Morgan Freeman

Morgan Freeman was born June 1, 1937, in Memphis, Tennessee, to a barber and a teacher, and spent much of his childhood shuttled between Mississippi and Chicago as his parents' marriage came apart. He won a citywide drama competition at twelve, then turned down a partial drama scholarship at seventeen to enlist in the Air Force instead, training as a radar technician for four years before deciding, after watching a jet nearly crash on a runway, that flying was not for him either. He moved to Los Angeles, studied at the Pasadena Playhouse, and spent most of the 1960s dancing at the 1964 World's Fair and taking bit parts, unable to break into anything larger until The Electric Company cast him in 1971, when he was already thirty-four.

Freeman spent his forties still mostly unrecognized before a supporting role as a violent street hustler in Street Smart in 1987 earned his first Oscar nomination at fifty, the notice that had eluded him for two decades. Driving Miss Daisy and Glory followed in 1989, then a run that made him one of the era's most cast character actors: the wise inmate Red in The Shawshank Redemption, the detective hunting a serial killer in Se7en, God in Bruce Almighty, and Lucius Fox across Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy. He won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in 2005 for Million Dollar Baby, playing a boxer turned cutman, thirty-four years after The Electric Company. His distinctive voice went on to narrate more films and documentaries than almost any actor of his generation.

In August 2008, Freeman's car rolled multiple times near Ruleville, Mississippi, shattering his left arm, shoulder and elbow and leaving him with lasting nerve damage and fibromyalgia that changed how he moved for the rest of his career. In 2018, a CNN investigation reported that eight women who had worked with Freeman accused him of inappropriate comments and unwanted touching over the years; Freeman apologized for any behavior that had made people uncomfortable while disputing that he had ever intended harm, and the Screen Actors Guild took no formal action against him. He was diagnosed with stage-one colon cancer in 2010 and recovered after surgery. Two marriages, to Jeanette Bradshaw and then Myrna Colley-Lee, both ended in divorce.

Freeman remains active past his mid-eighties, appearing in a Paramount+ series and a 2025 theatrical release, and he earned a private pilot's license at sixty-five, flying his own planes between homes in Mississippi and New York. How the 2018 allegations sit alongside six decades of work he is still adding to remains genuinely unresolved: they ended few of his ongoing collaborations and no institution formally sanctioned him, yet they surface in nearly every profile written since. What is not in dispute is the shape of the second half of his career, built from a slow start that took until he was fifty to pay off.

Morgan Freeman's life against the full span of the corpus — the fading end marks a life still in progress.

• The Electric Company television
  Breakout role after nearly a decade of bit parts 1971
• Street Smart film
  First Oscar nomination, at fifty 1987
• Driving Miss Daisy film
  Best Picture winner 1989
• The Shawshank Redemption film
  As Red; now among the highest-rated films on record 1994
• Million Dollar Baby film
  Academy Award, Best Supporting Actor 2004
• Invictus film
  Played Nelson Mandela in an Oscar-nominated performance 2009

• June 1, 1937 aged 0 Born in Memphis, Tennessee
• 1955 aged ~18 Enlists in the U.S. Air Force instead of accepting a drama scholarship
• 1959 aged ~22 Leaves the Air Force and moves to Los Angeles to study acting
• 1971 aged ~34 Cast in The Electric Company at 34
• 1987 aged ~50 Earns his first Oscar nomination for Street Smart at 50
• 1994 aged ~57 Stars as Red in The Shawshank Redemption
• 2005 aged ~68 Wins the Academy Award for Million Dollar Baby
• August 3, 2008 aged 71 Survives a near-fatal car accident near Ruleville, Mississippi
• May 24, 2018 aged 80 A CNN investigation reports harassment allegations from eight women

• Clint Eastwood b. 1930
  Actor and director whose Westerns and gritty dramas, from Dirty Harry to Unforgiven, defined American masculinity. frequent collaborator
• Sidney Poitier 1927–2022
  First Black actor to win the Academy Award for Best Actor, breaking barriers in Hollywood. followed the path of
• Steven Spielberg b. 1946
  Director and producer whose blockbusters and dramas have defined American cinema for five decades. directed by
• Jack Nicholson b. 1937
  Three-time Oscar winner and one of the most celebrated actors in Hollywood history. co-star