STACK #137 Mar 2016

DVD & BD FEATURE

visit stack.net.au

MORGAN FREEMAN

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).

1987

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).

1994

DVD & BD

1995

1997

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).

2003

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).

2004

2009

2012

2014

2016

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).

MARCH 2016

38

jbhifi.com.au