Danny Glover Announces He Has Alzheimer’s
On the TODAY show Wednesday morning, Danny Glover announced that he has Alzheimer’s disease. The San Francisco-based actor and activist said he was initially diagnosed with the degenerative brain disease in 2022.
“I can live with it, in a sense,” Glover told NBC’s Lester Holt during an on-air interview. “I’m sure as it advances, things are going to be different.”
Now 79, the award-winning actor has etched an indelible legacy, known for roles in films like The Color Purple, Lethal Weapon and Angels in The Outfield. Local productions he’s appeared in include Sorry to Bother You and The Last Black Man in San Francisco.
He has said his favorite film to work on was Places in the Heart, and dedicated his performance to his mother, who was killed in a car accident on the day he was cast.
An activist before his acting career, Glover has remained involved in civic discourse. Since 2004, he’s been a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador, in addition to sitting on the board of the Black AIDS Institute and serving on the National African American Reparations Commission. In 2010, Glover and 11 others were arrested for protesting what the SEIU alleged were “unfair and illegal treatment of workers” by Sodexo.
The following year, during the nationwide Occupy Wall Street movement, Glover spoke to protesters in Oakland’s Frank Ogawa Plaza. “It’s not only taking back our democracy,” Glover told the audience, “we have to remake it, we have to transform it, we have to build something better than that.”
Glover’s activism led to a career in acting. As a San Francisco State University student, he was involved in the historic 1968–1969 student-led strike at San Francisco State University (then San Francisco State College), which resulted in the establishment of the first College of Ethnic Studies. It was then that a young Glover, as an organizer and protestor, crossed paths with well-known poet Amiri Baraka and was challenged to take his fight to the world of theatre.
During his interview on TODAY, Glover discussed the connection between art and activism. “We have challenges in the world,” he said, “and I think art becomes a way of looking at that.”
Glover is now one of an estimated 7.4 million Americans over the age of 65 living with Alzheimer’s disease. The fifth leading cause of death among senior citizens, the disease disproportionately impacts African Americans. Older Black people are nearly twice as likely to have Alzheimer’s or other dementias as older White Americans, according to the Alzheimer’s Association.