Morgan Freeman
Multi-award-winning actor Morgan Freeman is one of the most recognizable figures in American cinema. His works are among the most critically and commercially successful films of all time. Freeman ranks within the Top 10 worldwide top-grossing actors of all time, with his films having earned over $5 billion in cumulative ticket sales. Whether a role requires an air of gravitas, a playful smile, twinkle of the eye, or a world-weary, yet insightful soul, Freeman’s ability to delve into the core of a character and infuse it with a quiet dignity has resulted in some of the most memorable cinematic characters committed to film.
In 2005 Freeman won the Best Supporting Actor Academy Award for his role in Million Dollar Baby (2004). Freeman also received an Academy Award nomination in 1987 for Best Supporting Actor for Street Smart, in 1994 for Best Actor for THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION, and in 2010 for Best Actor for Invictus. He also won the Golden Globe for Best Actor for his performance in Driving Miss Daisy in 1990.
Freeman was honored with the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award in 2018, recognizing his career achievement and humanitarian accomplishments. Freeman was also honored with the Cecil B. DeMille Award at the 2011 Golden Globe Awards. That same year, Freeman received the 39th AFI Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2000, Freeman received the coveted Kennedy Center Honor for his distinguished acting and was also honored with the Hollywood Actor Award from the Hollywood Film Festival.
In 2010, Freeman won the National Board of Review Award for Best Actor for his performance as Nelson Mandela in Invictus. In addition to his Academy Award nomination for Best Actor, he also received a Golden Globe nomination and a Broadcast Critics Association nomination. Invictus was produced by Revelations Entertainment, the company Freeman co-founded in 1996 with Lori McCreary. Since its inception, Revelations Entertainment has continued to be a frontrunner in the field of digital technology.
Freeman was recently seen in A Good Person (2023), Paradise Highway (2022), The Minute You Wake Up Dead (2022), Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard (2021), Vanquish (2021), Hate to See You Go (2022), The Ritual Killer (2023), Coming 2 America (2021) and The Comeback Trail (2020). In addition, Freeman stars in Angel has Fallen (2019), The Poison Rose (2019), Disney’s The Nutcracker and the Four Realms (2018), Broad Green Pictures’ Just Getting Started (2017), Warner Bros.’ Going In Style (2017), Paramount Pictures’ Ben-Hur (2016), Summit Entertainment’s Now You See Me 2 (2016), Focus Features’ London Has Fallen (2016), Universal’s Ted 2 (2015), Last Knights (2015), Lucy (2014), Dolphin Tale 2 (2014), Transcendence (2014), The Lego Movie (2014), Last Vegas (2013), Now You See Me (2013), Oblivion (2013), Olympus Has Fallen (2013), and The Dark Knight Rises (2012).
Freeman’s current projects include The History Channel’s Black Patriots: The 761st Battalion, produced by Freeman and McCreary’s Revelations Entertainment, a starring role in Special Ops: Lioness, produced by MTV Entertainment Studios and 101 Studios for Paramount+, and a starring role in 57 Seconds (2023), produced by Ashland Hill Media Finance and Lori McCreary.
Most recently through Revelations Entertainment, he was an executive producer of the timely and powerful true dramas The Killing of Kenneth Chamberlain (2019) and Princess of the Row (2019). Also through Revelations Entertainment, Freeman hosted and produced a nonfiction series for the History Channel entitled Great Escapes with Morgan Freeman about the biggest jailbreaks from the world’s more notorious prisons, which aired starting in November 2021. Freeman was an executive producer with McCreary on the Revelations series Madam Secretary for CBS, starring Téa Leoni, which recently aired its sixth and final season. He hosted and was an executive producer also for the three-time Emmy-nominated Revelations series Through the Wormhole with Morgan Freeman for Science Channel. Also through Revelations, he hosted both the Emmy- nominated event series The Story of God with Morgan Freeman for three seasons and The Story of Us with Morgan Freeman, both, respectively, on the National Geographic Channel.
Revelations’ features include 5 Flights Up, starring Freeman, Invictus, The Code, The Magic of Belle Isle, Levity, Under Suspicion, Mutiny, Bopha!, Along Came a Spider, Feast of Love, 10 Items or Less, Maiden Heist and the Peabody Award-winning ESPN 30 For 30 documentary, The 16th Man.
Freeman narrated the documentary March of the Penguins 2: The Next Step (2017), for which he received an Emmy-nomination for Outstanding Narrator. He also narrated The C Word (2016), the IMAX documentary Island of Lemurs: Madagascar (2014), Science Channel’s Stem Cell Universe with Stephen Hawking (2014) and the documentary We the People. Past narrations include two Academy Award-winning documentaries, The Long Way Home (1997) and March of The Penguins (2005).
Other credits include Dolphin’s Tale (2011), Born to be Wild (2011), The Dark Knight (2008), The Bucket List (2007), Glory (1989), Clean and Sober (1988), Lean on Me (1989), Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991), Unforgiven (1992), SE7EN (1995), Kiss the Girls (1997), Amistad (1997), Deep Impact (1998), Nurse Betty (2000), The Sum of All Fears (2002), Bruce Almighty (2003), Coriolanus (2011), Attica (1980), Brubaker (1980), Eyewitness (1981), Death of a Prophet (1981), and Along Came a Spider (2001).
After beginning his acting career on the off-Broadway stage productions of The Niggerlovers and the all African American production of Hello Dolly, Freeman segued into television. Many people grew up watching him on the long-running Children’s Television Workshop classic The Electric Company, where he played the ironic Easy Reader among several recurring characters. Looking for his next challenge, he set his sights on both Broadway and the silver screen simultaneously and quickly began to fill his resume with memorable performances.
In 1978 Freeman won a Drama Desk Award for his role as Zeke in The Mighty Gents. He also received a Tony Nomination for Best Performance by a Featured Actor.
His stage work continued to earn him accolades and awards, including Obie Awards in 1980, 1984 and 1987 and a second Drama Desk Nomination in 1987 for the role of Hoke Colburn, which he created for the Alfred Uhry play Driving Miss Daisy and reprised in the 1989 movie of the same name.
In his spare time, Freeman loves the freedom of both sea and sky; he is a long-time sailor and has earned a private pilot’s license. He also has a love for the blues and seeks to keep it in the forefront through his Ground Zero club in Clarksville, Mississippi, the birthplace of the blues. In 1973 he co-founded the Frank Silvera Writers’ Workshop, now in its 37th season. The workshop seeks to serve successful playwrights of the new millennium. He is a member of the Board of Directors of Earth Biofuels, a company whose mission is to promote the use of clean-burning fuels. He also supports Artists for a New South Africa and the Campaign for Female Education.
Freeman has been named on the Forbes Most Trustworthy Celebrities list each of the five times it has been published since 2006.