The product of a strong close knit nuclear family, Mr. Glover was the firstborn of his parents' five children on July 22, 1947. Mom and dad were both employees of the U.S. Postal Service, both active in the NAACP and as postal union organizers, and both committed to instilling a strong sense of social responsibility in their children.

Raised in the Haight Ashbury district of San Francisco, Calif., Glover lived in a government housing project until the age of 10, at which point his parents were able to provide the family with better living quarters.

Afflicted with dyslexia as a child, young Danny was further ostracized by his schoolyard peers as a result of both his race and his unusual height; perhaps unsurprisingly, he became quite shy. He harbored no acting aspirations in his youth, and during high school involved himself primarily with community service programs and the football team, where his strapping frame made him a natural choice for tight end. 

At the age of 16, however, Glover began suffering from recurring epileptic seizures, a condition which prevented him from pursuing football beyond high school.

Determined to become the second member of his family (his mother had been the first) to earn a college degree, Glover enrolled at San Francisco State University following his graduation from high school in 1965. Acting on his overall inclination towards mathematics, he became an economics major, but like many students of his day, he ultimately let the course of his higher education be steered largely by his conscience. 

He participated in the university's Black Student Union, became affiliated with the Black Panthers, and even spent several months of 1968 living on a commune. He also gave free rein to the humanitarian impulses his parents had inspired in him, spending a great deal of time working as a tutor to inner-city children; at one point he personally coordinated three reading centers. Somehow, in the midst of all that awareness, he found time to become aware of classmate Asake Bomani: Glover took to stationing himself outside her English class, where he would greet her each day by saying, "Hi, how ya doin'?" before fleeing in a fit of self-conscious terror. After several weeks of such abortive conversations, he finally worked up the courage to call and ask her out. The two eventually wed.

With a degree in hand and a young family to support, Glover embarked on a career as a civil servant, working in various capacities for the city of San Francisco over the next several years. It wasn't until 1975 that the 28-year-old first began to develop a serious interest in acting. With no more background in dramatics than a few political plays done during his college years, Glover began taking classes with the Black Actors Workshop at the American Conservatory Theater. Soon, he was winning roles in local theater productions, and eventually (after seeking and receiving his wife's approval) he moved the family to Los Angeles in order to pursue acting opportunities full-time. Over the next several years, he compiled an impressively diverse list of stage credits, including performances in Sam Shepard's Suicide in B Flat, Shakespeare's Macbeth, and South African activist Athol Fugard's The Island.

Eventually, Glover developed a special relationship with the reclusive Fugard that had its roots in a 1980 off-Broadway revival of the playwright's Blood Knot, in which Glover had a lead role. During the show's run, he got a call from his agent with an offer to take a role in the pilot for Hill Street Blues.

Realizing that Blood Knot would be forced to close if he accepted (he had no understudy) Glover turned down the pilot to stick with the play (he eventually had a small recurring role during Hill Street's second season). Not long thereafter, Fugard himself caught a performance and came away so impressed with Glover's work that he personally offered the novice actor a starring role in Master Harold and the Boys, the first of his plays to have its world premiere on Broadway. Critical accolades poured in following the show'sng run, and among those impressed was director Robert Benton, who invited Glover to star opposite Sally Field in his Depression-era drama Places in the Heart.

The movie was a hit, and on the strength of his performance as Moze, a folksy cotton farmer, Glover lined up three prominent roles with a troika of respected directors: He played a murderous narcotics detective to chilling effect in Peter Weir's Witness; and provided the Lawrence Kasdan western Silverado with a strong moral center as Mal, a high-plains drifter who happens to be right handy with a rifle.

But it was in Steven Spielberg's The Color Purple that Glover truly shined; as the abusive, black-hearted Mister, he delivered the most captivating performance of his early career. Two years later, he burst into theaters with Lethal Weapon, and his leading-man status was assured. Over the next decade, Glover's film career languished somewhat between Lethal Weapon sequels, but he busied himself with television projects (including a hefty role in the acclaimed CBS miniseries adaptation of Lonesome Dove), a second career as a producer (beginning with the 1991 feature film To Sleep With Anger, in which he also starred), and (of course) all manner of social work. Though 1997's Gone Fishin', an ill-advised foray into comedy, was DOA at the box office, Glover delivered a particularly effective cameo in Francis Ford Coppola's The Rainmaker, and proved that he hadn't, in fact, gotten "too old for this shit" with his involvement in 1998's Lethal Weapon 4. Later that year, he reunited on-screen with his Color Purple co-star Oprah Winfrey in Jonathan Demme's buzz-laden adaptation of Toni Morrison's Beloved, and essayed the first voice roles of his career, contributing a hilarious cameo to Antz and providing the voice of Moses' sage father-in-law, Jethro, in The Prince of Egypt.

In recent years, Glover and Bomane have divided their time between a large Victorian home in their native San Francisco and a 40-acre vineyard in nearby Sonoma County. Among the always-busy actor's upcoming projects are the romantic drama Wings Against the Wind, with Angela Bassett, Don Cheadle, and Gerard Depardieu; and a starring role in a project titled The Monster.

Among those who know him best, actor Danny Glover is nearly as renowned for his tireless social activism as for his many acting accomplishments. Perhaps the truest measure of his commitment to helping people is that, by and large, only those who really do know him are aware of how continuously involved with crusading against various social ills he is. As longtime friend and frequent co-star Mel Gibson once put it, "Most people in Hollywood have a token thing they do, but it's mostly about self-aggrandizement and ego. That's not the case with Danny. He's up to his eyeballs in devoting time to community services and just causes. He keeps going whether or not the public knows about it." Perhaps the only other aspect of his public life Glover is so assiduously devoted to is his acting career, which has grown by leaps and bounds since he first bellyached to Gibson that he was getting "too old for this shit" in 1987's Lethal Weapon. The action franchise that film spawned assured Glover's lifelong financial security many times over, but that has yet to stop him from piling up new projects as rapidly as if he were living from paycheck to paycheck.

Mr. Glover's lives with his wife, Asake Bomani, who is a art gallery owner and his daughter, Mandisa, who is a film production assistant.