Interview: Danny Glover
In 1976, Danny Glover was the father of a baby girl and was working a steady job in community development. But he had also been trying his hand at acting — attending the American Conservatory Theater and performing when he had the chance. His friend Ben Guillory, a fellow ACT student, suggested putting on an evening of monologues.

Guillory gave Glover a play titled Blood Knot, by Athol Fugard, and the pair decided to mount the entire show. "We put together the play, we built the set, we recorded the music," Glover says of the grass-roots production. "We used ACT's little theatre, which seated 30 or 40 people. I remember I sat on that stage after finishing the first performance, and I knew right there and then I wanted to be an actor." Glover had a good job — "I had a pension!" — but he knew what his true calling was: "Everything I did in 1977 was with the intent that I was going to leave my job by the end of the year.

"Community development's loss was the acting world's gain, as Glover would forge a remarkable career in all mediums, from stage to television and the silver screen. He has worked with directors from Steven Spielberg (The Color Purple) to Wes Anderson (The Royal Tenenbaums) and headlined billion-dollar franchises (the Lethal Weapon series) and low-budget indies (To Sleep With Anger). He has portrayed men up and down the social strata, heroes to villains. But if there is one common thread Glover manages to bring to every one of his roles, it's an inherent humanity. It's no coincidence Lawrence Kasdan cast him as the saintly tow-truck driver Kevin Kline believes is his guardian angel in Grand Canyon. Or that Anjelica Huston is won over by his simple decency (and those colorful bow ties) in The Royal Tenenbaums. And the Lethal Weapon series may be about relentless action, but its heart belongs to family man Roger Murtaugh, Mel Gibson's put-upon partner who has been "getting too old for this shit" for four movies. Glover can currently be seen bringing that humanity to writer-director John Sayles' drama Honeydripper, playing debt-ridden club owner Tyrone Purvis. Set in 1950s rural Georgia, the film details Purvis' last-ditch effort to save his club by claiming a famous guitar player is coming to perform. The film also stars Charles S. Dutton and Lisa Gay Hamilton.

Sayles and Glover seem such a natural fit, with their love for indie film and humanitarian story lines, that it's hard to believe this is their first collaboration. The filmmaker didn't write the role with the actor in mind, but once Sayles read the script in its entirety he knew Glover was an excellent choice for the part. "Danny has the depth and the weight to play a black man who was his own man in the South in 1950," Sayles says. He adds that he was thrilled to land Glover. "One of the biggest compliments you can get is that we're paying scale and these really good actors say yes."

By all accounts, there was nothing luxurious about the shoot; it was done in four weeks with virtually no rehearsal, and the film is being self-distributed by Sayles. But Glover says he didn't require much preparation. "I've known Charles Dutton for 30 years, and we've never worked together," he says. "But we love each other, and you see that on screen. And you have great language at the same time. It's such a beautiful opportunity to come together. All you know is that something magical is going to happen." He says the same of his onscreen wife: "Lisa Gay and I were in Beloved, even though we didn't have scenes together; but you see her in that, and everything you need to know about what kind of an actor she is is right there in front of your eyes. We spoke the same language. We knew we were going to work out whatever we needed to. We really loved each other as actors and artists."

Hamilton has been a fan since seeing Glover in "Master Harold"…and the Boys on Broadway in the early 1980s. "Danny and I never sat down and talked about our characters," she says. "It was a matter of: Let's play. And you have John, who wants to give humanity an opportunity to breathe and be seen in its truth. That's why we're here. Thank God it's Danny Glover and not someone else. Because I know it's going to work. I know it's going to be a collaborative relationship."

'Places' in His Heart

It's fitting that Glover had his acting epiphany courtesy of a Fugard play; the author ultimately was responsible for many turning points in the actor's career. It was his performance in Fugard's The Island at the Matrix Theatre in Los Angeles in 1978 that landed Glover his first agent. And Glover's Broadway debut was in the playwright's "Master Harold," in the role that put him on Hollywood's radar. Most audiences probably first took notice of Glover in 1984's Places in the Heart, opposite Sally Field in her Oscar-winning performance. But Glover says he hadn't necessarily planned on a film career. "I think the arc of my career has been to create another dynamic, not simply to see myself as a black actor doing black plays, as that would have been very limiting," he says. "So to do Fugard, to do Macbeth, to do Sam Shepard — those were the kind of things in which I got to explore other territories. And I think that's reflected in my film career as well."

Another driving force in Glover's life is his passion for humanitarian causes, something that has been a part of his life from an early age. His parents were active in the NAACP, and while attending San Francisco State University, Glover was a member of the Black Students Union, one of the organizations that led a five-month strike for ethnic studies. "Perhaps because of my political upbringing, I wanted to see and siege the power in our art," Glover notes. "When I began to think about the kind of work I wanted to do, it was definitely with intent. I guess the question over the last 30 years is: How do we find and articulate that vision?"

One way, says Glover, is to pursue projects he's drawn to, no matter the paycheck. "If there's something I want to do, I don't care whether I'm getting $20 million or $200,000 a film," he says. "For example, the director of a play came to me because I was procrastinating about doing it. I met him, I listened to him, and I told my agent, 'I really want this to happen. It may not be the money you expect me to get, but I want it.' And it happened."

Going for Broke?

That said, it's shocking to hear Glover admit one of the reasons he signed on to last year's The Shaggy Dog. "I had done Shaggy Dog because they asked, which is always a great reason to do something," he says with a laugh. "But also, I was broke." How does the actor who once commanded a $7 million paycheck for Lethal Weapon 4 explain this? "It's a funny business," he says. "Relatively speaking, I was broke. The last Lethal Weapon I did was almost 10 years ago. Let's say an actor does a movie and makes $5 million. Most of that's going to go to state and government taxes. Then there's maintenance: accountants, agents, managers. Don't get drawn into the misconception that actors, because they do these big movies, that the income is perpetual and ongoing at the same rate. And the more you have, the more you spend."

In fact, after Lethal Weapon 4 and Beloved in 1998, Glover wasn't signed to another studio film until he landed Dreamgirls, which came out in 2006. He says this was not by his choice. "There wasn't anybody exactly knocking on my door," he admits. "And it was my agent and manager who really worked hard on Dreamgirls. They wanted me to be in that."

Of course, during that "downtime," Glover knows he was fortunate to be working with some of the most fascinating directors in the business. He made "no money" on Manderlay but was directed by Lars von Trier. Tenenbaums was "an indie," but Glover adored Anderson. "I've been fortunate enough to be positioned to work with extraordinary directors," the actor says. "And I'm at a point where I'm feeling more and more confident and more and more able to articulate what I think my vision should be in my work."

To that end, he recently launched a production company with Joslyn Barnes called Louverture Films. "One of the exciting things to come out of this journey is that now more than ever I'm able to articulate what I want to do, as both an actor and a producer," he says. Though Glover won't star in all the projects, he and Barnes are currently developing several films, including one about the Haitian revolution of 1791-1804 and one centering on the relationship between scholar-performer Paul Robeson and Albert Einstein. "One thing I would want to do is create a space where imaginative minds can come together and support each other — to find the resources we need to do the work and then to bring it to an audience," Glover says. "And I'm really excited about that. I think we have the possibility right now to democratize this system. Sometimes you can get so despondent and dissuaded from trying to do this kind of work, but it's the kind of work I want to be doing. I love that idea. There are so many possibilities. It's the most exciting time in my career."