Early life

Glover is an only child, born in New York City, and moved to Los Angeles with his family at the age of five. His father is actor Bruce Glover and his mother, Mary Elizabeth Lillian Betty Krachey (née) Bloom Koerber, was an actress and dancer who retired upon his birth.

He was named after the Saint Crispin's Day speech from William Shakespeare's play Henry V, which his parents enjoyed. "Hellion," his real middle name, had earlier been used as a false middle name by his father, who did not like his own real middle name, Herbert.

His father is of English, Czech, and Swedish descent, and his mother is of German and Czech ancestry. As a child, Glover attended The Mirman School from grade one through nine. He then attended both Venice High for grade ten and eleven, and Beverly Hills High School only for grade twelve; he graduated in 1982.

Career

Acting career

Glover began acting professionally at the age of 13. To date, he has acted in over 50 feature films. He appeared in several sitcoms as a teenager, including Happy Days and Family Ties. His first film role was in 1983's My Tutor. That led to roles in Teachers (1984) and Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1984). He then worked with director Trent Harris on the third chapter of the Beaver Trilogy, entitled The Orkly Kid. In this short film, he portrayed a small town man who organizes a local talent show to showcase his obsession with Olivia Newton-John, much to the embarrassment of the local community. At the climax of the film, Glover does his rendition, in full drag, of Newton-John's "Please Don't Keep Me Waiting" from her 1979 album Totally Hot.

His breakout role was as George McFly in Robert Zemeckis's Back to the Future, an international box office success in 1985. Glover and the producers could not agree on suitable terms for him to appear in the sequels, so the role of the character was greatly reduced and recast. In Back to the Future Part II, Zemeckis reused brief footage of Glover which had been filmed for the first movie. Glover was billed as "George McFly in footage from Back to the Future" in the closing credits. The older footage was combined with new footage of actor Jeffrey Weissman wearing a false chin, nose and cheekbones, and various obfuscating methods—in the background, wearing sunglasses, rear shot, upside down—to play the role of George McFly. Because these methods suggested that Glover himself had performed for the film, he sued the producers on the grounds that they had used his likeness without permission, as well as not having paid him for the reuse of the footage from the original movie. Subsequently, there are now clauses in the Screen Actors Guild collective bargaining agreements to the effect that this is no longer permitted.

He has continued to play exceedingly eccentric types, including playing Andy Warhol in Oliver Stone's The Doors in 1991, as well as the title characters in Bartleby (2001) and Willard (2003). He received mainstream attention as the "Thin Man" in the Charlie's Angels films; the character had initially been cast as a speaking role, but Glover, noting that the lines as written were exposition, convinced the producers to eliminate the lines to create a precise image for the character.

Glover was a co-interlocutor with Norm Hill and Werner Herzog for the special feature commentary for the DVD of Werner Herzog's Even Dwarfs Started Small and Fata Morgana.

Glover appeared in the 2007 film Beowulf as the monster Grendel, playing the part through performance capture technology. The film was Glover's first collaboration with director Robert Zemeckis since the original Back to the Future film. He voiced the character 6 in the film 9.

Glover played Ilosovic Stayne, the Knave of Hearts in Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland. He played the one armed Bellman in Hot Tub Time Machine. He played the unwitting employee of Robert DeNiro's character in The Bag Man.

Late Night appearance

Glover appeared on Late Night with David Letterman on July 28, 1987, to promote the movie River's Edge, in which he starred. Unbeknownst to Letterman and the audience, Glover appeared in character as "Rubin," from the then-unreleased movie Rubin and Ed, wearing platform shoes and a wig. Rather than a conventional interview, Glover staged an Andy Kaufman-like prank. After being goaded by a woman in the audience (who some argue had been planted), Glover stated that he "knew that this was gonna happen" and that "the press, they can do things, they can twist things around." After challenging Letterman to an arm-wrestling match, Glover delivered an impromptu karate kick a few feet from Letterman while stating, "I'm strong... I can kick!" Letterman then abruptly ended the segment by walking off stage, saying, "I'm going to check on the Top 10," as the program cut to commercial.

