Danny Glover

Danny Lebern Glover1 (born July 22, 1946) is an American actor, film director, and political activist.

Glover was born in San Francisco, California, the son of Carrie (née Hunley) and James Glover, both of whom were postal workers and were active in the NAACP. Glover grew up with a love for sports just like his father. Glover's mother, daughter of a midwife, was born in Louisville, Georgia and graduated from Paine College.2 Glover graduated from George Washington High School (San Francisco) before attending American University and matriculating at San Francisco State University. At university, he also met his future wife Asake Bomani, whom he married in 1975. They have been divorced for some time now.

In his late twenties, Glover enrolled in the Black Actors Workshop at 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 Actor's Studio, Glover credited 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. He moved to Los Angeles for more opportunities in acting.

Glover suffered from epilepsy as a teenager and young adult; according to his own account, he "developed a way of concentrating so that seizures wouldn't happen." Using this technique, which he describes as a type of self-hypnosis, Glover says he hasn't suffered a seizure since the age of 35.3

He has had a variety of film, stage, and television roles, and is best known for playing Los Angeles police Sgt. Roger Murtaugh in the Lethal Weapon series of action films. He is also known as the abusive husband to Whoopi Goldberg's character Celie in The Color Purple.

In Predator 2, the sequel to the sci-fi actioner Predator, Glover earned top billing for the first time. In addition, Glover has been a voice actor in many children's movies. Glover was featured in the popular 2001 film Royal Tenenbaums, also starring Gywneth Paltrow, Anjelica Huston, Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson.

Among many awards, he has won five NAACP Image Awards for his achievements as an actor of color.

Glover joined the ranks of actors, such as Humphrey Bogart, Elliott Gould, and Robert Mitchum, who have portrayed Raymond Chandler's private eye detective Philip Marlowe in the episode 'Red Wind' of the Showtime network's 1995 series Fallen Angels. Glover made his directorial debut with the Showtime channel short film Override in 1994. Also in 1994, Glover and actor Ben Guillory formed the Robey Theatre Company in Los Angeles, focusing on theatre by and about the Black experience.

In 2005, Glover and Joslyn Barnes announced plans to make "No FEAR," a movie about Dr. Marsha Coleman-Adebayo's experience.4 Coleman-Adebayo won a 2000 jury trial against the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). 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 passage of the No FEAR Act.

While attending San Francisco State University, Glover was a member of the Black Students Union5, that along with the Third World Liberation Front led the five-month strike to establish a department of Ethnic Studies. This action helped create the first school of Ethnic Studies in the U.S., and it was the longest student strike in the U.S.6 During the strike, Glover protested with Hari Dillon, now the president of the Vanguard Public Foundation. Glover sits on its advisory board.

Glover serves as a board member to numerous national and international organizations. He is presently chair of the TransAfrica Forum, "a non-profit organization dedicated to educating the general public — particularly African-Americans — on the economic, political and moral ramifications of U.S. foreign policy as it affects Africa and the Diaspora in the Caribbean and Latin America". He is also a board member of Cheryl Byron's Something Positive Dance Group. In March 1998, he was appointed by President Bill Clinton as ambassador to the United Nations Development Programme.

Glover is among a number of high-profile U.S. supporters of Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez. The group also includes singer Harry Belafonte and Princeton University scholar Cornel West, who have sided with the Venezuelan president against accusations of abuses to democratic freedoms.7 Glover also serves on the Advisory Council for TeleSUR, "Television of the South", a pan-Latin American television network based in Caracas, financed by the Venezuelan government. It began broadcasting on July 24, 2005. His role in this capacity and his resulting interaction with Chávez have drawn criticism for Glover from some Western media.8

On January 24, 2008, he was convicted of trespassing during a union rally at a Sheraton Hotel in Niagara Falls, Ontario. He was convicted along with union representative Alex Dagg and Ontario Federation of Labour president Wayne Samuelson.9Although Canadian Niagara Hotels were seeking $22,000 in a private prosecution, Glover, Dagg and Samuelson were sentenced with a $100 fine on February 8, 2008. The justice of the peace suggested that "the prosecution was unnecessary to protect the interests of the hotel's owner, and that the company should have put more effort toward good faith negotiations with the union".10

After John Edwards withdrew from the race, Glover endorsed Barack Obama for the 2008 Presidential election.11

(wiki)