Morgan Freeman

• 1. Introduction

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  In January 2010, Morgan Freeman became the voice that opened the CBS Evening News, replacing Walter Cronkite in that spot. The network said it wanted consistency across the introductions to its regular news broadcasts and special reports. Freeman is an American actor, producer, and narrator, and his career has run for six decades. A 2022 readers' poll by Empire voted him one of the 50 greatest actors of all time. Yet that voice did not arrive fully formed. Where did it come from? How did it carry a performer from small stages to the biggest screens? And what did he build with the authority it gave him?

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• 2. Mississippi Roots

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  Morgan Freeman was born on the 1st of June 1937 in Memphis, Tennessee. His mother, Mamie Edna, was a teacher. His father, Morgan Porterfield Freeman, was a barber who died of cirrhosis in 1961. Freeman has three older siblings.

  Some of Freeman's great-great-grandparents were enslaved people who migrated from North Carolina to Mississippi. He later discovered that his white maternal great-great-grandfather had lived with his Black great-great-grandmother and was buried beside her. In the segregated South, the two could not legally marry. A DNA test suggested that a little over one-quarter of his African ancestry traced to the stretch from present-day Senegal to Liberia. The other three-quarters traced to the Congo-Angola region.

  As an infant, Freeman was sent to his paternal grandmother in Charleston, Mississippi. Childhood after that meant frequent moves, first to Greenwood, Mississippi, then to Gary, Indiana, and finally to Chicago. He made his acting debut at the age of nine, in the lead role of a school play. At 12 he won a statewide drama competition, and he found music and theater while settling into school. He attended Broad Street High School in Greenwood, a building that now serves as Threadgill Elementary School. When he was 16, he contracted pneumonia.

  Freeman graduated from high school in 1955 and turned down a partial drama scholarship from Jackson State University. He chose to enlist in the United States Air Force instead. There he worked as an Automatic Tracking Radar repairman and rose to the rank of airman first class. His service ran from 1955 to 1959. After leaving, he moved to Los Angeles and took acting classes at the Pasadena Playhouse. He also studied theater arts at Los Angeles City College, where a teacher encouraged him to pursue a dance career. That suggestion would shape his first working years in the 1960s.

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• 3. Stage Years

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  At the 1964 World's Fair, Freeman worked as a dancer. He was also a member of the Opera Ring, a musical theater group in San Francisco. Next he acted in a touring company version of The Royal Hunt of the Sun. In 1965 he appeared as an extra in Sidney Lumet's drama The Pawnbroker, starring Rod Steiger. Between dancing jobs and acting jobs, he realized that acting was where his heart lay. He later recalled: "After The Royal Hunt of the Sun, my acting career just took off".

  In 1967, Freeman made his Off-Broadway debut opposite Viveca Lindfors, in a show about the Freedom Riders of the American Civil Rights Movement. A year later, in 1968, he debuted on Broadway in an all-black version of Hello, Dolly! that starred Pearl Bailey and Cab Calloway. In 1969 he also performed on stage in The Dozens.

  Beginning in 1971, Freeman starred in The Electric Company, a children's television show on PBS. The series gave him financial stability and recognition among American audiences. It also wore him out, and he quit in 1975. Television producer Joan Ganz Cooney said Freeman loathed appearing in it, adding that "it was a very unhappy period in his life". Freeman himself later said he does not think about the show, though he was grateful to have been part of it.

  The year 1971 also brought Freeman's first credited appearance in a feature film, the family drama Who Says I Can't Ride a Rainbow!, starring Jack Klugman. That same year he performed in a theater production of Purlie.

  After a short career break, Freeman returned to work in 1978 with two stage productions, The Mighty Gents and White Pelicans. In Richard Wesley's The Mighty Gents he played Zeke, which earned him a Tony Award nomination for Best Featured Actor in a Play. His work in that production also won a Drama Desk Award and a Clarence Derwent Award. He then took on the Shakespearean tragedies Coriolanus and Julius Caesar, and the title role in Coriolanus won him an Obie Award. Two more Obies followed, one for a preacher in the musical The Gospel at Colonus and one for Hoke Colburn in the play Driving Miss Daisy.

