MORGAN FREEMAN

A free man……

Pauline Kael, the high priestess of movie criticism in America has called Morgan Freeman the best actor in Hollywood. Gwyneth Palltrow, Hollywood’s beautiful and acclaimed new actress, says he’s the sexiest man alive.

But when foreign journalists interviewed Morgan Freeman in New York recently, what they really expected to see was a black American with a bunch of grievances.

That is one role 60-year-old Freeman won’t play. And don’t call him African-American. “African-Americans are immigrants from Sierra Leone, Senegal or Ghana. I am an American. A black American.”

And he’s fed up with the assumption that a black skin in America encases a prescribed set of views about whites, Jews, Hollywood and pride in America.

The occasion for our interview was the release if Amistad, Steven Spielberg’s epic drama about a mutiny among slaves aboard a ship bound for Cuba. Freeman plays an abolitionist in the New England town where the mutineers are eventually put on trial.

Amistad has been nominated for four Academy Awards. Freeman himself has already had three Oscar nominations (best supporting actor for Street Smart in 1987, best actor for Driving Miss Daisy in 1989 and best actor for Shawshank Redemption in 1996). And he’s given so many acclaimed performances that he’s one of the few black actors whose choice of roles transcends the color of his skin.

And so do many of his views.

Freeman, expected to identify with the suffering of the slaves in the film, was asked if it was emotionally wrenching making Amistad. “What I found wrenching,” he smiles, “was shooting in the cold New England winter.”

Pressed on the impact he hoped the scenes of terrible cruelty on the slave ship would have on America, Freeman contradicted the script on white guilt and reparation. “I have high expectation that it will say something positive about the American ethos, the idea of slavery and where have been in our psyche. Because, number one, we didn’t invent it. Feudal Japan, feudal England, even Feudal France were no different.”

A reporter said it was sad the film took so long to be made. “It did take long,” Freeman concurred. “But whose fault is that? I suspect it’s mine. It’s my obligation to tell the story. Who told the story of the Holocaust? I think it was the Jews.”

Another overseas report perceived among blacks a bitterness towards Jews because the Holocaust got so much more attention than slavery. “God,” said Freeman, with irritation, “why not!”

In a last-ditch effort to elicit criticism of his American lot, a European journalist inquired: “Will this film help Americans see what’s wrong with…? Before she could finish, Freeman replied coldly: “We know what’s wrong. This film will help us see what’s right with America.”

Born in Memphis in 1937, Freeman joined the Air Force for five years. The only discrimination he may have experienced, he says, was then – it might have kept him out of the Strategic Air Command.

After the Air Force he went to study acting in Los Angeles. He broke into theatre, won three awards for off-Broadway plays, and finally made his name worldwide in Driving Miss Daisy. Among his disappointments is the 1993 film Bopha! based on South African Mbongeni Ngema’s play on apartheid that Freeman directed. It attracted little attention.

Freeman, who has married twice and has four children, now lives on a farm in Mississippi. He rides horses, sails his yacht and reads history.

His role in the historical film Glory, about the Union Army’s first black regiment during the Civil War, is as important to him as his role in Armistad. “When you come across something that informs people and is emotionally and educationally rewarding, it’s worth everything you’ve lived for, especially if you are 60. You ask ’what will I leave for my progeny? Will there be something they can stand on?’ Since I have a very high profile, my progeny is every kid that I inform.”

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The Star, Johannesburg, 1998