STAR SELECTION
We have a whole host of Hollywood stars and big names on Movies 24. Now's your chance to find out a bit more about them in our Star Selection.
MORGAN FREEMAN
Morgan Freeman is one of the most popular actors of modern times, commercially as well as critically. But his success was a long time coming. After leaving the US Air-Force and deciding to become an actor Freeman spent the 1960s appearing on stage in various off-Broadway theatre productions. In 1971 he began a long stint in the educational children’s programme The Electric Company.
Freeman finally got his big break in Street Smart opposite Christopher Reeve in 1987. His turn as a murderous pimp completely outshone the films star in the eyes of the critics and he received a Best Supporting Actor Oscar© nomination for his troubles. Freeman was already 50, but finally his career was about to explode.
In 1989 Glory and Driving Miss Daisy were both commercial and critical successes, the later bringing Freeman his second Oscar nomination. A likeable supporting role in the blockbusting Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves added to his popularity with mainstream audiences and another supporting role in Clint Eastwood’s unflinching western, Unforgiven boosted his acting credentials.
In 1994 prison drama The Shawshank Redemption was a failure at the Box Office, but Freeman received a third Oscar nomination and the film has since been cited as one of the best ever made. The sinister and darkly compulsive serial killer film Se7en (1995) was yet another film that managed to bridge the all important gap between critical success and money making.
More recently, in 2004 Freeman finally won the Oscar that had always eluded him for his performance as ex-boxing champ Eddie ‘Scrap-Iron’ Dupris in another Clint Eastwood film, Million Dollar Baby. In 2005 he played Lucius Fox in Christopher Nolan’s superb Batman Begins, a role that he is set to reprise in next summer’s The Dark Knight.
Between his Oscar nominated turn in Street Smart and his acclaimed performance in Glory, Freeman appeared in Fight for Life, a TV movie also starring Jerry Lewis as the father of a young girl who has a severe form of epilepsy and requires illegal drugs to survive. Freeman appears as the girls sympathetic Doctor.
• He has a private pilots licence
• Owns a production company called Revelations Entertainment, which produced Along Came a Spider, starring Freeman.
• Is the co-owner of the Madidi restaurant and the Ground Zero Blues Club, both in Charlestown, Mississippi.
• Father of actor Alfonso Freeman.
• In 2006 Freeman contributed to a cook book called Morgan Freeman and Friends: Caribbean Cooking for a Cause, the proceeds of which went to residents of Grenada who were made homeless by hurricane Ivan in 2004.
• Enjoys sailing, but rarely gets the chance to go out in his boat because of his hectic work schedule.
Movie 24 films that Morgan Freeman stars in
Fight For Life
|
|