  In the summer of 1990, Freeman played Petruchio in Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew, which opened at the Delacorte Theater in New York City. He had been thinking about the part for six years. "Petruchio seems to have a lot of fun in life", he said.

  In 2008, Freeman returned to Broadway after an eighteen-year absence. He co-starred with Frances McDormand and Peter Gallagher in Clifford Odets's play The Country Girl, directed by Mike Nichols. Three years later he played attorney David Boies in 8, Dustin Lance Black's staged reenactment of Perry v. Brown, the federal trial that overturned California's Proposition 8 ban on same-sex marriage. John Lithgow was also featured. The production ran at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre to raise money for the American Foundation for Equal Rights.

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• 4. Defining Performances

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  In 1980, Freeman had a small part as Walter in Brubaker, a prison drama in which Robert Redford played a warden. The same year he appeared in the television film Attica, about the 1971 Attica Prison riot and its aftermath. A year later he had a lead role in Peter Yates's Eyewitness, alongside William Hurt and Sigourney Weaver. From 1982 to 1984 he played the architect Roy Bingham on the soap opera Another World. In 1985 he portrayed Charles Traughber in Marie, adapted from Peter Maas's book Marie: A True Story. By the mid-1980s he was accepting prominent supporting roles in feature films, and a reputation followed for playing wise, fatherly characters.

  Street Smart, released in 1987, cast Freeman against that reputation as a violent street hustler. Christopher Reeve and Kathy Baker co-starred. Roger Ebert wrote that Freeman had the flashier role, as a man who could be charming or intimidating as needed. He added that "Freeman creates such an unforgettable villain." The performance earned Freeman an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor at the 60th Academy Awards. He later said he considered Street Smart his breakthrough role.

  Freeman had four film releases in 1989. In Glory, directed by Edward Zwick, he played Sergeant Major John Rawlins. The film followed the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment, the Union Army's second African-American regiment in the American Civil War. Desson Thomson of The Washington Post praised Freeman and co-star Denzel Washington for their "warming sense of fraternity". Glory won three of its five Academy Award nominations, including Best Supporting Actor for Washington. In a 1990 interview, Freeman named it among his favorites: "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."

  Driving Miss Daisy, also from 1989, is based on Alfred Uhry's play. Freeman plays Hoke Colburn, chauffeur to a Jewish widow portrayed by Jessica Tandy, with Dan Aykroyd in the cast. The film grossed US$145 million worldwide. It earned nine Academy Award nominations and won four, including Best Picture. Freeman was nominated for Best Actor and won the Golden Globe for Best Actor. His other 1989 releases were Lean on Me, in which he plays the principal of a troubled New Jersey high school, and Johnny Handsome, in which he plays a New Orleans police officer.

  In 1992, Freeman appeared in Clint Eastwood's western Unforgiven as Ned Logan. Logan is the old friend of William Munny, an aging outlaw and killer played by Eastwood, who takes on one more job. The film won four Academy Awards, including Best Picture.

  Producer Liz Glotzer suggested Freeman for the role of Red in The Shawshank Redemption, even though the character in Stephen King's 1982 novella Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption is a white Irishman. Frank Darabont directed, with Tim Robbins as co-star. Filming proved challenging mainly because Darabont wanted so many takes. Freeman said: "The answer I'd give him was no... having to do something again and again for no discernible reason tends to be a bit debilitating to the energy." The New York Times called his performance "quietly impressive" and "moving". At the 67th Academy Awards Freeman was nominated for Best Actor, but Tom Hanks won for Forrest Gump. The film has stayed popular with audiences since its release. In 1994 Freeman also sat on the jury at the 44th Berlin International Film Festival.

  In 1995, Freeman starred with Brad Pitt in David Fincher's Seven. They play two detectives trying to identify a serial killer whose murders are based on the Christian seven deadly sins. Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly wrote that Freeman "plays nearly every scene in a doleful hush; he makes you lean in to hear his words". The critic from Variety called the acting "supremely nuanced".

