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Crispin Glover

Crispin Glover has built a screen career around characters who rarely seem fully at ease with the world around them. Born in New York City on April 20, 1964, he moved to Los Angeles with his family at five and began acting professionally at 13. After teenage television appearances and early film roles, he broke through as George McFly in Robert Zemeckis’s Back to the Future. Glover’s nervous rhythms and precise physical choices helped make George more than a conventional awkward father figure, establishing the distinctly off-center presence that would shape much of his work. Rather than simply repeat that success, Glover pursued films and filmmakers that questioned the status quo. He played Layne in River’s Edge, worked with David Lynch on Wild at Heart and Hotel Room, and became the first actor to portray Andy Warhol in a widely released film with Oliver Stone’s The Doors. In Charlie’s Angels, he turned the Thin Man into a silent, sharply defined figure after persuading the producers to remove the character’s expository dialogue. Willard later gave him his first protagonist role in a studio-funded film. His choices have continued to move between mainstream productions and stranger territory. He performed Grendel through performance capture in Beowulf, speaking his dialogue in Old English, and reunited there with Zemeckis for the first time since Back to the Future. Other roles include the Knave of Hearts in Alice in Wonderland, Phil in Hot Tub Time Machine and Mr. World in American Gods, his first series-regular television part. Acting is only one part of Glover’s work. He has also written, directed, produced, edited, published books and recorded music. His feature directorial debut, What Is It?, premiered at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival, followed by It Is Fine! Everything Is Fine. in 2007. These films, funded in part through his acting work, reflect a career shaped less by a single lane than by a persistent interest in making work on his own terms.