Danny Glover
Danny Glover is an American actor, producer, and political activist. Over his career he has received numerous accolades including the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the NAACP's President's Award, as well as nominations for five Emmy Awards and four Grammy Awards.
Glover made his film acting debut in Escape from Alcatraz in 1979. He rose to fame in the late 1980s for playing Roger Murtaugh in the Lethal Weapon film series. Glover's other notable films include Places in the Heart, The Color Purple, Witness, To Sleep with Anger, Predator 2, Grand Canyon, Bopha!, Angels in the Outfield, The Royal Tenenbaums, Saw, Dreamgirls, Shooter, Be Kind Rewind, 2012, Death at a Funeral, Beyond the Lights, Sorry to Bother You, and The Last Black Man in San Francisco.
He is known for his work in television, receiving four Primetime Emmy Award nominations for his roles as Nelson Mandela in the HBO television film Mandela, Joshua Deets in CBS western miniseries Lonesome Dove, Philip Marlowe in the Showtime neo-noir series Fallen Angels, and Will Walker in TNT biographical film Freedom Song. He had recurring roles in Hill Street Blues, ER, and Brothers & Sisters.
Glover is also an active supporter of various political causes. He is a member of the TransAfrica Forum and the Center for Economic and Policy Research. For his political work, he was awarded the Cuban National Medal of Friendship by the Cuban Council of State.
Early life and education
Glover was born on July 22, 1946, in San Francisco, California, the son of Carrie and James Glover. Both of his parents were postal workers, and were active in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, working to advance equal rights. Glover's mother, daughter of a midwife, was born in Louisville, Georgia, and graduated from Paine College in Augusta, Georgia. His father was a World War II veteran. He graduated from George Washington High School in San Francisco.As an adolescent and a young adult, Glover had epilepsy but has not had a seizure since age 35. He attended San Francisco State University in the late 1960s but did not graduate. SFSU later awarded him the Presidential Medal of San Francisco State University for his service to education. Glover trained at the Black Actors' Workshop of the American Conservatory Theater.
Career
1979–1984: Early roles
Glover originally worked in city administration working on community development before transitioning to theater. He has said:His first theater involvement was with the American Conservatory Theater, a regional training program in San Francisco. Glover also trained with Jean Shelton at the Shelton Actors Lab in San Francisco. In an interview on Inside the Actors Studio, Glover credited Jean Shelton for much of his development as an actor. Deciding that he wanted to be an actor, Glover resigned from his city administration job and soon began his career as a stage actor. Glover then moved to Los Angeles for more opportunities in acting.
Glover made his film acting debut in Escape from Alcatraz. He has since had a variety of film, stage and television roles. His earlier work included a recurring role on Hill Street Blues, and the role of Moses Hadner in the 1984 drama film Places in the Heart.
1985–2000: Breakthrough and acclaim
Glover gained acclaim in 1985 starring as the husband to Whoopi Goldberg's character Celie in the celebrated literary adaptation The Color Purple. The same year he played Lieutenant James McFee in the crime thriller film Witness, and Mal in the western film Silverado.Glover is best known for playing Los Angeles police Sergeant Roger Murtaugh in the action film Lethal Weapon, and in the 1989, 1992 and 1998 sequels of the film series, starring alongside Mel Gibson. He received Primetime Emmy Award nominations for his roles as Nelson Mandela in the HBO television film Mandela and Joshua Deets in CBS western miniseries Lonesome Dove. In 1990, he earned top billing for the first time in the blockbuster Predator 2 with Gary Busey, the sequel to the science-fiction action film Predator. That same year, he starred in Charles Burnett's To Sleep with Anger, for which he won the Independent Spirit Award for Best Male Lead. He also appeared in films such as Grand Canyon and Bopha!.
During his career, Glover has also made several cameos, appearing, for example, in the Michael Jackson video "Liberian Girl" of 1987. In 1994, Glover and actor Ben Guillory founded the Robey Theatre Company in Los Angeles in honor of the actor and concert singer Paul Robeson. Its purpose was to focus on theatre by and about Black people.
Also in 1994, Glover made his directorial debut with the Showtime channel short film Override. That same year, he played the role of baseball manager George Knox in Angels in the Outfield for Walt Disney Pictures.
In common with Humphrey Bogart, Elliott Gould and Robert Mitchum, who have played Raymond Chandler's private eye detective Philip Marlowe, Glover played the role in the episode "Red Wind" of the Showtime network's 1995 series Fallen Angels, earning him a Primetime Emmy Award nomination. Also that year, Glover played Captain Sam Cahill in the war film Operation Dumbo Drop.