  Freeman won his first Academy Award for Million Dollar Baby, released in 2004, in which he played an elderly former boxer. Clint Eastwood directed. The film won four Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress for Hilary Swank, and Best Supporting Actor for Freeman. He was also nominated for a Golden Globe. Roger Ebert complimented his "flat and factual" narration.

  Invictus, released in 2009, grew from a project Freeman had wanted for some time, a film about Nelson Mandela. He first hoped to adapt Mandela's autobiography Long Walk to Freedom into a screenplay, but those plans were never finalized. Instead he bought the film rights to John Carlin's book Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game That Made a Nation. Eastwood directed, with Freeman as Mandela and Matt Damon as rugby team captain Francois Pienaar. Ebert wrote that Freeman showed Mandela as "genial, confident, calming, over what was clearly a core of tempered steel." Freeman earned Best Actor nominations at the Academy Awards and the Golden Globes, plus a nomination at the Screen Actors Guild Awards.

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• 5. Hits And Misses

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  In 2003, Freeman played God opposite Jim Carrey and Jennifer Aniston in the hit comedy Bruce Almighty. He reprised the role in 2007's Evan Almighty, with Steve Carell. That sequel was a box-office failure and was negatively received. A critic at The Guardian said the cast "flounder in this deluge of sentimentality and CGI" and urged readers to "Avoid like the Ten Plagues."

  Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins, released in 2005, gave Freeman another recurring part, the fictional Lucius Fox. He played Fox again in The Dark Knight in 2008 and for a third time in The Dark Knight Rises in 2012.

  In Deep Impact, released in 1998, Freeman played President Tim Beck as humanity tries to destroy a comet seven miles wide that is headed for Earth. The film was a box-office hit despite competing with the summer blockbuster Armageddon.

  Outbreak, released in 1995, grossed $189.8 million worldwide, though critics were mixed. Freeman played General Billy Ford, a doctor dealing with a fictional virus in a small town. The Sum of All Fears grossed $193.9 million worldwide in 2002. The Bucket List, in which he starred opposite Jack Nicholson in 2007, grossed $175 million. Now You See Me 2 earned $334.9 million worldwide in 2016, and Angel Has Fallen earned $147.5 million in 2019.

  Producer Virginie Silla wanted Freeman for Lucy, released in 2014, because of his experience portraying characters of wisdom. "He was the perfect actor", she said.

  The Bonfire of the Vanities, released in 1990, holds a 16% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 51 reviews. Dreamcatcher, from 2003, was a box-office flop with a 28% rating on the same site. Edison, in 2005, bombed at the box office. The Contract, in 2006, was released direct-to-video. The Magic of Belle Isle, in 2012, gained only a 29% approval rating. Just Getting Started, in 2017, was critically panned.

  Ben-Hur, released in 2016, was the fifth film adaptation of Lew Wallace's 1880 novel. Freeman wanted to play Sheik Ilderim, a wealthy Nubian. "This character has quite a bit of power in the story. And I like playing power. It's something about my own personal ego", he said. The film turned out to be one of 2016's biggest box-office bombs.

  London Has Fallen, the 2016 sequel to Olympus Has Fallen, was a commercial success. Ignatiy Vishnevetsky of The A.V. Club still found fault with its writing. He observed that "it's possible to write something that will sound like garbage even when spoken in Freeman's sonorous voice."

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• 6. The Voice

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  Freeman has said his voice took its shape in college speech classes. He noticed that most people speak either too fast or too high. To build a commanding voice, he dropped to a lower octave and enunciated every word. Journalist Radhika Sanghani wrote that his "deeply reassuring voice, with its mellifluous tones and authoritative presence, is why an entire generation still hear his trademark tones when they think of the almighty".

  In 1990, Freeman provided the voice of Frederick Douglass in The Civil War, a television miniseries. He also narrated The True Story of Glory Continues, a documentary about the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment. In 1997 he narrated The Long Way Home, an Academy Award-winning documentary about Jewish refugees' liberation after World War II and the establishment of Israel. In 2005 he narrated Steven Spielberg's War of the Worlds and March of the Penguins, which also won an Academy Award. That year he also voiced Neil Armstrong in the documentary Magnificent Desolation: Walking on the Moon 3D.

  In 2009, Freeman provided the narration for Anne and Emmett, a play by Janet Langhart. It staged an imaginary conversation between Emmett Till and Anne Frank, who were both killed as young teenagers because of racial persecution. In 2018 he narrated Alpha, a historical drama set in the last ice age.

  Deborah Myers, head of the Science Channel, approached Freeman to present Through the Wormhole, which ran from 2010 to 2017. She had heard that he was "really interested in space and the universe", and the two agreed to develop the series together. Later narration credits include Our Universe in 2022 and Life on Our Planet in 2023.

  Freeman hosted National Geographic's The Story of God with Morgan Freeman in 2016 and The Story of Us with Morgan Freeman in 2017. Asked whether he believed in God, he answered: "It's a hard question because as I said at the start, I think we invented God. So if I believe in God, and I do, it's because I think I'm God." Working on The Story of God did not change his views on religion. He sees Zoroastrianism as a belief system that is "intrinsically me", and he said "Good thoughts, good words, good deeds" sums it up.

  Author Miriam DeCosta-Willis describes Freeman as an intuitive actor who selects roles carefully and studies each character. Beverly Todd, who co-starred with him in Lean on Me and The Bucket List, called him "a very sharing actor and such a nice guy". Freeman himself values careful listening on set: "The big danger in acting is to wait for your line. That's what I never do. I always listen, no matter how many times we do it."

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• 7. Beyond The Screen

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  Bopha!, released in 1993, was Freeman's debut as a director. The drama tells the story of a Black policeman, played by Danny Glover, during South Africa's apartheid era. Hal Hinson of The Washington Post wrote that Freeman "lays out the father-son dynamics with great skill and very little fuss." Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times also complimented the direction but thought the film "more predictable than powerful".

  While filming Outbreak, Freeman expressed interest in starting a production company. He turned to Lori McCreary, the producer of Bopha!, as his business partner. Freeman wanted representation on screen, challenging issues and hidden truths, so they named the firm Revelations Entertainment. It was founded in the 1990s.

  Under Suspicion, a 2000 thriller and a remake of the 1981 French film Garde à vue, had been "carting round" for twelve years before Freeman could produce it through Revelations. He co-starred with Gene Hackman, and said: "Working with Gene was wonderful. I didn't find it too hard working with an icon I so respected."

  The CBS political drama Madam Secretary ran from 2014 to 2019. Freeman played Chief Justice Frawley of the United States Supreme Court in a recurring role, and he and McCreary were executive producers. Freeman directed the first episode. McCreary said of his style: "What's riveting is that he can achieve a complete tonal change in performance with the least amount of direction."

  In 2006, Freeman co-founded ClickStar, a film download company backed by investment from Intel Corporation. Two weeks after the low-budget comedy 10 Items or Less reached theaters, it was made available for download from ClickStar. The company ceased operations in 2008. In Clarksdale, Mississippi, Freeman owns and operates Ground Zero, a blues club. He is also the former co-owner of Madidi, a fine dining restaurant in the same city.

  Freeman lives in Charleston, Mississippi, and keeps a home in New York City. He earned a private pilot's license at the age of 65. He owns, or has owned, at least three private aircraft: a Cessna Citation 501, a Cessna 414 and an Emivest SJ30.

  In 2004, Freeman helped form the Grenada Relief Fund to aid people affected by Hurricane Ivan on the island of Grenada. The fund has since become PLANIT NOW, which offers preparedness resources to people living where hurricanes and severe storms strike. In 2014 he narrated a clip called What's Possible, which debuted at the United Nations climate summit. That July, after learning about the decline of honeybees, he turned his 124-acre ranch into a bee sanctuary, beginning with 26 beehives. He also supports Oceana and ocean conservation. He has donated to the Mississippi Horse Park in Starkville, where he keeps several horses.

