My movies have humanised me – Danny Glover

Weekend Magazine: How did you become an actor from being an Economics major?Danny Glover: I was first on stage at 20 in college on invitation of the great poet, Amiri Baraka, who passed away early this year. We started a community communication project which involved drama, dance, poetry and all of music. It was about […]

Weekend Magazine: How did you become an actor from being an Economics major?
Danny Glover: I was first on stage at 20 in college on invitation of the great poet, Amiri Baraka, who passed away early this year. We started a community communication project which involved drama, dance, poetry and all of music. It was about communicating and engaging the community. I didn’t think that would be my course after I finished school, because right after I went to work in public service with the city government, somewhere in between that, I began toiling with the idea of acting and probably discovered the source of my inspiration when I started working with the work of Athol Fugard, the great South African playwright, in 1975. Right in the midst of it, 15 to 20 years before the end of apartheid I was doing South African plays. So, I developed the dialogue, spoke a little bit of Afrikaans and developed all that as an actor, while at the same time talking about what I thought was important in the world. To be able to do that as an artiste, to be able to talk about things that are important in the world and learn the craft of acting and say whose side you are on in the world as well, those are gifts that I was really fortunate to have. Consequently, they brought me into the anti-apartheid movement to end colonisation in southern Africa.
WM: You were friends with Mandela and also acted as him. How did you receive the news on his passing?
Glover: I met Mandela on June 23, 1990 when he first came to the United States. The last time I saw Madiba was in January 2010 and I knew it may be the last time that I would see him. When he died, in a way I was expecting it. I had such a great opportunity to be around him to be of service whenever I could. To sit with him and listen to his jokes; to watch him in his full capacity as president and to be considered as one of his sons, that’s amazing. I remember Mandela… he was only a year older than my father and I was having breakfast with him on my father’s 80th birthday and he would always ask after him, because they had met in 1990, and we would talk about him.
But to be engaged in the movement, whether it was apartheid or something else, to witness the independence of South Africa… I was 10 years old when Ghana got its independence, I remember asking, ‘who are these people?’ Also in music, knowing Hugh Masekela, he came to my campus in 1969; Mariam Makeba, listening to their music and wanting to know who these people are, and what their songs were about. Even King Sunny Ade and Olatunji from 1966. It goes a long way. It doesn’t start in a day. (Laughter)
WM: Ten years after you first came to AMAA, what can you say about the metamorphosis of movies in Africa?
Glover: The change is inevitable. That there is a pattern, there is a branding in Nollywood, it is about whether the stories we tell… the complicated stories, the changes and relationships that exist post-colonialism, now in this stage where we find some of the same issues, some of the same issues and challenges that we found, at the end of colonialism and the first stages of nationhood. There are so many things to talk about but film becomes a medium to do that. And I think that we are challenged by that as artistes and to use it as best as we can a way as a platform to tell stories that not only enhance our constantly evolving humanity but bring us closer to each other in some sense. I think that in some ways these stories stand the test of time. Maybe not challenging at that, but if you don’t have the capacity of changing the course of our relationship with each other, with governance, with civil society… I believed that and I’ve believed it since the first day I became an artiste.
WM: You’ve been in the movie industry for a while from ‘Colour Purple’, ‘Mandela’ era till date. What have the various encounters done to you?
Glover: The movies changed me. My encounter with people around the world and different communities has nurtured me. I don’t care whether it’s in Latin America, Africa or in my own hometown, San Francisco or any other place in the world and in some ways it’s humanised me with what I have been able to do with the United Nations, UNDP, UNICEF over the last 17 years have also brought a new focus on that; to be able to talk to people all over the world. To be able to meet people who are heroes of mine from when I was a student. The likes of former President Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia, Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, the reason I decided I wanted to major in Economics as a young student about 47 years ago was because I read African socialism or Nelson Mandela whose writings I began reading in 1967 and 68; all of these things are what in a sense I have been able to do. Or like my great friend, President Hugo Chavez, and other presidents and heads of states I ever met over the last decade before his death.
On the one hand, those are the opportunities and to be able to talk about these and issues I think are important. I have a film company Louverture Films, we’ve produced different types of films on the African debt crisis, Bamako, one on South Sudan. Being able to do that kind of work has been a bit challenging for me. Who would have thought that when I came here as a 25 year-old ago, all these other things would happen in my life? Sit, think, talk and celebrate people in their victory whether it’s celebrating the end of Portuguese colonialism or the freedom of South Africa, Namibia or Zimbabwe; all these are in my life time and struggles that I was involved in, in the early 70s. To be able to do that and be able to have been a part of that is something I am happy about. Even in my own country. I worked for the city government, I know how governance works and how people can mobilise their own talents and imagination and change their lives in like a moment. And then, how do you maintain and sustain this change. These kinds of things, I have been fortunate to have as a part of my life.
WM: You’ve played different characters. Which of your roles has been the most challenging to express?
Glover: They’ve all had their own challenges, but probably the most of them was ‘Places in the heart,’ because my work in that film was for my mother.  She was my first love and had just passed on unexpectedly in an accident, just before I went to do the film. That was the most challenging. But I had the opportunity to use the platform to celebrate an extraordinary woman. And I am who I am because of my two extraordinary parents, without a doubt.
WM: Why are you supporting the AMAA?
Glover: I came here 10 years ago; I have always had a relationship with Africa. I first came to Africa 42 years ago as an artiste. I have done seven films here either as acting or producing. It started with Mandela in 1986. There is also my relationship with Ousmane Sembène, whom I helped provide funds for his last movie, ‘Moolaadé’; then going back to being a student in the late 60s, going to school with Nigerians at San Francisco State University where I went.
On the one hand of talking about the cultural life and the importance of art, the sense of seeing and envisioning ourselves among other things. I feel fortunate to be a part of that and be able to use my career as an instrument to promote such initiatives.
WM: Do you see yourself retiring from acting at some point?
Glover: Oh no. No way. I’m only 67 and there are people in their 80s still acting. No, I’m not considering it.