The subsequent confusion and controversy surrounding his appearance was compounded by the fact that Rubin and Ed was not actually released until 1991; however, the movie had been in development since before Back to the Future—Glover had actually already devised Rubin's "look" by 1985. Almost nobody, apparently including Letterman, understood what Glover was doing and the interview became the hallmark of the "weird" TV guest.

Glover returned to the Letterman show three times after that. The first appearance was about a month later. The second was almost three years later, wherein he participated in a more standard interview, but made it questionable whether he had ever been on the show before. Glover used a variety of delay tactics explaining the incident, and referring to it as being "an interesting thing." Glover then appeared the third time two years later, promoting a record album. When again asked about his first appearance, Glover launched into a long story, mentioning having met a fellow resembling himself named Rubin, and needing to appear on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson simultaneous to his appearance with Letterman. Here, Letterman cut him off to talk about the album Glover was promoting, as the time allotted for the interview was more than halfway over. Glover has subsequently refused to go into detail about the reasons for his behavior on the show, other than to mention that he's flattered that fans are still speculating on the performance more than twenty years later. Glover has also mentioned that he prefers there to be an "air of mystery" about the appearance. In an interview in 2011, Back to the Future co-star Michael J. Fox talked about the incident with Letterman, saying "Crispin isn't crazy, just excitable."

Music career

In 1989, during a hiatus from films, Glover released an album called The Big Problem Does Not Equal the Solution, The Solution Equals Let It Be through Restless Records, produced by Barnes & Barnes (of "Fish Heads" fame). The album features original songs like "Clowny Clown Clown," odd versions of Lee Hazlewood's "These Boots Are Made for Walkin'" and Charles Manson's "I'll Never Say Never to Always" (sung in falsetto), and readings from his art books Rat Catching and Oak Mot (see Books section below). Sample pages from these books are featured in the album's liner notes.

The back cover of the album is a collage of figures relating to each track on the album, with an inscription: "All words and lyrics point to THE BIG PROBLEM. The solution lay within the title; LET IT BE. Crispin Hellion Glover wants to know what you think these nine things all have in common." He included a telephone number on the back of the album, encouraging listeners to phone when they had figured out the element that all pieces had in common.

He has said the telephone number was a pre-internet way of letting people know about the books. As for the "Nine things in common" Glover has said "It is really just the theme of the album." Glover later commented that he was surprised how many people realized what it was.

He recorded a version of the Michael Jackson song "Ben" to coincide with the release of the 2003 film Willard; the song had been written for the sequel to the original 1971 version of this film. In the music video for the song, he sings to a rat named Ben.

A number of songs using Glover's name as the title have been recorded by various artists, including shoegaze/gothic rock band Scarling., Chicago outsider musician Wesley Willis and a New Jersey-based band called Children in Adult Jails. In the early 2000s, a Kansas City band named itself Onward Crispin Glover.

Books

Glover has written between 15 and 20 books. Oak-Mot and Rat Catching are featured prominently during his Big Slide Show presentation, and are presented as visual art as much as written art. He constructs the books by reusing old novels and other publications which have fallen into public domain due to their age (for example, Rat Catching was constructed from an 1896 book Studies in the Art of Rat Catching, and Oak-Mot was constructed from an 1868 novel of the same title). He rearranges text, blacks out certain standing passages, and adds his own prose (and sometimes images) into the margins and elsewhere, thus creating an entirely new story. Four of his books have been published so far, through his publishing company, Volcanic Eruptions. Other known titles include The Backward Swing, A New World and Round My House.

Year *	Title
1983	Billow and the Rock **
1988	Rat Catching
1989	Oak-Mot
1990	Concrete Inspection †
1992	What it is, and How it is Done ‡

* The publishing years listed above may not represent first edition publication dates, but may include subsequent available editions.

** Not published.

† Re-issued.

‡ Out of Print.

Directorial work

Glover made his directorial debut with 2005's What Is It?, a surreal film featuring a cast of actors with Down syndrome. It premiered at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival. With a budget of only $150,000, it took almost a decade to complete and was originally intended to be a short film. Most of the primary footage was shot in 12 days, stretched over a two-and-a-half-year period. Production was mostly funded by the actor's roles in Willard and the Charlie's Angels films.

