Danny Glover

By Tom Kirvan

One of the most versatile actors on stage and screen, Danny Glover has been nominated for five Emmy Awards and four Grammy Awards during a career that took flight in 1985 with his roles in the hit movies “The Color Purple” and “Witness.”

Born on July 22, 1946 in San Francisco, Glover made his film acting debut in 1979 in “Escape from Alcatraz,” a movie that starred Clint Eastwood and chronicled the 1962 prisoner escape from the federal maximum-security prison on Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay. His fame continued to grow in the late 1980s when he appeared in the “Lethal Weapon” series as Los Angeles Police Sergeant Roger Murtaugh.

He received Emmy recognition in 1987 for his portrayal of Nelson Mandela in the HBO television film, “Mandela.” Glover, who overcame epilepsy and dyslexia to become a film and TV star, also was featured in recurring roles in “Hill Street Blues,” “ER,” and “Brothers and Sisters.”

An activist since his early days as a cab driver in San Francisco, Glover compared the scale and devastation of the 2010 Haiti earthquake to the predicament that other island nations may face as a result of climate change.

“The threat of what happens to Haiti is a threat that can happen anywhere in the Caribbean to these island nations... they’re all in peril because of global warming... because of climate change,” said Glover, whose parents were both postal workers and active in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

Danny Glover*

Glover’s belief in the power of education has manifested itself in his support of various literacy causes in the U.S. and abroad.

“If we talk about literacy, we have to talk about how to enhance our children’s mastery over the tools needed to live intelligent, creative, and involved lives,” Glover said.

“If we talk about the environment, for example, we have to talk about environmental racism – about the fact that kids in South Central Los Angeles have a third of the lung capacity of kids in Santa Monica,” he added.

*5of7, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons