Biography
Glynn Russell Turman, born on January 31, 1947, in New York City, is a revered American stage, television, and film actor as well as a writer, whose career spans decades. He gained early recognition for his role as Leroy "Preach" Jackson in the 1975 film "Cooley High." Turman's talent shone on Broadway, earning a Tony Award for "The Great White Hope." He's renowned for TV work in "The Wire," math professor and retired Army colonel Bradford Taylor on the NBC sitcom "A Different World," fictional ...
Known For
Complete Filmography

STRAW
2025
as Richard
What will be her last straw? A devastatingly bad day pushes a hardworking single mother to the breaking point — and into a shocking act of desperation...

Horizon: An American Saga - Chapter 2
2024
Explore the lure of the Old West and how it was won—and lost—through the blood, sweat and tears of many. Spanning 15 years before, during, and followi...

A Hero's Journey: The Making of Percy Jackson and the Olympians
2024
as Self - Chiron
Alongside a passionate cast and crew, follow Walker Scobell, Leah Sava Jeffries and Aryan Simhadri as they step into worlds fit for gods, battle unfor...

Rustin
2023
as A. Philip Randolph
Activist Bayard Rustin faces racism and homophobia as he helps change the course of Civil Rights history by orchestrating the 1963 March on Washington...

Outlaw Johnny Black
2023
as Bullseye Black
Hell bent on avenging the death of his father, Johnny Black vows to gun down Brett Clayton and becomes a wanted man in the process while posing as a p...

80 for Brady
2023
as Mickey
Four lifelong friends set out on an unforgettable journey to see their hero Tom Brady play in Super Bowl LI and witness one of the greatest comebacks ...

Is That Black Enough for You?!?
2022
as Self
A look at the Black revolution in 1970s cinema, from genre films to social realism, from the making of new superstars to the craft of rising auteurs.

Women of Theatre, New York
2022
Executive Producer
A documentary film about the life, times and experiences of eight theatre artists and a theatre critic in the theatre of New York City.

The Legend of Glynn Turman
2022
as G.T.
Actor Glynn Turman makes his Broadway debut at 12 years old in the original production of “A Raisin in the Sun” opposite Sidney Poitier and becomes a ...

The Legend of Glynn Turman
2022
Writer
Actor Glynn Turman makes his Broadway debut at 12 years old in the original production of “A Raisin in the Sun” opposite Sidney Poitier and becomes a ...

The Devil You Know
2022
as Lloyd Cowans
Once-incarcerated Marcus Cowans is trying to turn over a new leaf with the support of his loving family. Upon discovering that one of his brothers may...

Chadwick Boseman: Portrait of an Artist
2021
as Self
An intimate look at the Oscar-nominated actor’s incomparable artistry, and the acting process which informed his transformative performances. Viola Da...

Ma Rainey's Black Bottom: A Legacy Brought to Screen
2020
as Self - Presenter
Viola Davis, Denzel Washington, George C. Wolfe and more share the heart, soul and history that brought August Wilson's timeless play to the screen.

Ma Rainey's Black Bottom
2020
as Toledo
Tensions rise when the trailblazing Mother of the Blues and her band gather at a Chicago recording studio in 1927. Adapted from August Wilson's play.

The Way Back
2020
as Doc
A former basketball all-star, who has lost his wife and family foundation in a struggle with addiction, attempts to regain his soul and salvation by b...

Sextuplets
2019
as Leland
Father-to-be Alan is shocked to learn that he was born a sextuplet. With his newfound brother Russell riding shotgun, the duo sets out on a hilarious ...

Justine
2019
as Papa Don
A woman dealing with the loss of her husband, the struggle of parenthood and finding work in a new state, finds solace in her relationship with an eig...

Justine
2019
Executive Producer
A woman dealing with the loss of her husband, the struggle of parenthood and finding work in a new state, finds solace in her relationship with an eig...

Windows on the World
2019
as Lou
After watching the news on 9/11 with his family, Fernando travels from Mexico to New York City to find his father, an undocumented worker at the World...

Bumblebee
2018
as General Whalen
On the run in the year 1987, Bumblebee finds refuge in a junkyard in a small Californian beach town. Charlie, on the cusp of turning 18 and trying to ...

Solace
2018
as Clay (Pastor Davis)
Following the death of her father, a 17-year-old girl is sent to live with her estranged family and finds comfort in a questionable friendship with a ...

The Killing Floor
2017
as Self
A documentary on making the movie JD'S REVENGE.

Lorraine Hansberry: Sighted Eyes / Feeling Heart
2017
as Self
On March 11, 1959, Lorraine Hansberry’s 'A Raisin in the Sun' opened on Broadway and changed the face of American theater forever. As the first-ever b...

August 28: A Day in the Life of a People
2017
Documentary film on events that happened on August 28th in African-American history, shown at the Smithsonian African-American History Museum.

Race
2016
as Harry E. Davis
Based on the story of Jesse Owens, the athlete whose quest to become the greatest track and field athlete in history thrusts him onto the world stage ...

Act Like You Love Me
2013
as David Lofton
Kelly Lofton is a young, successful dentist who has all the material things a woman could ask for. However, Kelly has struggled to find time for love ...

