Danny Glover publicly revealed his Alzheimer’s disease diagnosis on the *Today Show* with Lester Holt on July 1st, 2026, a decision pushed forward by his daughter Mandisa, who said it was time for him to take ownership of his life’s story. The announcement reframed years of studio delays surrounding *Lethal Weapon 5*, shifting the conversation from Hollywood complications to something far more personal and urgent. Glover, born in San Francisco on July 22nd, 1946, to postal worker parents, built a career on the values of community and service instilled in him early. He came to acting through an unlikely door, recruited by poet and activist Amiri Baraka while at San Francisco State University, before committing to the American Conservatory Theater and spending years building a serious theater career.
His first major Hollywood visibility came in 1985 with the Western ensemble *Silverado*, where many reviews noted he essentially stole the picture. That same year, Steven Spielberg directed *The Color Purple*, and Glover delivered a psychologically precise performance as Mister, the cruel husband of Whoopi Goldberg’s Celie. Despite critical acclaim, he received no major award nominations for the role. The year before, *Places in the Heart* had given him something more personal.
Glover played a Black drifter in a 1930s Texas farming story starring Sally Field, a film he has consistently named across decades as his most precious work, a tribute to his ancestors as the great-grandson of slaves. On the day he was cast, his mother was killed in a car accident, and he went to set and worked anyway, channeling his grief into the performance. In 1987, two defining projects arrived: he played Nelson Mandela in a television film and Roger Murtaugh in *Lethal Weapon*. The contrast showed the full range of his abilities, embodying one of the 20th century’s most towering moral figures and a tired, middle-aged cop with a bad back who just wanted to reach retirement.
The *Lethal Weapon* franchise, spanning four films between 1987 and 1998, succeeded almost entirely on the relationship between two characters with no obvious reason to be friends. Murtaugh, stable and family-oriented, and Martin Riggs, reckless and grieving, became family on screen. The most famous scene in the franchise, the toilet bomb sequence from the first film, was largely built through improvisation when director Richard Donner gave the actors a setup and told them to come back in twenty minutes. The family dinner scenes were similarly discovered rather than scripted in detail.
Glover has described how he and Gibson would sit and talk before filming, letting the rhythms feel real. Gibson, already a major star, consistently deferred to Glover in moments that made the films better. At a tribute event for Donner after his death in 2021, Gibson said, “Being around Danny makes you want to be the better version of yourself. ”
Glover has returned the sentiment, describing the partnership’s generosity as crucial to his own development.
He used the word “generous” deliberately, referring to a co-star willing to set up another actor’s moment rather than his own. Gibson, speaking of their early work, said, “I knew good when I saw it and I knew when I was secure and I felt secure with this man. ”
Richard Donner, who died on July 5th, 2021, had been working on *Lethal Weapon 5* before his death, leaving notes, partial scenes, and the story he wanted to tell as a final chapter. Gibson described it as a promise: “Donner tasked me with carrying the flag home on that one.
” He worked on the script and has repeatedly stated the result may be the best in the entire franchise. In May 2025, Gibson told *Screen Rant*, “I think it’s the best of all of them. It’s a lot of fun and got really emotional. ” But the film did not move forward.
Gibson was confident it would shoot in 2023, then 2024, then described unspecified studio problems. The reasons remained unclear, behind a curtain of contractual complications and unnamed obstacles. The window for making the film is now closing for reasons that have nothing to do with Warner Brothers. Glover is 79 years old, and the script written to reunite two old men now sits unfinished while the real man it was written for faces a challenge harder than any villain Murtaugh ever confronted.
In 2022, the Academy awarded Glover the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, an honorary Oscar for his humanitarian contributions. He accepted it onstage and gave a speech that barely mentioned film, talking about young people and the work still to be done. Nobody in that room knew he had already been diagnosed. He accepted a lifetime honor while carrying a private burden and did not make the occasion about his own suffering.
More than 7 million Americans over 65 are living with Alzheimer’s, and Black men develop it at twice the national average rate. Glover told *People* magazine that his mind is clearest in the mornings, and he works to keep himself engaged. He told Holt, “I don’t feel like it’s the end of my life. There’s work to do.
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Gibson has not made a formal public statement since the announcement, but the record of 38 years and four films speaks for itself. They reunited at fan expos in Orlando in February 2025 and Philadelphia in May 2025, sitting side by side, ribbing each other about age and weight, promising audiences there would be one more chapter. In retrospect, the quiet that settled around Glover in those appearances was already visible. Glover has said the diagnosis does not mean his life is over, telling a reporter who came to his home, “Your life continues.
” He looked around his kitchen at the people who were still there. Whether *Lethal Weapon 5* ever gets made now, nobody can say with certainty. What can be said is that the story Gibson has been trying to make is essentially the story already happening in the real lives of the two men who started it all in 1987: two old friends, still in the same room, still making each other laugh, still choosing to be on each other’s side.
