Oscar winner Morgan Freeman turns 85: ‘I’m not retiring’

From BZ/dpa

Morgan Freeman wants nothing to do with retirement. “I’m doing my best to keep going,” the gray-bearded Hollywood star said on British talk show The Screenlately Show in early May.

“I’m not retiring,” the actor affirmed. But at the same time he admitted in the video link that his memory had diminished. He is well on the way to old age, says Freeman with a smile. On Wednesday (June 1), the Oscar winner will be 85 years old.

In the interview, Freeman spoke passionately about his role as a producer of independent films, such as the father-daughter drama Princess of the Row. His colleague Lori McCreary, with whom he has run the production company Revelations Entertainment since the 1990s, was also connected.

Mix up as a mafia boss

Freeman also appears regularly in front of the camera. In the spring he shot the comedy thriller “The Minute You Wake Up Dead” in the US state of Mississippi; in it he plays a small-town sheriff. In 2021 he was cast in the action thriller “Muti”. In it, a detective (Cole Hauser) and an anthropology professor (Freeman) go on the trail of a serial killer. Next up for Freeman in the role of a powerful tech guru is sci-fi thriller 57 Seconds, Variety reported in mid-May.

There is really no trace of old age on the screen. Last year he mixed up the action comedy “Kings Of Hollywood” alongside veteran stars Robert De Niro and Tommy Lee Jones as mafia boss.

Professionally, Freeman was more of a late bloomer. The actor only really took off on the film scene at the age of 50.

His accolades began with the gangster role in Glittering Asphalt (1987). She earned Freeman the first of five Oscar nominations. In the 1989 film “Miss Daisy and Her Chauffeur” he shone as the patient driver of an old Southern lady and also received a Golden Globe for it.

Other Oscar nominations were for The Condemned and for his performance as South Africa’s first black president, Nelson Mandela, in Invictus. He eventually won the Best Supporting Actor trophy in the role of a retired prizefighter in Clint Eastwood’s Million Dollar Baby (2004).

Freeman has impressed in dozens of roles: as a sergeant in Glory (1989), as an old gangster in the Eastwood western Unforgiven (1992), as a prison inmate in The Condemned (1994), as a serene god in Bruce Almighty ( 2003), as Jack Nicholson’s terminally ill buddy in the tragic comedy The Best Comes Last (2007).

In Christopher Nolan’s “Batman” series he mimed the smart manager Lucius Fox, in “The Unbelievable” a wily magician, in the terror drama “London Has Fallen” a cool US Vice President.

Beekeepers on a ranch

The father of four, who is already a great-grandfather, has two marriages behind him. In 2008 he separated from his second wife Myrna after 24 years of marriage. Ten years later, Freeman hit the headlines as part of the #MeToo movement, and he was confronted with allegations from several women.

According to her description, Freeman is said to have made suggestive comments and groped her, for example on film sets, the broadcaster CNN reported in 2018. He was not someone “who would intentionally hurt or knowingly make anyone feel uncomfortable,” the actor wrote in a statement at the time. “I apologize to anyone who felt uncomfortable or disrespected – that was never my intention.”

Freeman lives far from Hollywood, on a ranch in the US state of Mississippi. He grew up in the southern states. The actor has been campaigning for the protection of bees for many years – his own farm has become a habitat for many bee colonies. In mid-May, on International Biodiversity Day, Freeman linked an earlier video on his Twitter account calling for bee conservation.

The screen veteran was recently asked on British talk show The Screenlately Show how he was going to celebrate his 85th birthday. He doesn’t have any plans of his own, said the Hollywood star with a grin. “I’ll go to the party that’s planned for me.”