Morgan Freeman

Morgan Freeman 1937–

Actor

At a Glance…

Goodbye Air Force, Hello Hollywood

From The Electric Company to Shakespeare

Two Academy Award Nominations

Smooth Sailing in the Real World

Sources

Morgan Freeman is a versatile actor who has performed in numerous roles from children’s television to Shakespearean drama. He is best known, however, for his appearances in a string of well-regarded motion pictures, including Driving Miss Daisy, Lean on Me, and Glory. Praise has been bestowed upon Freeman in the form of several awards and award nominations. Time correspondent Janice C. Simpson noted that his performances “are so finely calibrated that [the] characters emerge as men of true heft and substance.” A private man who says acting “comes easy” for him, Freeman does not care for the movie star label and all that it implies. The actor observed in Ebony that “once you become a movie star, people come to see you. You don’t have to act anymore. And, to me, that’s a danger.”

The big screen has brought Freeman to a wider audience, but he has long been a figure in New York City theater, appearing only in Broadway and off-Broadway plays that suit his very particular tastes. As early as 1967 he held a part in the Broadway cast of Hello, Dolly that starred Pearl Bailey, but the bulk of his work has come in nonmusical, intensely serious dramas that relate various aspects of the African-American experience. “I have a special affinity for seeing to it that our history is told,” Freeman declared in Ebony. “The Black legacy is as noble, is as heroic, is as filled with adventure and conquest and discovery as anybody else’s. It’s just that nobody knows it.”

Freeman endured a tumultuous childhood, and he prefers not to reveal much in interviews about his early years. The fourth child in the family, he was born in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1937. While still an infant, he was sent to live with his maternal grandmother in Charleston, Mississippi. She died when Freeman was six years old, and he spent the next several years traveling with his mother from Chicago to Nashville, Tennessee, and finally to Greenwood, Mississippi, where they settled down.

Like most youngsters of his generation, Freeman loved the movies. “When I was a kid, it cost 12 cents to go to the movies,” he related in a People interview with Susan Toepfer. “If you could find a milk bottle, you could sell it for a nickel. Soda and beer bottles were worth 2 cents. If you were diligent, you could come up with movie money every day.” The World War II-era films Freeman saw inspired him to be a fighter pilot. At first, drama served

At a Glance…

Born June 1, 1937, in Memphis, TN; son of Grafton Curtis and Mayme Edna (Revere) Freeman; married Jeanette Adair Bradshaw, October 22, 1967 (divorced, 1979); married Myrna Colley-Lee (a costume designer), June 16,1984; children: Alphonse, Saifoulaye, Deena, Morgana; seven grandchildren. Education: Attended Los Angeles City College.

Actor, 1959—. Principal stage appearances include The Nigger-Lovers, 1967; Hello, Dolly, 1967; jungle of Cities, 1969; The Recruiting Officer, 1969; Sisyphus and the Blue-Eyed Cyclops, 1975; Cockfight, 1977; The Last Street Play, 1977 (produced as The Mighty Gents, 1978); White Pelicans, 1978; Coriolanus, 1979; Julius Caesar, 1979; Mother Courage and Her Children, 1980; Buck, 1982; The Cospel at Colonus, 1983; Medea and the Doll, 1984; Driving Miss Daisy, 1987; and The Taming of the Shrew, 1990. Principal film appearances include Brubaker, 1980; Eyewitness, 1980; Harry and Son, 1983; Teachers, 1984; Street Smart, 1987; Clean and Sober, 1988; johnny Handsome, 1988; Lean on Me, 1989; Driving Miss Daisy, 1989; Glory, 1989; and Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, 1991. Principal television appearances include The Electric Company, Public Broadcasting Service, c. 1971-75; Hollow Image, 1979; Attica, 1980; The Atlanta Child Murders, 1985; Resting Place, 1986; Flight for Life, 1987; and Clinton and Nadine, 1988. Appeared on television soap opera Another World. Military service: U.S. Air Force, 1955-59.

