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Actor Danny Glover Opens Up About Career And Pet Project That Still Makes Him A Lethal Weapon On Stage

LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) Actor Danny Glover sat down recently for a very special conversation with CBS2's Pat Harvey.

The popular and acclaimed actor talked about his career and a LA's Robey Theater.

Glover said the non-profit theater produces plays that help at-risk youth in Los Angeles.

In their conversation, Harvey started at the beginning. She asked Glover about attending San Francisco State University and if he studied performing arts.

"I studied economics," Glover said. with a laugh. "I still study economics, I'm still trying to figure out economics."

Glover -- the son of postal carriers -- didn't actually start acting until he was nearly 30.

"I was 28, 29," he recalls when he got the acting bug.

He was doing the Broadway play "Master Harold and the Boys," when a film director spotted him.

"I was told years later that Robert Benton was in the audience and leaned over to Littleton, his editor, and said, 'I think I found my Moze for 'Places in the Heart,'" Glover said.

His first major role on stage led to an Academy award nomination.

Not only was it a big break, another director saw him in the movie and was looking to cast a strong black actor in a Western with a black here. The movie was "Silverado."

Glover also made memorable turns in "Witness" and "The Color Purple" where he played the brutal Mister.

"Can we stop at 'Color Purple?" Harvey asks playfully. Playing a bad man -- a very bad man -- surely led people to question who the real Glover was.

"My grandmother thought so, too. She saw it and said she was going to get a switch after that boy. You know he was raised better than to act like that," he recalls.

Partly why he got involved with the Robey theater was to do plays that fully express the black experience. He helped establish the theater in 1994. It's named after Paul Robeson.

The theater exposes at-risk young people to theater.

"You look at the possibility of engaging children and everything else. And bringing them to watching live theater. First of all, they are awed by it," he says.

Actor, producer and theater director -- Glover has paved a path for many to follow.

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