“Simply put, it’s the most overdue war movie ever made, not only reflecting American history, but putting right its glaring downplaying of the pivotal role of black troops fighting on the Union side in the Civil War.” ![]() Freeman “has a seemingly limitless range, quicksilver modulation, surprise, a dry humor and a watchful intelligence.” “Nowhere on Hollywood’s long list of war movies is there anything like GLORY,” Jay Carr raved in the Boston Globe. “The most formidable actor on the American scene,” cheered LA Times film critic Sheila Benson in her review of LEAN ON ME. The nation’s film critics also responded. Freeman’s return to the role added an Academy Award nomination to his Obie Award for Best Actor in an off-Broadway play. Then came 1989, a year Freeman completed an historic hat trick of three memorable film roles: Joe Clark, the controversial principal of a failing Newark high school in LEAN ON ME Sergeant Major John Rollins, the heart and soul of a regiment of black soldiers in the Civil War drama, GLORY and Hoke Colburn, the patient chauffeur and best friend of his Southern, Jewish employer in DRIVING MISS DAISY. Other plays followed, including an off-Broadway gem by Alfred Uhry called “Driving Miss Daisy,” but by then the film community had taken notice and Freeman found himself in the driver’s seat of his own career. Returning to Broadway, Freeman’s shattering performance as Zeke, a street gang member turned wino in Richard Wesley’s “The Mighty Gents,” earned him a Tony nomination and the New York Drama Desk Award for Best Actor. In the process, Freeman learned to use his voice more effectively, to act and react in front of the camera day in and day out. As Easy Reader, a groovy literary junkie, he taught Generation X its ABCs. In 1971, Freeman began a six-year, 780-episode marathon of sketch comedy, Sesame Workshop’s THE ELECTRIC COMPANY on PBS. When he landed the role of Head Waiter in the long-running hit musical “Hello, Dolly!,” Freeman’s dancing lessons paid off, and he acquired the discipline and stamina of a Broadway gypsy. There were some lean times, but he worked.įreeman quit his day job to appear off-Broadway for $72 a week and flexed his acting chops in classic works by Brecht and Shakespeare. He stretched his talent with five years of dance training - not to be a dancer, but to improve his chances of getting acting work. ![]() This question posed of his first significant film role.ĭuring the 1960s and ’70s, when Hollywood jumped on the box-office bandwagon of “blaxploitation” and flashy pimps seemed to be everywhere on screen, Freeman remained in New York, observing the real-life street scene around him and polishing his craft on stage. “Is Morgan Freeman the greatest American actor?” film critic Pauline Kael asked in the New Yorker. He became a film star in 1987, the year he turned 50, in his break-through, Oscar-nominated role as Fast Black, the lithe and lethal pimp in STREET SMART. This towering and well-deserved achievement stands, as it must, on a broad and solid foundation. “It’s as if he’s had 1,000 years of living experience.” “Morgan’s mind is never a blank,” Joseph Papp, legendary producer of the New York Shakespeare Festival, once said. ![]() They are crime-fighters familiar with back alleys and statesmen at home in the corridors of power. His characters are drawn from history books and comic books. The Trustees of the American Film Institute have selected Morgan Freeman as the recipient of its 39th Life Achievement Award for a body of work encompassing heroes and villains, sidekicks and leading men. Straddling the branch of a tree, he would pretend to ride into the sunset or soar beyond the horizon.Īt school, Freeman gained confidence in his first title role, “Little Boy Blue.” He went on to win a statewide acting competition at age 12, earning a pin, which read “Best Actor.” It stuck. In the beginning, before he was God, the President of the United States or Nelson Mandela, Morgan Freeman was a playful lad with an active imagination, staring out at the cotton fields near his grandparents’ home in Mississippi, and starring in fantasies based on Hollywood films of the 1940s.īorn in Memphis on June 1, 1937, Freeman loved westerns and war movies best, especially those about the Air Force.
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