  In 2005, Freeman criticized the celebration of Black History Month, saying: "I don't want a black history month. Black history is American history." He argued that the only way to end racism is to stop talking about it. In an interview with Mike Wallace of 60 Minutes, he said: "I am going to stop calling you a white man and I'm going to ask you to stop calling me a black man." He supported the defeated proposal to change the Mississippi state flag, which then incorporated the Confederate battle flag. On CNN's Piers Morgan Tonight, he drew controversy by accusing the Tea Party movement of racism. In 2015 he said he was "absolutely" supportive of the Baltimore protesters.

  During the 2008 presidential election, Freeman endorsed Barack Obama's bid, though he said he would not join the campaign. He narrated Disney World's The Hall of Presidents when Obama was added, and when it reopened on the 4th of July 2009. At the 2016 Democratic National Convention he provided the voiceover for the video introducing Hillary Clinton. On the 19th of September 2017, he appeared in a video by the Committee to Investigate Russia and declared "we United States are at war". In 2011 he endorsed his friend Bill Luckett, who ran unsuccessfully for Governor of Mississippi.

  In June 2021, Freeman and Linda Keena, a professor at the University of Mississippi, donated $1 million to the university. Their gift established the Center for Evidence-Based Policing and Reform.

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• 8. Hardship And Honor

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  Freeman was married to Jeanette Adair Bradshaw from the 22nd of October 1967 until the 18th of November 1979. He married Myrna Colley-Lee on the 16th of June 1984. The couple separated in December 2007 and divorced on the 15th of September 2010. Freeman has four children: Alfonso, Deena, Morgana, and Saifoulaye. He and Colley-Lee also raised E'dena Hines, his step-granddaughter from his first marriage. On the 16th of August 2015, Hines was murdered in New York City at the age of 33.

  On the evening of the 3rd of August 2008, Freeman's 1997 Nissan Maxima rolled over near Ruleville, Mississippi. He and his passenger, Demaris Meyer, had to be cut free from the vehicle with hydraulic tools. Freeman stayed conscious and joked with a photographer at the scene. A helicopter took him to The Regional Medical Center in Memphis. His left shoulder, arm, and elbow were broken, and doctors operated for four hours on the 5th of August to repair nerve damage. Alcohol was not considered a factor. Meyer nevertheless sued for negligence, claiming he had been drinking, and the suit was settled for an undisclosed amount. Freeman developed fibromyalgia afterward and had to switch dominant hands because his left was paralyzed. In 2010 he was diagnosed with stage 1 colon cancer and underwent successful surgery to remove the tumor.

  On the 24th of May 2018, CNN published an investigation in which eight women accused Freeman of what some called harassment and others called inappropriate behavior. Freeman responded: "I apologize to anyone who felt uncomfortable or disrespected, that was never my intent." One of the women named, Tyra Martin, spoke out against her portrayal, saying: "CNN totally misrepresented the video and took my remarks out of context." Freeman's lawyer demanded that CNN retract the story. After a period of deliberation, the Screen Actors Guild decided not to take any action against him.

  On the 28th of October 2006, the first Mississippi's Best Awards in Jackson gave Freeman a Lifetime Achievement Award. In May 2006 Delta State University gave him an honorary Doctor of Arts and Letters degree, and Boston University awarded an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters in 2013. On the 12th of November 2014, the City of London bestowed on him the Freedom of the City. He was a Kennedy Center Honoree in 2008. The AFI Life Achievement Award followed in 2011, with tributes from Sidney Poitier, Samuel L. Jackson, Forest Whitaker, Rita Moreno, Helen Mirren, Clint Eastwood, Cuba Gooding Jr., and Matthew Broderick. In 2012 he received the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award. In August 2017 he was named the 54th recipient of the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award, and his Electric Company co-star Rita Moreno presented it the following January. A YouGov poll conducted over the first quarter of 2026 found that 80.9% of adults have a positive opinion of him, making him the fourth most liked celebrity.

  Now You See Me: Now You Don't, released in November 2025, marked Freeman's first theatrical release in several years. Asked about retirement, he said the idea sometimes floats past him, but a job offer brings the old routine back. "The appetite is still there. I will concede that it's dimmed a little. But not enough to make a serious difference."

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