Danny Glover's Family Opens Up About His Battle with Alzheimer's: “You Just Have to Live the Day for What It Is”

Beloved veteran actor Danny Glover is speaking publicly for the first time about his life with Alzheimer's disease.

The Hollywood actor, who turns 80 on July 22, opened up in an exclusive interview with People, often toggling between unfinished thoughts and poetic anecdotes throughout the conversation. His diagnosis came in 2023.

Glover's daughter, Mandisa, 50, said she first began noticing changes in her father's behavior in 2022. “The history of my dad is that he remembers every single thing back to 1970, what corner he was standing on, who he spoke to, what they spoke about, what color they were wearing, everything,” she told People.

“He'd tell you so much about his parents—and I've heard those stories over and over—and there would be pieces of the story missing. I said, ‘I wonder what's going on.’”

That same year, in 2022, Glover received the Academy's Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award for his lifelong dedication to charitable work and activism, a capstone to a career built across more than four decades.

Glover rose to international recognition through acclaimed performances on Broadway and breakout roles in films like 1984's Places in the Heart and 1985's cultural touchstone The Color Purple, in which he played Albert Johnson. He became a household name with his role as Roger Murtaugh opposite Mel Gibson in the 1987 action blockbuster Lethal Weapon, which launched a massive franchise and took his career to new heights.

He contributed to broader opportunities for Black actors. In the decades that followed, he starred in hits like 1994's Angels in the Outfield and gripping, heavy dramas like 1998's Beloved, solidifying his place as an unforgettable cinematic force.

Now, Glover is ready to share what it is like to face the disease. For him, speaking out is rooted in his longtime commitment to others. "Reconciling himself with the diagnosis is in some sense acknowledging that it's happening to you and at the same time that there are millions of people suffering from it," he said.

His support network includes a dedicated team of caregivers and his younger brother, Marty, 67, who lives with him at his San Francisco home. The family leans into the moments when Glover's mind is at its clearest, which tend to come in the mornings.

“I think he’s aware sometimes and then sometimes not,” Mandisa said. “It’s a change in the core of who you think you are or don’t think you are. It’s very hard. You just have to live the day for what it is.”

Despite the progression of the disease, Glover still holds tightly to the memory of his parents. "There's a picture in my living room with my mother and father," he said. "I have it to remind me, looking at it, how much I loved them both."

His parents, James and Carrie, were postal workers who raised Glover as the oldest of five children in San Francisco. As a kid growing up there, he worked a paper route, which sparked a lifelong love for reading. That intellectual curiosity eventually led him to San Francisco State University, where his passion for both acting and activism first took root.

For Marty, watching his brother’s decline has been difficult to process. “You see the deterioration, and you think, ‘Wow,'” he said. “Sometimes you get emotional about it. It's tough because you don't want to see nobody go through this.”

The brothers' bond runs deep. Marty spent years working in film production alongside his brother, but their relationship was forged long before Hollywood.

“He's the greatest guy I ever met in my life. He saved me,” Marty said. “I've been to jails, institutions, used drugs. Growing up, we weren't close until I started getting into trouble. And then he came and got me out and moved me down to Hollywood, and we've been inseparable ever since.”