Danny Glover was born on July 22, 1947, and raised in San Francisco. He attended San Francisco State University and studied at the Black Actors Workshop of the American Conservatory. During the 1970s he appeared in numerous stage productions, including Athol Fugard’s The Island and Shakespeare’s Macbeth at the Los Angeles Actors’ Theater and Sizwe Bansi Is Dead at the Eureka Theatre. He first achieved national notice with his New York performances in Fugard's Blood Knot (1980) and Master Harold . . . and the Boys (1982). He also began working in film during this time.

By the mid-1980s, Glover was making a name for himself through his supporting roles in the films Witness, Places in the Heart, and Silverado, and also through his television work, with two television films (one for PBS and one for HBO) about Nelson Mandela (in which he was paired with the wonderful Alfre Woodard, with whom he would work in a number of films in the Eighties and Nineties, including Bopha!). He received an NAACP Image Award as well as an ACE Award for his performance in the HBO production of Mandela. His first leading role on film was in Steven Spielberg's The Color Purple. However, most Americans came to know him through his work in the Lethal Weapon series, and in his outstanding performance in the TV mini-series Lonesome Dove (1989), for which he earned an Emmy nomination.

With success came the ability to choose projects that supported African and African-American filmmakers. He starred in and was executive producer for the critically-acclaimed To Sleep With Anger (1990), by noted Black independent director Charles Burnett. Here he played the complex figure--alternately mysterious, affable, seductive, and terrifying--of a Southern relative who comes North to disrupt the placid surface of a middle-class African-American family in L.A. He played Easy Money in Bill Duke's A Rage in Harlem (1991), Micah Mangena in Morgan Freeman's Bopha! (1993), and was in Battu (2000), by Idrissa Ouedraogo of Burkina Faso. He was instrumental in getting these and many other projects off the ground, including the recent film version of Fugard's Boesman & Lena (2001), films that tell African and African-American stories through the eyes of their Black protagonists.

Other films executive produced by Glover include HBO’s America’s Dream series for Black History Month; the HBO-BBC movie Deadly Voyage, based on a true story of eight African stowaways who were slaughtered on the high seas by a Ukrainian freighter crew; and TNT’s Freedom Song, a story about the civil rights movement.

Along with his commitment to being part of film projects that cause people to question the status quo, Danny Glover has also used his success as an actor to further the cause of progressive social activism. As he has stated, "If my visibility as an actor creates a kind of space where these kinds of discussions can be out on the table and other people can be part of that dialogue, so be it. That’s what I’ll lend my name to." In the foreground of this "commitment space" has been Africa and issues related to the continent. In 1989 he, Alfre Woodard, and other actors helped form Artists for a Free South Africa, committed to the struggle against apartheid. The organization continues as Artists for a New South Africa, which "works to help eradicate the inequities that are apartheid's legacy, while strengthening the bonds between our two nations and addressing related issues of social justice here in the U.S." (from the ANSA web site).

In March 1998 Danny Glover was appointed a Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations, in which capacity he traveled all over the African continent as part of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). In response to the AIDS crisis in Africa, and to raise awareness about the impact of the disease on underserved communities in the United States, Glover recently agreed to extend his tenure as Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations Development Program. He has testified before Congress about our need to be more involved in international anti-AIDS programs.

He is also a major supporter of the TransAfrican Forum, the African-American lobbying organization on Africa and the Caribbean, and the Algebra Project, a math/science empowerment program developed by civil rights veteran and MacArthur Fellow Bob Moses, which works with young people in the U.S. and in Africa.

Danny Glover has also continued his support of filmmaking in Africa through his ongoing work with FESPACO, the biennial Festival of African Film in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso.

He has recently come under attack from conservatives for his criticism of the U.S. government's decision to withdraw from the International Conference on Racism and his criticism of President Bush's plans for military tribunals as a violation of civil liberty and human rights. These have been seen as inappropriate interventions by an actor pushing a personal agenda. However, anyone who has followed Danny Glover's career both as an actor and as an activist can see that these critiques are part of a larger social vision that sees film as more than escapist entertainment, that refuses to compartmentalize the different domains of one's life, that sees all humanity as inter-connected, and that works for social justice everywhere. He is an inspiration to us all, and the Cascade Festival of African Films is proud to honor his work in all its many spheres.

Escape from Alcatraz (1979)

Oscar Micheaux, Film Pioneer (1981)

Chu Chu and the Philly Flash (1981)

Places in the Heart (1984)

The Color Purple (1985)

Silverado (1985)

Mandela (1987) (TV)

Lethal Weapon (1987)

BAT-21 (1988)

A Raisin in the Sun (1989) (TV)

Lethal Weapon 2 (1989)

Lonesome Dove (1989) (TV)

Predator 2 (1990)

To Sleep with Anger (1990)

Grand Canyon (1991)

A Rage in Harlem (1991)

Lethal Weapon 3 (1992)

The Saint of Fort Washington (1993)

Bopha! (1993)

Angels in the Outfield (1994)

Switchback (1997)

Buffalo Soldiers (1997) (TV)

Lethal Weapon 4 (1998)

Beloved (1998)

Boesman & Lena (2000)

Battu (2000)

The Royal Tennenbaums (2001)

--Notes by Michael Dembrow