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38 MARCH 2016
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You gotta start somewhere...
Following four years in the Air Force, Freeman trod
the boards off-Broadway before appearing as an
extra in The Pawnbroker (1964). He considers his
role as a New York pimp in Street Smart (1987) as
his breakthrough – and rightly so: he received an
Oscar-nomination for Best Supporting Actor. "It put
a rocket booster in my career," he recalls. "Since
childhood, all I wanted to do was make movies." His
most regonisable early role was as the stern principal
in Lean on Me (1989).
HISTORICAL PHASE
"Glory (1989) does what I think movies are best at, and that is giving
you a lesson in history," he says. He also considers the Civil War drama
as one of the most important films he has made. He's also appeared in
a rare Spielberg flop: Amistad (1997). "People thought it was a picture
about slavery. But it wasn't... It was about American jurisprudence."
He's also played civil rights campaigner Frederick Douglass in two TV
documentary series, as well as Nelson Mandela in Invictus (2009).
ACADEMY AWARD PHASE
Following his 1988 nomination for Street
Smart, Freeman has been up for an Oscar
on four further occasions: a Best Supporting
Actor nod for Invictus, as well as Best Actor
nominations for Driving Miss Daisy(1989)
and The Shawshank Redemption (1994).
He finally claimed the statuette for Best
Supporting Actor in 2005, for convincing Clint
Eastwood to train Hilary Swank in Million
Dollar Baby (2004).
DETECTIVE PHASE
Freeman has pursued serial killers as Alex
Cross, twice, in Kiss the Girls (1997) and
Along Came a Spider (2001). He also
teamed up with Brad Pitt to catch Kevin
Spacey in Se7en (1995).
EXPLANATORY PHASE
"How come when something convoluted
needs explaining, you show up?" asks
Stan of Morgan Freeman in a 2012
episode of South Park ? It's a fair call
– how else would we have learned the
martians' fate in the War of the Worlds
(2005) remake without Freeman's
narrator? Or hoped to understand the
existential plots of Transcendence
(2014) and Lucy (2014)... hang on, we
still don't!
GOD PHASE
With his air of dignity and authority, Freeman always
suspected that one day he would be asked to play
God – the deity that is, not literally – and would
only accept if it was a comedy. It was: Jim Carrey's
Bruce Almighty (2003). He would also offer Steve
Carell some divine assistance in sequel Evan Almighty
(2007). Fittingly, Freeman has just signed on as host of the
National Geographic series The Story of God (2016).
MORGAN
FREEMAN
1987
2004
1989
1994
1995
2014
2016
1997
2009
2003
2012