You are now reading this entry with my voice, in your head. Well, my, my, isn't that something.
Morgan Freeman (born June 1, 1937 in Memphis, Tennessee) is God note . His distinctive and authoritative voice and his calm, measured tones lend dignity and gravitas to everything he says. And yes, we DO mean everything. See the page quote if you don't believe us. The comforting qualities of his voice are only equalled by Stephen Fry (and maybe David Attenborough). Watching them have a conversation in a blues club
is exactly as awesome as it sounds.
The quintessential Magical Negro actor, Freeman is probably best known for his roles as God in Bruce Almighty and Evan Almighty, Lucius Fox in The Dark Knight Trilogy, and was the narrator of March of the Penguins and the The War of the Worlds remake. Other well-known roles include in Driving Miss Daisy, Glory, The Shawshank Redemption, Unforgiven, Se7en, and Million Dollar Baby, for which he won the 2004 Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. Considering he spent years trying to live down his roles of "Easy Reader" and "Vincent the Vegetable Vampire" on The Electric Company (1971), he's not complaining. He also played the President of the United States in Deep Impact and Angel Has Fallen, and South African president Nelson Mandela in Invictus. (Interestingly, South Africa is also the setting of his only directorial effort to date, 1993's Bopha!). Since early 2010, he has performed the voiceover spiel in the open of the CBS Evening News, replacing a 2006 spiel done by Walter Cronkite, who died a few months prior. He is also voice of Visa in the commercials, most notably those done for the 2008 Summer Olympics, the 2010 Winter Olympics, the 2012 Summer Olympics, and the Super Bowl. He's the host of Through the Wormhole on The Science Channel, a show which hopes to tackle some of the greater mysteries of life and existence. If anyone can explain it, it's Morgan Freeman. See this
◊ for a good summation of his career.
He also participated in Ken Burns' documentary The Civil War, voicing Frederick Douglass and several other Black writers of the era. He also lent his golden voice to The LEGO Movie as Vitruvius, which is his first and only non-narrator voice-over role in an animated film to date. He also executive-produces the 2014 CBS Government Procedural series Madam Secretary.
He was the "voice" of Disney's The Hall of Presidents attraction during the Barack Obama years.
Also, see this xkcd comic, as well as this parody of The Man Your Man Could Smell Like. According to Joe Loves Crappy Movies, even the guys want him.
Not to be mistaken for a relative of Gordon Freeman, as awesome and bearded as they both are. (By proxy, John Freeman is also out.) Neither so with Robert Freeman, as much as they fit the description of a Cool Old Guy. Nor with Martin Freeman, although seeing these two actors in same film playing long lost relatives would be awesome (What? It's not like that sort of thing hasn't been done before). Nor with Crispin Freeman. Nor with Milton Friedman, although having Morgan Freeman read some of his works would make them a lot easier to get through.
Filmography
Film
- Brubaker (1980) as Walter
- Teachers (1984) as Lewis
- Marie (1985) as Charles Traughber
- Street Smart (1987) as Leo Smalls/Fast Black
- Glory (1989) as John Rawlins
- Driving Miss Daisy (1989) as Hoke Colburn
- Lean on Me (1989) as Joe Louis Clark
- Johnny Handsome (1989) as Lt. Drones
- Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991) as Azeem Edin Bashir Al Bakir
- Unforgiven (1992) as Ned Logan
- The Shawshank Redemption (1994) as Ellis Boyd "Red" Redding
- Outbreak (1995) as General Billy Ford
- Se7en (1995) as Detective Lieutenant William Somerset
- Chain Reaction (1996) as Paul Shannon
- Amistad (1997) as Theodore Joadson
- Alex Cross as Alex Cross
- Kiss the Girls (1997)
- Along Came a Spider (2001)
- Deep Impact (1998) as President Beck
- Hard Rain (1998) as Jim
- Nurse Betty (2000) as Charlie
- Under Suspicion (2000) as Victor
- The Sum of All Fears (2002) as DCI William Cabot
- High Crimes (2002) as Charlie Grimes
- Bruce Almighty (2003) as God
- Evan Almighty (2007)
- Dreamcatcher (2003) as Colonel Abraham Curtis
- Million Dollar Baby (2004) as Eddie "Scrap Iron" Dupris
- War of the Worlds (2005) as Narrator
- The Dark Knight Trilogy as Lucius Fox
- Batman Begins (2005)
- The Dark Knight (2008)
- The Dark Knight Rises (2012)
- March of the Penguins (2005) as Narrator
- An Unfinished Life (2005) as Mitch Bradley
- Unleashed (2005) as Sam
- Edison (2005) as Ashford
- Lucky Number Slevin (2006) as The Boss
- Gone Baby Gone (2007) as Jack Doyle
- The Bucket List (2007) as Carter Chambers
- Feast of Love (2007) as Harry Stevenson
- Wanted (2008) as Sloan
- The Love Guru (2008) as Narrator
- Invictus (2009) as Nelson Mandela
- Red (2010) as Joe Matheson
- Dolphin Tale (2012) as Dr. McCarthy
- Dolphin Tale 2 (2014)
- Olympus Has Fallen (2013) as Allan Trumbull
- London Has Fallen (2016)
- Angel Has Fallen (2019)
- Oblivion (2013) as Beech
- Now You See Me (2013) as Thaddeus Bradley
- Now You See Me 2 (2016)
- Last Vegas (2013) as Archie
- The LEGO Movie (2014) as Vitruvius
- Transcendence (2014) as Joseph Tagger
- Lucy (2014) as Professor Norman
- Last Knights (2015) as Bartok
- Ted 2 (2015) as Patrick Meighan
- Ben-Hur (2016) as Sheikh Ilderim
- Going in Style (2017) as Willie
- The Nutcracker and the Four Realms (2018) as Drosselmeyer
- Coming 2 America (2021) as Himself
- The Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard (2021) as Michael Bryce Sr.
Tropes
- Creator Backlash: Don't ask Morgan Freeman about playing Easy Reader on The Electric Company (1971). He doesn't want to talk about it.
- Playing Against Type: Zig-Zagged. Watching him play the murderous pimp Fast Black in Street Smart may shock viewers today, but Freeman played the role while he was still rising to stardom and hadn't yet established a common character type. Despite it being so at odds with Freeman's current public image, Street Smart isn't an Old Shame, Freeman is very proud of it and considers Fast Black to be one of his best performances.
- Playing with Character Type: In what has actually become a sort of type casting itself, Morgan Freeman, who is known for playing "wise old man" characters, sometimes plays "wise old man characters... who turn out to be evil", with Wanted being a good example of this.
- Star-Derailing Role: Yes, he actually did have a couple of these. Moll Flanders and Chain Reaction bombed at the box office (somewhat averted with the latter, thanks to overseas gross) and were poorly received, resulting in Freeman's star power falling for about seven years after that.
- Star-Making Role: Hoke Coburn in Driving Miss Daisy is widely considered to be Freeman's, but Freeman himself considers it to be playing Fast Black in the 1987 film Street Smart, which earned his first Academy Award nomination.
- Typecasting: Freeman currently provides the image for the Typecasting index page. He's often (though not always) a wise old black man, usually some sort of authority figure; and he's famous for his smoothly deep voice, which is considered awesome enough that he's often played a narrator role (especially in documentaries). Though at least he's not known only for being Easy Reader.
