Danny Glover Bio

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Chief Danny Lebern Glover (born July 22, 1946) is an American actor, film director, and political activist. Glover is possibly best known for his role as Detective Roger Murtaugh in the Lethal Weapon film franchise.

Danny Glover: Early life and education

Glover was born in San Francisco, California, the son of Carrie (née Hunley) and James Glover. Both were postal workers and were active in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), working to advance equal rights. Glover grew up with a love for sports like his father. Glover's mother, daughter of a midwife, was born in Louisville, Georgia and graduated from Paine College in Augusta, Georgia.

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.

He graduated from George Washington High School (San Francisco) before attending American University in Washington D.C. and matriculating at San Francisco State University. At the university, he also met his future wife Asake Bomani, whom he married in 1975. Their only child and daughter, Mandisa, was born on January 5, 1976. They have been divorced for some time now.

On April 6, 2009, Glover was given a chieftancy title in Imo State, Nigeria. Chief Glover, who is a Chief in the Igbo tribe of Eastern Nigeria, was given the title Enyioma of Nkwerre, which means A Good Friend.

Danny Glover: Career

Glover originally worked in city administration but always had other interests. In his late thirties, he 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.

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 received notice as the husband to Whoopi Goldberg's character Celie in The Color Purple.

Glover earned top billing for the first time in Predator 2, the sequel to the sci-fi action film Predator.

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 Gwyneth Paltrow, Anjelica Huston, Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson.

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. He played him in the episode 'Red Wind' of the Showtime network's 1995 series Fallen Angels.

Glover has continued to expand his dramatic skills. In 1994 he made his directorial debut with the Showtime channel short film Override. Also in 1994, Glover and actor Ben Guillory formed the Robey Theatre Company in Los Angeles, focusing on theatre by and about the Black people.

In 2005, Glover and Joslyn Barnes announced plans to make No FEAR, a movie about Dr. Marsha Coleman-Adebayo's experience. 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 Notification and Federal Employee Anti-discrimination and Retaliation Act of 2002 (No FEAR Act).

Glover is set to play the President of the United States in 2012, a disaster film directed by Roland Emmerich, which is scheduled for release in theaters November 13, 2009.

Danny Glover - Planned directorial debut

Glover sought to make a film biography of Toussaint Louverture for his directorial debut. In May 2006, the film had included cast members Wesley Snipes, Angela Bassett, Don Cheadle, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Roger Guenveur Smith, Mos Def, Isaach De Bankolé, and Richard Bohringer. Production, estimated to cost $30 million, was planned to begin in South Africa, filming from late 2006 into early 2007. In May 2007, President of Venezuela Hugo Chávez contributed $18 million to fund the production of Toussaint for Glover, who is a prominent U.S. supporter of Chávez. The contribution infuriated Venezuelan filmmakers, who said the money could have funded local cinema and that Glover's film was not even about Venezuela. The following June, Venezuelan filmmakers petitioned for Glover to reconsider using the funds provided by their president while the actor was scouting locations outside the Venezuelan capital Caracas. The petition resulted in the local film guilds Anac and Caveprol being outlawed by Venezuela; the country's state-backed film institute Cnac was also instructed to sever ties with the guild (CNAC severed ties with the guild, presumably over the Danny Glover incident, but there's no proof they were 'instructed' to do so). In April 2008, the Venezuelan National Assembly authorized an additional $9,840,505 for Glover's film, which is still in planning.

Danny Glover: Activism

Glover speaks at a March for Immigrants Rights in Madison, Wisconsin.

While attending San Francisco State University, Glover was a member of the Black Students Union which, along with the Third World Liberation Front and the American Federation of Teachers, collaborated in a five-month student-led strike to establish a Department of Black Studies. The strike was the longest student walkout in U.S. history. It helped create not only the first Department of Black Studies but also the first School of Ethnic Studies in the U.S.

Hari Dillon, current president of the Vanguard Public Foundation, was a fellow striker at SFSU. Glover now sits on Vanguard's advisory board. Glover is also a board member of The Algebra Project, The Black AIDS Institute, Walden House, and Cheryl Byron's Something Positive Dance Group, among others.

Glover's long history of union activism includes support for the United Farm Workers, UNITE HERE!, and numerous service unions.

In January 2006, Harry Belafonte led a delegation of activists, including Glover and activist/professor Cornel West, in a meeting with President of Venezuela Hugo Chávez.

Glover was an early supporter of John Edwards in the 2008 Democratic Presidential Primary until Edwards' withdrawal. Glover then endorsed Barack Obama. Glover was an outspoken critic of George W. Bush, calling him a known racist. "Yes, he's racist. We all knew that. As Texas's governor, Bush led a penitentiary system that executed more people than all the other U.S. states together. And most of the people who died were Afro-Americans or Hispanics."

Glover's support of California Proposition 7 (2008) led him to use his voice in an automated phone call to generate support for the measure before the election.