The career-altering advice that changed everything for Morgan Freeman: “Nobody’s going to tell your story”
Making movies has never been more challenging, and a recurring mantra in the industry suggests that if you truly want to bring a story to life, you must be prepared to sacrifice blood, sweat, and perhaps even your firstborn child to get it off the ground.
Actors like Nicole Kidman and Reese Witherspoon are championing female-driven narratives that are often overlooked, while production companies like A24 are committed to amplifying the voices of underrepresented communities, striving to diversify the landscape of cinema. Yet, despite these efforts, meaningful progress demands constant vigilance and dedication—something Morgan Freeman learned from one of his co-stars and later adopted as the guiding philosophy for his own production company.
Freeman does not seem like an actor who struggles to find projects, with decades of performances under his belt in iconic films like Se7en, The Shawshank Redemption and The Dark Knight series. However, Freeman has struggled with the limited and stereotypical roles he was offered as a Black actor, with his Academy Award-nominated performances seeing him playing a pimp, driver and convict.
This naturally began to frustrate the actor, and while he was on set for the 1995 film Outbreak, he was venting about this problem to Dustin Hoffman, who gave him some advice that helped him forge a new path in his career.
Outbreak is an apocalyptic story about a deadly virus that begins sweeping its way through America and a group of scientists who are tasked with preventing it from spreading further. However, perhaps the most fruitful takeaway from this collaboration was the conversation that Freeman had with Hoffman, in which the Kramer Vs Kramer actor advised him to start his own production company. When describing this conversation, Freeman said, “The point was to address that loss, that lack, realising that, ‘OK, so I’m dissatisfied, but nobody’s going to tell your story. If you want your story told, you have to tell it yourself.”
This is a philosophy that many people in the industry have to adopt, especially if you are part of an underrepresented community. Freeman had grown up watching movies in which he rarely saw people that reflected himself, with Hollywood pumping money into Westerns and cowboy dramas that hardly ever included Black actors, and roles available were very limited.
However, Freeman wanted to address this disparity himself, so he partnered up with Lori McCreary to create their own production company, Revelations Entertainment. The duo wanted to create a company that was not only representative of more people but also showcased challenging and sometimes hidden truths, which is how they landed on the name ‘Revelations’.
Freeman’s work as a producer is perhaps less widely known, but his commitment to this ethos has led to many new and thought-provoking stories that go against the status quo in the film industry and help spark change and conversation. Interactions and friendships in Hollywood can be serendipitous and unpredictable, but it seems as though the collaboration between Freeman and Hoffman was crafted by fate itself, leading to a new path for the actor.
