Morgan Freeman

Morgan Freeman (born June 1, 1937) is an American actor, producer, and narrator. In a career spanning six decades, he has received numerous accolades, including an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award, as well as a nomination for a Grammy Award and a Tony Award. He was honored with the Kennedy Center Honor in 2008, an AFI Life Achievement Award in 2011, the Cecil B. DeMille Award in 2012, and Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award in 2018. In a 2022 readers' poll by Empire, he was voted one of the 50 greatest actors of all time.

Born in Memphis, Tennessee, Freeman was raised in Mississippi, where he began acting in school plays. He studied theater arts in Los Angeles and appeared in stage productions in his early career. He rose to fame in the 1970s for his role in the children's television series The Electric Company. Freeman then appeared in the Shakespearean plays Coriolanus and Julius Caesar, the former of which earned him an Obie Award. In 1978, he was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play for his role as Zeke in the Richard Wesley play The Mighty Gents.

Freeman received the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor playing a former boxer in Clint Eastwood's sports drama Million Dollar Baby (2004). He was Oscar-nominated for Street Smart (1987), Driving Miss Daisy (1989), The Shawshank Redemption (1994), and Invictus (2009). He also acted in Glory (1989), Lean on Me (1989), Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991), Unforgiven (1992), Se7en (1995), Amistad (1997), Deep Impact (1998), Gone Baby Gone (2007), and The Bucket List (2007). He also portrayed Lucius Fox in Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy (2005–2012) and acted in the action films Wanted (2008), Red (2010), Oblivion (2013), the Now You See Me films (2013–2025), and Lucy (2014).

Known for his distinctive voice, he has narrated numerous documentaries including The Long Way Home (1997), March of the Penguins (2005), Through the Wormhole (2010–2017), The Story of God with Morgan Freeman (2016–2019), Our Universe (2022) and Life on Our Planet (2023). He made his directorial debut with the drama Bopha! (1993). He founded the film production company Revelations Entertainment with business partner Lori McCreary in 1996, under which they produced projects such as the CBS political drama Madam Secretary (2014–2019).

Freeman was born on June 1, 1937 in Memphis, Tennessee. He is the son of Mamie Edna (née Revere; 1912–2000), a teacher, and Morgan Porterfield Freeman (July 6, 1915 – April 27, 1961), a barber, who died of cirrhosis in 1961. He has three older siblings. Some of Morgan's great-great-grandparents were slaves who migrated from North Carolina to Mississippi. He later discovered that his white maternal great-great-grandfather had lived with and was buried beside Freeman's black great-great-grandmother in the segregated South, as the two could not legally marry at the time. The DNA test suggested that among all of his African ancestors, a little over one-quarter came from the area that stretches from present-day Senegal to Liberia and three-quarters came from the Congo-Angola region.

As an infant, Freeman was sent to his paternal grandmother in Charleston, Mississippi. He moved frequently during his childhood, living in Greenwood, Mississippi, Gary, Indiana, and finally Chicago. He made his acting debut aged nine, playing the lead role in a school play. He then attended Broad Street High School, a building which serves today as Threadgill Elementary School in Greenwood. At the age of 12, he won a statewide drama competition, and while settling into school, discovered music and theater. When Freeman was 16 years old, he contracted pneumonia.

Freeman graduated high school in 1955, but turned down a partial drama scholarship from Jackson State University, opting instead to enlist in the United States Air Force. He served as an Automatic Tracking Radar repairman, rising to the rank of airman first class. After serving from 1955 to 1959, he moved to Los Angeles and took acting classes at the Pasadena Playhouse. He also studied theater arts at Los Angeles City College, where a teacher encouraged him to embark on a dance career.

Freeman worked as a dancer at the 1964 World's Fair and was a member of the Opera Ring musical theater group in San Francisco. He acted in a touring company version of The Royal Hunt of the Sun, and also appeared as an extra in Sidney Lumet's 1965 drama film The Pawnbroker starring Rod Steiger. Between acting and dancing jobs, Freeman realized that acting was where his heart lay. "After [The Royal Hunt of the Sun], my acting career just took off", he later recalled. Freeman made his Off-Broadway debut in 1967, opposite Viveca Lindfors in The Niggerlovers, a show about the Freedom Riders during the American Civil Rights Movement, before debuting on Broadway in 1968's all-black version of Hello, Dolly! that also starred Pearl Bailey and Cab Calloway. In 1969, Freeman also performed on stage in The Dozens.