John Dies at the End
2013
as Detective Lawrence 'Morgan Freeman' Appleton
A new drug promises out-of-body experiences, but users are coming back changed forever, and an otherworldly invasion of Earth is underway.

The Obama Effect
2012
as Slim Sugar
A serious health scare ignites John Thomas, an insurance salesman in his 50s, to take a closer look at his life. Motivated by a misguided obsession wi...

City Teacher
2012
as Kevin Sawyer
A Jewish parole officer, Jeff Solomon White, struggles in his new role as a reading teacher for illiterate teens at a New York high school. Hard Lesso...
The Pastor's Secret
2012
After paying his debt to society, a convicted man is redeemed, called by God to become the pastor of a disgraced church and lead it back to glory. But...

Super 8
2011
as Dr. Woodward
In 1979 Ohio, several youngsters are making a zombie movie with a Super-8 camera. In the midst of filming, the friends witness a horrifying train dera...

Burlesque
2010
as Harold Saint
Ali leaves behind a troubled life and follows her dreams to Los Angeles, where she lands a job as a cocktail waitress at the Burlesque Lounge, a once-...

Takers
2010
as Chief Detective Duncan
A seasoned team of bank robbers, including Gordon Jennings, John Rahway, A.J., and brothers Jake and Jesse Attica successfully complete their latest h...

Preaching To The Pastor
2009
as Bishop Hightower
Preaching To The Pastor is a musical comedy about the controversy going on at High And Mighty Missionary Baptist Church. The Pastor has a dark secret ...

Murder 101: The Locked Room Mystery
2008
as Sheriff Bob Monroe
Criminology professor Jonathan Maxwell investigates a murder at a new age retreat where the leader is killed in a locked room surrounded by people in ...

Kings of the Evening
2008
as Clarence Brown
Homer Hobbs, home after two years in jail, discovers that life on the outside can be crueler than the back-breaking injustice of the chain gang...

Uncle P
2007
as Dr. Niles
Rapper/multi-millionaire P. Miller becomes the guardian of his sister's three children - all of whom need a father figure in their lives.

Sahara
2005
as Dr. Frank Hopper
Seasoned adventurer and treasure hunter Dirk Pitt, a former Navy SEAL, sets out for the African desert with his wisecracking buddy Al in search of a c...

The Seat Filler
2004
as Derrick's Dad
Derrick is a struggling law student who takes a job as an awards show seat filler to make ends meet. One day, he is seated next to the beautiful pop s...

Air Rage
2001
as Ted Bigelow
A Marine Colonel and his men are sent abroad on hostage rescue mission. When they arrive, they find the hostages dead and decide to get payback by mas...
The Visit
2001
as Parole Board Member Reingold
A young man dying in prison brings his family together for a fateful visit, and proceeds to put his life back together.

Fire & Ice
2001
as Robert Aimes Sr.
While many celebrities believe their fame gives them good luck with the opposite gender, one man with a successful television career discovers fame is...

Men of Honor
2000
as Chief Floyd
Against formidable odds -- and an old-school diving instructor embittered by the U.S. Navy's new, less prejudicial policies -- Carl Brashear sets his ...

Freedom Song
2000
as T-Bone Lanier
Freedom Song is a made-for-TV film based on true stories of the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi in the 1960s. It tells the story of the struggle ...

Light It Up
1999
as Principal Allan Armstrong
On a winter day in a southside Queens high school, events collide and six students are suddenly in an armed standoff with the NYPD. At the school, cla...

How Stella Got Her Groove Back
1998
as Dr. Shakespeare
Through good times and bad, Stella and Delilah have always had each other. Now, Stella's so busy building a life that she's forgotten how to really li...

Buffalo Soldiers
1997
as Sgt. Joshua 'Joyu' Judges Ruth
They've ridden dusty miles without end and fought fierce battles. Yet when these brave African-American cavalrymen enter a scraggly frontier town, the...

Rebound: The Legend of Earl 'The Goat' Manigault
1996
as Coach Powell
A dramatization of the life of Earl 'The Goat' Manigault (Don Cheadle), with a lot of factual based occurrences. A reformed junkie returns from prison...

Subterfuge
1996
as Stallworth Hubbs
Scuba-diver turned beach-bum Jonathan Slade is forced back into his previous milieu - the world of international espionage - in order to retrieve Blac...
Someone Else's Child
1994
as Judge Roullard
Ten years after the birth of her son, Corey Maddox discovers an awful truth: Her son was switched at birth.

The Inkwell
1994
as Spencer Phillips
The Inkwell is about a 16-year-old boy coming of age on Martha's Vineyard in the summer of 1976.

Deep Cover
1992
as Russell Stevens Sr.
Black police officer Russell Stevens applies for a special anti-drug squad which targets the highest boss of cocaine delivery to LA—the Colombian fore...

A Different World
1987
as Colonel Bradford Taylor
A Different World is an American sitcom television series and a spin-off of The Cosby Show. It aired for six seasons on NBC from September 24, 1987, t...