Selected awards: Clarence Derwent Award, Drama Desk Award, and Antoinette Perry Award nomination, all 1978, all for The Mighty Gents; Obie Award from the Village Voice, 1987, for stage version of Driving Miss Daisy; New York Film Critics Circle Award, Los Angeles Film Critics Award, National Society of Film Critics Award, Golden Globe nomination, and Academy Award nomination, all 1987, all for Street Smart; Golden Globe Award and Academy Award nomination, both 1989, both for film version of Driving Miss Daisy.

Addresses: Agent—Jeff Hunter, Triad Artists, 888 Seventh Ave., Suite 1610, New York, NY 10036.

mainly as a pastime until he could enter the armed services.

Freeman recalled in New York that his acting hobby began in junior high school. “It all started with a girl named Barbara,” he said, “the class princess, as nice as you please. I wanted to get her attention, so one day I pulled a chair out from under her. Sure enough, I got attention. The teacher grabbed me by the nape of the neck, lifted me onto my toes, and marched me down the hall. I thought for sure I was gonna be expelled.

“But he opens this door and flings me into this room, and there’s this English teacher and he asks me, ‘You ever done any actin’?’ Well, under the circumstances, I’m quick to say yes. Turns out there’s these dramatic tournaments—every school does a play—and the winner goes to the state finals. Well, we do this play ’bout a family with a wounded son just home from the war—I play his kid brother. We win the district championship, we win the state championship, and dadgummit, I’m chosen as best actor. All’ cause I pull this chair out from under Barbara.”

Freeman’s tale shows that he exhibited talent early but did not take acting seriously, even when others recognized his skill. After graduating from high school in Greenwood he entered the U.S. Air Force, hoping to become a pilot. Aptitude tests showed that he had the ability, but he was instead assigned duties as a mechanic and a radar technician. “I was aced out,” he explained in Esquire. “Racism, the southern old-boy network. I had a sergeant who interposed himself between me and the casual barracks [stockade]—I was insolent. I called a horse’s ass a horse’s ass, even if it was wearin’ brass. The whole thing in the service, you’re supposed to look down. Never could do that.”

Goodbye Air Force, Hello Hollywood

Freeman spent his spare time while in the Air Force contemplating other careers, and he ultimately decided to become an actor. He left the service in 1959 and headed straight for Hollywood. Once there, he looked up the address of Paramount Studios in the telephone book and went over to apply for a job. Only when he noticed that the questions on the application concerned familiarity with office machinery and typing did it dawn upon him that he would not be hired as an actor on the spot. He opted to follow a more conventional route, taking acting classes at Los Angeles City College while supporting himself as a clerk. He also took tap dancing lessons, becoming good enough to land a part-time job performing at the 1964 World’s Fair.

By his own admission, Freeman did not gain much insight from his acting classes. “I’m not much for talking about acting,” he noted in New York. ” I’ve been called an intuitive actor, and I guess that’s right. I go with what I feel. It doesn’t do me any good to intellectualize about it.” Freeman moved to New York City in the early 1960s and supported himself with a series of day jobs while auditioning for theatrical roles. At one point he even served as a counter man in a Penn Station doughnut stand. His first important part came in an off-Broadway play called The Nigger-Lovers, which opened and closed quickly in 1967.

From The Electric Company to Shakespeare

Freeman’s brief experience in The Nigger-Lovers was valuable, however, because it helped him land a role in the all-black cast of Hello, Dolly that opened on Broadway in 1967. When the show closed, he moved on to a series of off-Broadway and repertory plays in New York City and elsewhere. In 1971 he was cast in a television series produced by the Public Broadcasting Service, The Electric Company. On the air for five years, the educational show was aimed at school-aged children, and Freeman played a hip character called Easy Reader. The actor commented in People that he is still remembered for his role. “It’s like being known as Captain Kangaroo,” he said. “It irks me when I meet people who are parents now who talk about how they grew up with me.”

Freeman drew his first major awards for his role in the play The Mighty Gents, produced at New York City’s Ambassador Theatre in 1978. Even though he won the Clarence Derwent Award, Drama Desk Award, and earned a Tony Award nomination, the play closed in nine days and Freeman was out of work. For a while he found himself scuffling for jobs. This experience taught him that awards do not guarantee future success, and he has been decidedly indifferent about them ever since.

