Danny Glover’s Daughter Reveals the First Sign She Noticed of His Alzheimer’s: ‘Pieces Were Missing’

Mandisa Glover has been walking a deeply personal path as she helps care for her father. At 50, she is Danny Glover’s only child from his first marriage to Asake Bomani, and she has seen the 79-year-old actor and activist move in and out of awareness while living with Alzheimer’s disease. She puts it plainly. He seems present one moment and then not quite there the next.

The first clear signs that something had shifted came around 2022. That was the year her father received the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award from the Oscars for his decades of activism and charitable work. Mandisa had always known him as someone who remembered everything.

He could recall the exact corner he stood on back in 1970, who he spoke with, what they talked about, even the colors people wore. But when he began telling stories about his own parents, stories she had heard countless times, pieces started to disappear. She found herself wondering what was happening.

Danny has spoken openly in this interview about still coming to terms with the diagnosis in his own mind. He describes holding onto moments that prove he can still remember, alongside others that feel permanent. One memory that stays especially vivid involves his mother. She was killed in a car accident on the same day he learned he had won a career-defining role in the 1984 film Places in the Heart.

He often returns to how she had once dreamed of becoming an actress herself and how proud she felt after watching him perform in a theater production. She told him the people said he could act. Their exchanges were passionate, almost like girlfriend and boyfriend, but always filled with love. These days Mandisa steps into that role, arguing with him the way her grandmother once did. She says it is all love.

His younger brother Marty, 67, lives with him in the longtime family townhouse in San Francisco and helps with daily care. Marty has spoken about the unbreakable bond the two share. Years ago Danny stepped in during Marty’s own struggles with jail, institutions, and drugs, pulling him out and bringing him to Hollywood. They have been inseparable ever since. Now Marty watches the changes up close and admits it can be emotional. Still, the focus for everyone remains the same. They simply want Danny to live his best life, the same way he once made life better for them.

Mandisa keeps a quiet perspective on it all. It is either this, or he is not here. She is grateful.