Morgan Freeman has one of the most distinctive voices in the world. That, combined with the elegant actor’s ease at inhabiting roles of authority, has made him the go-to guy for a certain type of performance.
“More often than not, I’m typecast,” Mr. Freeman admits by telephone from Memphis, Tenn. “After awhile, they give you a script, and you look for the part with the gravitas, and that’s you - the teacher, the wise man.”
If you must be typecast - and so many iconic actors are - the dignified, intelligent figure isn’t such a terrible role to play.
“I’m in the company of Henry Fonda and Spencer Tracy and that lot. It’s not bad,” Mr. Freeman says, chuckling.
The 71-year-old actor is about to join some more good company. He predicts that receiving his Kennedy Center Honor this weekend will be one of “these moments of quiet ecstasy.”
“It’s a pretty august crowd,” he says, noting that he’s been an attendee twice, when fellow thespians Sean Connery and Clint Eastwood were honorees.
It’s been a long journey from the South, where Mr. Freeman was born and raised, to Hollywood, where he briefly attended community college, then to New York, where he first triumphed on the stage, and finally back to Hollywood, where he eventually became one of the world’s most respected actors.
He knew from an early age that he wanted to act. “I decided in my early teens what I wanted to do,” he says. “But I was a long ways away from it, in a little town in Mississippi.”
Mr. Freeman was born in Memphis but raised mostly in Mississippi. He made his acting debut at the tender age of 8, playing the lead role in a school play. After he graduated high school, though, he turned down a partial scholarship in drama to work as a mechanic in the Air Force in 1955.
“To get away. Go. Start moving,” he explains, adding that he was tempted by the “romance of war” after watching scenes from World War II and Korea.
He soon found out what military life was really like, he says, and was “disabused of the notion of being a fighter pilot.” He spent three years, eight months and 10 days in the Air Force. He did eventually get a pilot’s license - when he was 65.
Mr. Freeman made his Broadway debut in 1968’s all-black version of “Hello, Dolly!” alongside Pearl Bailey and Cab Calloway. He might have made his name in a musical, but don’t expect him to be singing and dancing on-screen anytime soon.
While at Los Angeles Community College, he took dance movement, and his instructors told him he had a talent for it that could garner him more jobs. “So I dove in head first,” he recalls, landing roles in two musicals. “Although I learned you spend your life in ballet classes, and then when you get to Broadway, it’s very simple movements.”
He gave up on musicals after the 1960s. “I tried singing a lot, but I never did make it,” he says. “I have the most control of myself as an actor.”
He moved to television, appearing in “The Electric Company” from 1971 to ’77. He played characters such as Easy Reader and Count Dracula on the Children’s Television Workshop program.
Did he ever imagine he’d jump from the humble beginnings of a children’s show to the Oscars?
“Now you’re asking dangerous questions,” he says with a hearty laugh. “That’s the dream. To join that pantheon. To be thought of in those high terms. That’s what you grow up hoping to become. That’s your work ethic.”
He had no problem making the transition. He was nominated for a best-actor Tony in 1978 for “The Mighty Gents.” Then he received his first Oscar nomination - for playing something he’s hardly played since, a hoodlum - earning a best-supporting-actor nod for 1987’s “Street Smart.” Just two years later, he got a nod for “Driving Miss Daisy.” He followed it up five years later with one for “The Shawshank Redemption.” By that time, he had perfected the role of the scene-stealing mentor, which finally won him an Oscar for 2004’s “Million Dollar Baby.”
The film was directed by Mr. Eastwood, with whom Mr. Freeman also worked on “Unforgiven.” He calls that film perhaps the biggest highlight of his career: “I always wanted to do a Western. The first person who called me to do a Western was Mr. Western himself, Clint Eastwood.”
Like one of his sagacious characters, Mr. Freeman takes his acclaim in stride. He doesn’t think his Oscar win has affected what scripts he’s offered - or much else. “It fades into the background, and you start looking for the next one,” he says. “Can you remember who won the Oscar last year?”
Mr. Freeman didn’t even seem to realize how big his latest film, “The Dark Knight,” is. “Was it the number one movie of the year?” he asks in response to a question about the second film in Christopher Nolan’s Batman franchise.
In August, Mr. Freeman was injured in an automobile accident in which his car flipped over several times. He broke his shoulder, arm and elbow. He says that’s “way in the past” now except that nerve damage in his left arm has left his left hand paralyzed. It’s expected to recover fully, though. It hasn’t delayed his next project, “The Human Factor,” in which he’ll play legendary South African president Nelson Mandela under the direction of his old collaborator Mr. Eastwood.
American politics are on most minds during this interview, just days after Barack Obama became the first black to be elected president. Mr. Freeman once told an interviewer: “I don’t want a black history month. Black history is American history.”
He doesn’t hide his jubilation on Mr. Obama’s win. Asked how he felt, he responds, “How did most Americans feel when he won?” He recalls first-lady-in-waiting Michelle Obama’s reaction: “What a country we live in.”
He supported Mr. Obama but didn’t campaign for him. “Politics is not something I get public with,” Mr. Freeman says. “I find most of the times when I supported somebody, they lost.”
It seems hard to believe that the voice of God (“Bruce Almighty” and “Evan Almighty”) isn’t authoritative enough for some people. Mr. Freeman - in a long career that’s still going strong - certainly is, though.
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