The actor Morgan Freeman always wanted to work with: “I’m one of his huge fans”
Having achieved legendary status, Morgan Freeman is an actor that younger generations look up to, admire, and dream of collaborating with. He might be one of cinema’s elder statesmen, but he’s still got favourites of his own that he’s always wanted to work with.
During his career, the man with one of the most recognisable voices in entertainment has worked with a raft of icons, whether it’s his recurring collaborations with Clint Eastwood and Gene Hackman, partnering with David Fincher and Brad Pitt, being directed by Steven Spielberg, or sharing the screen with Michael Caine and Robert De Niro.
However, it was a different type of superstar who had been very near the top of Freeman’s wish-list of co-stars, and he couldn’t have been happier when he finally got his chance. In early 2012, it was announced that the Academy Award winner would be packing his bags and heading off to a distant planet for a blockbuster sci-fi epic.
The film was Joseph Kosinski’s Oblivion, and when he was asked by Collider what drew him to the project, Freeman didn’t waste anytime in wearing his fanboy badge proudly on his sleeve when declaring that his involvement was down to one reason and one reason only.
“Tom Cruise,” he answered, refusing to even consider beating around the bush. “I mean, it’s a Tom Cruise movie. So, if I was going to be a truck driver hauling supplies, I would have taken the job. I’m one of his huge fans. I have been for I don’t know how many years, way, way back.”
Freeman admitted that even though he’d play any part that was offered to him as long as it meant he was sharing the screen with the long-time A-lister, he was fully aware that his name carries its own amount of weight. “I know, at this point, I’m not going to be offered a minor role,” he said. “If you compare the script to the movie, they don’t compare, but I was excited by the script. The movie is so much more than what you can read on the page.”
Kosinski developed the screenplay from his own graphic novel of the same name, which served as a proof-of-concept for the movie in a way. Cruise’s Jack Harper lives alone on a ravaged Earth in 2077, blissfully accepting that the planet is uninhabited. Of course, things are rarely how they seem in sci-fi, with Freeman’s Malcolm Beech the figurehead of the surviving human population who upends the protagonist’s worldview by way of his mere existence.
Describing the prospect of working with Cruise as “a big draw,” Freeman suggested “it’s hard to go wrong” with any movie that puts the biggest star in the business front-and-centre in a reliably popular genre. It was certainly a successful movie and a visually dazzling one, but it’s a bit of a shame the first pairing of the two major names came against the backdrop of such an underwhelming story.
