Through the 1990s, Glover garnered attention for portraying smaller but notable roles, including Cousin Del in Wild at Heart (1990), Andy Warhol in The Doors (1991), Bobby McBurney in What's Eating Gilbert Grape (1993) and the Train Fireman in Dead Man (1995).

The roles in these films include reprising his Thin Man role in Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle (2003), portraying the titular character in Willard (2003), Grendel in Beowulf (2007), The Knave of Hearts in Alice in Wonderland (2010) and Phil in Hot Tub Time Machine (2010).

[3] He is the son of actor Bruce Glover and actress and dancer Marion Elizabeth Lillian "Betty" Krachey,[4] 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.

Glover began acting professionally at the age of 13, his first role being Friedrich von Trapp in a theatre production of The Sound of Music at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion with Florence Henderson.

He appeared in a main role alongside Nicolas Cage in a television pilot titled The Best Of Times (1981) which aired on ABC, but was never picked up by the network.

His breakout role was as George McFly in Robert Zemeckis's Back to the Future (1985), an international box office success.

[12] Due to these initial disagreements and a salary dispute, Glover did not return for either of the Back to the Future sequels and his role was taken over by Jeffrey Weissman.

After the success of Back to the Future, Glover sought to star in films that "questioned" the status quo and contained themes that aligned with his own interests.

Glover appeared in Beowulf (2007), as the creature Grendel, playing the part through performance capture technology.

In 2010, Glover played Ilosovic Stayne/the Knave of Hearts in Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland and the one-armed bellhop Phil in Hot Tub Time Machine.

Glover portrayed his first series regular role on television as Mr. World in American Gods (2017–2021), while continuing to still act in films like We Have Always Lived in the Castle (2018) and Roger Avery's Lucky Day (2019).

He reunited with River's Edge director Tim Hunter on the Bret Easton Ellis-scripted slasher film Smiley Face Killers (2020), as the main antagonist.

In 2022, he appeared in the Netflix horror anthology series Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities in the episode Pickman's Model (based on the H. P. Lovecraft work of the same name), as the title character.

Glover made his directorial debut with 2005's What Is It?, a surreal film featuring a cast of actors with Down syndrome.

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.

The album features original songs such as "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.

In the music video for the song directed by Glover, he sings to a rat named Ben in front of a crowd of aroused women.

His residence Zámek Konárovice, 45 minutes east of Prague by train, is a 17th-century 20-acre (8.1 ha) chateau that is recognized as historically significant by the Czech government.

[28][29][30][31] Glover has refused to go into detail about the reasons for his behavior on the show, other than to mention that he was flattered that fans are still speculating on the performance decades later.

The lawsuit is often evoked in cases for actors involving the misuse of their likeness through digital recreation and other technological methods to replicate their appearance without their permission.