walsingham, in Elizabeth I (2005)) - these, and many, many more.