The New York Shakespeare Festival ultimately proved fertile ground for Freeman. There he appeared as the lead in Coriolanus in 1979 and had principal roles in Julius Caesar and Mother Courage and Her Children. His work in Coriolanus and Mother Courage earned him yet more awards, this time Obies. The breakthrough play for Freeman was The Gospel at Colonus, first performed in 1983. The musical, based on the ancient Greek drama about Oedipus—a mythical character who kills his father and marries his mother—is set in a modern Pentecostal church. The Gospel at Colonus featured Freeman as the preacher, a charismatic Oedipus figure around which the frenzied action revolves. Freeman won yet another Obie Award as best actor in a drama, and the play eventually moved to Broadway in 1988 with Freeman still in the lead.

Two Academy Award Nominations

Freeman’s success with the New York Shakespeare Festival helped him to land a starring role in the stage play Driving Miss Daisy, for which he won an additional Obie Award. The drama examines the close friendship that develops between a wealthy Jewish widow and her black chauffeur, Hoke, in the post-Civil War South. By the time he appeared in Driving Miss Daisy on stage, Freeman had also earned several film roles, most notably in the Robert Redford vehicle Brubaker, and in Harry and Son, starring Paul Newman. And because of Driving Miss Daisy’s success in the theater, Freeman was eager to portray Hoke in a film version of the play.

The actor almost missed his chance. In 1987 he took the part of a near-psychotic pimp in the movie Street Smart. Although the film was a box office flop, Freeman’s powerful performance earned him an Academy Award nomination. “Street Smart essentially serves as a backdrop for Freeman’s tour de force performance,” wrote Anthony DeCurtis in Rolling Stone. “As the Yoo-Hoo-swilling Fast Black, he alternates fierceness with irresistible charm, engaging intelligence with a bone-chilling capacity for evil. He is the epitome of knowingness.” The stage director of Driving Miss Daisy admitted that he never would have hired Freeman to play Hoke if he had seen the actor as the menacing Fast Black first.

Freeman’s portrayal in the violent Street Smart, however, did not deter the makers of the critically acclaimed 1989 film version of Driving Miss Daisy from casting him in his original role of the kind-hearted Hoke. Once again Freeman was nominated for an Academy Award for best actor. That same year he took another important role, this time as a grave digger-turned-soldier in the Civil War epic Glory. The film, a poignant drama about an all-black regiment that was chosen to lead an assault on a Southern fort, received much praise and provided Freeman just the sort of work he relishes. “I’ve been offered Black quasi-heroes who get hanged at the end,” he pointed out in Essence. “I won’t do a part like that. If I do a hero, he’s going to live to the end of the movie.” Freeman’s character in Glory —eventually promoted and decorated—is indeed one of the last fighters to perish as his battalion storms the fort.

Smooth Sailing in the Real World

Success has allowed Freeman to indulge himself at length in his favorite hobby—sailing. One of his acquisitions is a 38-foot sailboat that he has piloted through the Caribbean and the North Atlantic. “When you live in the world of make-believe, you need something real,” he remarked in Time. “I go sailing, I’m in the real world.” Freeman is often accompanied on his trips by his second wife, costume designer Myrna Colley-Lee, and one of his seven grandchildren, E’Dena Hines.

Noted for his subtle but scathing critiques of negative representations of African-Americans on stage and in films, Freeman is very careful about choosing roles. After ending the 1980s with a hectic spate of film and stage work, he took a brief breather before accepting work on a new project. Cast as Petruchio in the New York Shakespeare Festival’s production of The Taming of the Shrew in 1990, Freeman garnered lavish reviews, and he subsequently appeared as Azeem, a Moor, in the 1991 film Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. Explaining his philosophy of choosing roles that best suit his talents, the actor related in Ebony, “There’s a lot of stuff out there, a lot of people writing. So when the right thing comes along, I’ll know, and I’ll just tie the boat up, hop on a plane and go to work.”

Sources

Books

Contemporary Theatre, Film, and Television, Volume 6, Gale, 1989.

Periodicals

Ebony, April 1990.

Esquire, June 1988.

Essence, December 1988.

Jet, March 6, 1989.

New York, March 14, 1988.

People, April 4, 1988.

Rolling Stone, May 5, 1988.

Time, January 8, 1990.

Village Voice, July 24, 1990.

—Mark Kram