Danny Glover

Danny Glover is an American actor, producer, and political activist whose five-decade career has produced multiple defining American film roles — particularly his 1987–1998 four-film tenure as Roger Murtaugh across Richard Donner's Lethal Weapon film franchise. He was born Daniel Lebern Glover on July 22, 1946, in San Francisco, California, into an African-American working-class family. His father James Glover was a postal worker, and his mother Carrie Glover was also a postal worker.

His education at San Francisco State University (B.A. in Economics, 1970, after his late-1960s involvement with the Black Students Union and the San Francisco State College student strike of 1968–1969) launched his early-career path. His 1970s San Francisco-area community-theater career across multiple Bay Area theater productions — particularly the American Conservatory Theater — produced his early-career American theater public profile.

His 1979 first feature-film appearance in Escape from Alcatraz launched his early-1980s American film career. His 1984 supporting role as Mr. Albert Johnson in Steven Spielberg's The Color Purple (the Alice Walker novel adaptation, alongside Whoopi Goldberg and Oprah Winfrey) launched his mid-1980s American film public profile.

His 1987 first appearance as veteran Los Angeles Police Department detective Roger Murtaugh in Richard Donner's Lethal Weapon — opposite Mel Gibson's Martin Riggs — launched the four-film 1987–1998 Lethal Weapon franchise (which grossed over $955 million worldwide across all four films). His subsequent late-1980s and 1990s American film career has produced multiple defining American films — particularly Lawrence Kasdan's Grand Canyon (1991, opposite Kevin Kline), Beresford Bruce's Driving Miss Daisy (1989), Richard Pearce's The Rainmaker (1997), and Robert Altman's Gosford Park (2001). His parallel American political-activism career has produced his ongoing 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, 2010s, and 2020s political-activism work — particularly his 1980s Anti-Apartheid Movement in South Africa work, his 2000s opposition to the Iraq War, and his 2010s and 2020s American police-reform work. He married Asake Bomani in 1975 (divorced 2000), and he has been with Brazilian Eliane Cavalleiro since 2009.

His name Danny is the English diminutive of Daniel (from the Hebrew Daniyyel meaning "God is my judge"). Danny was the most-popular American boys' name through the mid-20th century.