In 1997, under his former production company banner Carrie Films, Glover executive produced numerous films of first time directors including Pamm Malveaux's neo-noir short film Final Act starring Joe Morton, which aired on the Independent Film Channel. In 1998, he starred as Paul D. in the drama film Beloved, based on Toni Morrison's novel. In addition, Glover has been a voice actor in many children's movies including The Prince of Egypt, Antz and Our Friend, Martin. In 2000, he played Will Walker in TNT biographical film Freedom Song, which earned him another Primetime Emmy Award nomination.
2001–present: Established actor
Glover was featured in the Wes Anderson directed 2001 film The Royal Tenenbaums, also starring Gwyneth Paltrow, Anjelica Huston, Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson.In 2004, he appeared in the low-budget horror film Saw as Detective David Tapp. In 2005, Glover and Joslyn Barnes announced plans to make No FEAR, a film about Dr. Marsha Coleman-Adebayo's experience. Coleman-Adebayo won a 2000 jury trial against the US Environmental Protection Agency. The jury found the EPA guilty of violating the civil rights of Coleman-Adebayo on the basis of race, sex, color and a hostile work environment, under the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Coleman-Adebayo was terminated shortly after she revealed the environmental and human disaster taking place in the Brits, South Africa vanadium mines. Her experience inspired the passage of the Notification and Federal Employee Anti-discrimination and Retaliation Act of 2002. the No Fear title has not appeared but The Marsha Coleman-Adebayo Story was announced as the next major project of No Fear Media Productions.
Glover portrayed David Keaton in the television film The Exonerated —a real-life story of Keaton's experience of being arrested, jailed, and then freed from death row. In 2006, he voiced Miles, an elderly mule, in the animated film Barnyard, and played Marty Madison in the musical Dreamgirls. In 2007, he played Colonel Isaac Johnson in the action thriller Shooter.
In 2009, Glover performed in The People Speak, a documentary feature film that uses dramatic and musical performances of the letters, diaries and speeches of everyday Americans, based on historian Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States. He also had recurring roles on the shows ER and Brothers & Sisters.
Glover played President Thomas Wilson, the President of the United States in 2012, a disaster film directed by Roland Emmerich and released in theaters November 13, 2009. In 2010, Glover participated in the black comedy film Death at a Funeral, and a Spanish film called I Want to Be a Soldier. In 2012, he starred in the film Donovan's Echo.
Glover co-starred in the science fiction comedy film Sorry to Bother You, which was released in theaters on July 6, 2018. He also appeared in the film The Last Black Man in San Francisco. In December 2019, he played Milo Walker in the action comedy film Jumanji: The Next Level starring Dwayne Johnson, Kevin Hart, Jack Black and Karen Gillan.
Glover played Mark Walker in the indie drama film The Drummer. He appeared in an episode of the ABC sitcom Black-ish as Uncle Norman in 2020. He played Jerry in the comedy American Dreamer. He played Cooper in the romantic drama Press Play. He played Santa Claus in the Disney+ original movie The Naughty Nine. He played Michael Tedeschi in the film Double Soul.
Unrealized projects
Glover has long sought to make a biopic of Toussaint Louverture for his directorial debut. In May 2006, the film had cast members Wesley Snipes, Angela Bassett, Don Cheadle, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Roger Guenveur Smith, Mos Def, Isaach de Bankolé, and Richard Bohringer attached. Production, estimated to cost $30 million, was planned to begin in Poland, filming from late 2006 into early 2007.In May 2007, President of Venezuela Hugo Chávez agreed to contribute $18 million to fund the production of Toussaint for Glover, who was a prominent U.S. supporter of Chávez. The contribution annoyed some Venezuelan filmmakers, who said the money could have funded other homegrown films and that Glover's film was not even about Venezuela. In April 2008, the Venezuelan National Assembly authorized an additional $9,840,505 for Glover's film, which was still in pre-production.
The film remains unproduced. In 2015, Glover stated: "The film that we always missed is a movie on the Haitian revolution and Toussaint Louverture. The company is fortuitously named after him and that was the movie that I wanted to do. We've developed a script. We thought we were going to get it done four years ago. We thought we were going to be making it right now. But also there are other kinds of things that intrigue me." As of 2024, the project does not appear on the active slate of Louverture Films, and Glover stepped down as the company's CEO in June of that year.