HOLLYWOOD — Danny Glover is a complicated man. Which is strange when you consider the solid, uncomplicated image of him. Tall, magisterial even, with that wide and lovely smile, the man we know from a hundred (OK, four) "Lethal Weapon" movies, from "Places in the Heart," "The Color Purple" and "Angels in the Outfield," from, a bit more recently, "Dreamgirls," "The Shaggy Dog" and "Saw."

"Saw." Let it sit for a minute. Impossible. What was Danny Glover doing in the grisly, low-budget horror flick "Saw"?

"The producers were, at the time, my managers," he says, referring to Evolution, whose principal partners produced "Saw." "I did it as a favor to them. And let's face it, no one was exactly banging down my door. I am glad I got killed off, though. Saved me from the sequels."

This is one reason the career is complicated — it might seem like Glover is working all the time, but he hasn't been. Music agent Marty Madison in "Dreamgirls" was the first big part in a big film he's had in a while; it was the good folks at ICM, he says, who actively pursued it. "I was not the first person on their list," he says, with a laugh. "But they were like, 'If Danny Glover wants to be in this movie, great. We're glad to have him.' Which was nice."

Now comes "Shooter," an action-thriller that opens next Friday and stars Mark Wahlberg as Bob Lee Swagger, an ex-Army marksman fighting for justice and his life. Glover had not been the first one on that list either — director Antoine Fuqua originally considered Gene Hackman for the Medal of Honor-winning colonel who coaxes Swagger back into action. But then producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura uttered Glover's name and the deal was sealed.

At 60, Glover is entering a territory where the roles are richer, though not as plentiful, where the competition can be stiff — Morgan Freeman, Hackman, Laurence Fishburne, even Alec Baldwin.

These days, Glover says, he makes more money lecturing — about education, civil rights, poverty — than in filmmaking.

When he turned 50, things sort of dried up career-wise, he says, and he still isn't quite sure why. It could have been his age — at 50, you're too old to play the husband, too young to play the grandfather — or simply too many "Lethal Weapons."

Like many actors, he tries to leverage his star power to finance or support films that wouldn't otherwise get made. For example, he's more interested in talking about "Bamako," a tiny feature film he produced last year about the African debt, which opened at New York's Film Forum.

"It got great reviews," he says. "It did incredible business in Paris and opened in London. And Christian Aid has started a petition to renounce British contributions to the IMF and the World Bank. So the film meant something."