Ask Max
1986
as Lloyd Lyman
A 12-year-old genius, poor Max is a washout socially. To impress his girlfriend, he sells the design of his latest invention-a jumping bike-to a major...

Out of Bounds
1986
as Lieutenant Delgado
Farm boy Daryl Cage's parents ship him off to the big city to live with his brother, hoping he will have a better life there. After a baggage mixup at...

Charlotte Forten's Mission: Experiment in Freedom
1985
as Joshua
At the beginning of the Civil War, Union gunboats sailed into Port Royal Sound, on the Sea Islands off the coast of Georgia. White plantation owners f...
Secrets of a Married Man
1984
as Jesse
A man going through a mid-life crisis, starts patronizing prostitutes. Eventually, he meets a very expensive one and he thinks he has it all. That is ...

Gremlins
1984
as Roy Hanson
After receiving an exotic small animal as a Christmas gift, a young man inadvertently breaks three important rules concerning his new pet, which unlea...

Manimal
1983
as Ty Earl
Jonathan Chase is a British college professor at New York University who has the unusual ability to transform into any kind of animal he wants.

Penitentiary II
1982
as Charles Johnson
An ex-con, on parole and trying to straighten his life out, decides to resume his boxing career when one of his prison enemies escapes and kills his g...

Thornwell
1981
as James Thornwell
The story of James Thornwell, whose accusation that the U.S. Army used mind control drugs on him to force him to confess to stealing secret documents ...

Attica
1980
as Raymond Franklin
Acclaimed dramatization recreating the incidents surrounding the 1971 revolt in New York's Attica State Prison that lasted for 23 days and resulted in...

Katie: Portrait of a Centerfold
1978
as Preston de Cordiva
A naive Texas beauty queen, seeking Hollywood stardom, quickly learns the realities of the business after attending an unethical modeling school.

A Hero Ain't Nothin' But a Sandwich
1977
as Nigeria
A troubled boy becomes addicted to heroin, and his mother and foster father help him fight it.

The Serpent's Egg
1977
as Monroe
Berlin, 1923. Following the suicide of his brother, American circus acrobat Abel Rosenberg attempts to survive while facing unemployment, depression, ...

The Richard Pryor Special?
1977
as Booster Johnson
Richard Pryor wanders around the NBC Studio, encountering various eccentrics. Meanwhile, the Reverend James L. White, the Ugandan dictator Idi Amin Da...

Minstrel Man
1977
as Harry Brown Jr.
Two black brothers in a traveling minstrel show in the early part of the twentieth century have two different goals. One brother is determined to succ...

The Tapestry
1976
A television drama directed by Maya Angelou. In 1975, the accomplished writer became the first African American woman to join the Directors Guild of A...

J.D.'s Revenge
1976
as Isaac / 'Ike'
Although notorious New Orleans gangster J.D. Walker is shot and killed in the 1940s, his spirit remains restless for three decades, until a hypnotist'...

The River Niger
1976
as Jeff Williams
An intimate look at life in the ghetto: Johnny Williams is a house painter who moonlights as a poet, struggling to financially and emotionally support...

Cooley High
1975
as Leroy "Preach" Jackson
In the mid-1960s, a group of high school friends who live on the Near North Side of Chicago enjoy life to the fullest...parties, hanging out, meeting ...

Carter's Army
1975
as Pvt. George Brightman
A racist officer is put in charge of an all-black squad of troops charged with the mission of blowing up an important hydro-dam in Nazi Germany. Their...

The Blue Knight
1975
as Edwin Beall
In this pilot film that preceded the short-lived series, a street cop in his last week on the force before his retirement investigates the murder of h...

Ceremonies in Dark Old Men
1975
as Theo
Russell B. Parker, a former vaudeville hoofer, is a man of big dreams but small ambitions. He hardly works at all in fact, often spending the time inc...

The Nine Lives of Fritz the Cat
1974
Fritz, now married and with a son, is desperate to escape from the domestic hell he now finds himself in. Lighting up a joint, he begins to dream abou...

Together Brothers
1974
as Dr. Johnson
A group of ghetto kids try to find out who killed a popular police officer.

Thomasine & Bushrod
1974
as Jomo J. Anderson
A pair of thieves operate in the American South between 1911 and 1915, stealing from rich, white capitalists, and giving to Mexicans, Native Americans...

Five on the Black Hand Side
1973
as Gideon
Leonard Jackson plays a barber who is also the domineering head of a middle-class African American family. Jackson is forced to rethink his values whe...

AWOL
1972
as Mohammed G.
In Sweden, young US soldier, Willy, goes a.w.o.l and teams up with other deserters in Stockholm. There, he meets leftist radical beauty, Inga, who tri...

Honky
1971
as Sailor at Bus Station
Sheila, an affluent black teenager, begins dating working class white teen Wayne, and asks him for help to sell a kilo of marijuana.

In Search of America
1971
as Bodhi
Michael (Jeff Bridges) drops out of college with the intention of finding himself. When his parents (Carl Betz and Vera Miles) balk, he talks them int...

You Look Familiar: Vernée Watson
N/A
Executive Producer
A look at the life and career of Vernee Watson, who paved the way for Black actresses for four decades.