Glover's second film, It Is Fine! Everything Is Fine. was written by Utah writer-actor Steven C. Stewart. Stewart was born with a severe case of cerebral palsy and had been confined to a nursing home for about ten years. The second film is a fantastical psycho-sexual re-telling of life from Stewart's point of view. It premiered at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival.

Glover is currently developing other feature films that are outside of the trilogy and planning a third film, called It Is Mine, which will end the It? Trilogy.

Glover has completed shooting his third feature film as a director. It is a film he has developed for himself and his father Bruce Glover to act in together. This film is not part three of the "IT" trilogy.

Personal life

Glover has residences in Los Angeles and Prague. His Prague residence, Zámek Konárovice, is a 17th-century 20-acre (8.1 ha) chateau that is recognized as historically significant by the Czech government. The property requires constant upkeep and restoration; according to Glover, " is a lifetime project that will be in continuous flux and repair for hundreds of years from now, as it has been the hundreds of years before I 'owned' it."

Filmography

Film

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1983	My Tutor	Jack
1984	Racing with the Moon	Gatsby Boy
	Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter	Jimmy
	Teachers	Danny
1985	The Orkly Kid	Larry	Short
	Back to the Future	George McFly	Nominated - Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actor
1986	At Close Range	Lucas
	River's Edge	Layne
1989	Twister	Howdy
1989	Back to the Future Part II	George McFly	(archive footage)
1990	"Back to the Future Part III"	George McFly	(archive footage)
	Where the Heart Is	Lionel
	Wild at Heart	Dell
1991	Rubin and Ed	Rubin Farr
	Little Noises	Joey
	Ferdydurke	Mientus
	The Doors	Andy Warhol
1993	Even Cowgirls Get the Blues	Howard Barth
	What's Eating Gilbert Grape	Bobby McBurney
1994	Chasers	Howard Finster
1995	Dead Man	Train Fireman
1996	The People vs. Larry Flynt	Arlo
2000	Nurse Betty	Roy Ostery
	Charlie's Angels	Thin Man
2001	Bartleby	Bartleby
	Fast Sofa	Jules Langdon
2002	Crime and Punishment	Rodion Raskolnikov
	Like Mike	Stan Bittleman
2003	Willard	Willard Stiles	3rd - Chainsaw Award for Best Actor Nominated - Saturn Award for Best Actor
	Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle	Thin Man
2004	Incident at Loch Ness	Party Guest
2005	What Is It?	Dueling Demi-God Auteur / The Young Man's Inner Psyche and Id	Director
	Drop Dead Sexy	Eddie
2006	Simon Says	Simon/Stanley
2007	Epic Movie	Willy
	The Wizard of Gore	Montag the Magnificent
	It is Fine. Everything is Fine!		Director
	Beowulf	Grendel	Motion Capture
2008	Open Season 2	Fifi	Voice
	Freezer Burn:The Invasion of Laxdale	Viergacht
2009	The Donner Party	William Foster
	9	6	Voice
2010	Alice in Wonderland	The Knave of Hearts
	Hot Tub Time Machine	Phil
	Mr. Nice	Ernie Combs
	Open Season 3	Fifi	Voice
2012	Freaky Deaky	Woody Ricks
2013	Hiszpanka	Dr. Abuse
2014	The Bag Man	Ned
2014	Aimy in a Cage	Claude Bohringer	Post-production
2016	The Brits Are Coming	Gabriel Anderson	Filming

Television

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1981	Best of Times	Crispin	Pilot
1982	The Facts of Life	Cadet No. 1	Episode: "The Big Fight"
1983	The Kid with the 200 I.Q.		TV Movie
	High School U.S.A.	Archie Feld	TV Movie
	Happy Days	Roach	Episode: "Vocational Education"
	Hill Street Blues	Space Cadet	Episode: "Honk If You're a Goose"
1984-1986	Family Ties	Doug	2 episodes
1993	Hotel Room	Danny	Episode: "Blackout"
2010	Funny or Die Presents	Thomas Edison	Episode: "105"
2015	Texas Rising	Moseley Baker	Miniseries
2017	American Gods	Mr. World	Upcoming series; main cast

[ Source: Wikipedia ]