MORGAN FREEMAN (Lucius Fox) became known nationally when he created the popular character Easy Reader on the highly praised public television children’s show The Electric Company, although he was already known in New York’s theater circles for the critical body of work and characters he had created there. Freeman won the Drama Desk Award, the Clarence Derwent Award and received a Tony Award Nomination for his outstanding performance in The Mighty Gents in 1978, and received more acclaim and an Obie Award for his appearance as the Shakespearean anti-hero Coriolanus at the New York Shakespeare Festival. Freeman was most recently seen in the acclaimed drama Million Dollar Baby, for which he won the Oscar for Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role.
In 1984, Freeman won an additional Obie for his role as The Messenger in the acclaimed Brooklyn Academy of Music production of Lee Breuer’s Gospel at Colonus. In 1985, he was awarded the Dramalogue Award for the same role. The role of Hoke Colburn in Alfred Uhry’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play Driving Miss Daisy won him his third Obie Award. His most recent stage appearance was as Petruchio in The Taming of the Shrew at the New York Shakespeare Festival’s Delacorte Theater, with Tracey Ullman.
Freeman’s numerous television credits include, notably, NBC’s The Atlanta Child Murders, with Cicely Tyson, and CBS’s The Execution of Raymond Graham. Film credits include: Brubaker, Eyewitness, Harry & Sons, Teachers, Marie, That Was Then, This Is Now, Street Smart (for which he won the LA, N.Y., and National Society of Film Critics Awards for Best Supporting Actor of 1987, and was nominated for both a Golden Globe award and an Academy Award), Clean & Sober, Johnny Handsome, Glory, Driving Miss Daisy (for which Freeman won his second Academy Award nomination, a Golden Globe Award and The Silver Bear for Best Actor at the Berlin Film Festival) and Chain Reaction. The Shawshank Redemption, a story of hope based on a Steven King novel, won Freeman his third Academy Award nomination.
Freeman was then seen in the thriller Kiss the Girls, produced by David Brown. He also starred in the Steven Spielberg production Amistad, as abolitionist Theodore Jackson; the adventure film Hard Rain, opposite Christian Slater; and as the President of the United States in the box office success Deep Impact. Following was Nurse Betty with Chris Rock and Renée Zellweger, which was released to critical acclaim in 2000, and Along Came a Spider, in which Freeman reprised his Kiss the Girls character, Alex Cross. This film was a box office smash in the spring of 2001. High Crimes, with Ashley Judd, was released in April of 2002, and the Tom Clancy thriller The Sum of All Fears, with Ben Affleck, was released in June 2002. Up next was Levity, directed by and co-starring Billy Bob Thornton, and another Steven King premise, Dreamcatcher, followed by Bruce Almighty, with Jim Carrey.
In 1993, Freeman made his film directorial debut with Bopha!, starring Danny Glover and Alfre Woodard, and soon after formed his production company, Revelations Entertainment.
Freeman recently wrapped production on several upcoming films including Unleashed with Jet Li, An Unfinished Life with Jennifer Lopez and Robert Redford, and Edison with Justin Timberlake, LL Cool J and Kevin Spacey.
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