The filmmaker Morgan Freeman compared to John Huston: “He will keep directing literally until he drops dead”
In a career spanning six decades (and counting), Morgan Freeman has worked with some of the greatest directors of all time. He kicked things off in style in 1965 when he appeared as an extra on Sidney Lumet’s The Pawnbroker and went on to work with the likes of Brian De Palma, Steven Spielberg, David Fincher, and Christopher Nolan. He has nearly 150 credits to his name, representing a body of work so diverse that it is difficult to sum up. In the latter half of his career, however, he has found a niche playing the voice of reassurance, whether he’s embodying the president, a wise comic book mentor, or God himself.
Suffice it to say that Freeman is an authority in the industry, past and present, and has a great appreciation for colleagues who have similarly lengthy careers. During an interview with The Guardian in 2012, he discussed working with Clint Eastwood and compared his longevity to that of another famously tenacious filmmaker.
“He will keep directing literally until he drops dead,” Freeman said of his Million Dollar Baby director. “Working for him was three of my happiest times in the movies. He’s the same way John Huston was: ‘The art of directing lies mainly in casting; once you cast somebody, get out of the way.’ I love that. And Huston kept directing right till the last moment, too.”
There is no accepted rule book for getting the best performances out of actors, and there is a wide range of styles. There are filmmakers who take an aggressively hands-on approach – sometimes to traumatising ends. John Ford was a notorious bully on set. Stanley Kubrick drove his casts to the brink of madness. And David Fincher is known for shooting the same scene dozens of times.
Clint Eastwood is on the opposite end of the spectrum, choosing instead, as Freeman noted, to pick his cast carefully and then let them get on with it. In the past, he reflected that his hands-off approach to directing came from his experience as an actor. For him, productions that moved quickly instead of lingering on take after take were his preferred environment.
Some actors have found this style of directing to be challenging, though. Tom Hanks, for example, once called Eastwood’s direction “intimidating as hell”, and revealed that instead of starting and ending a scene with the usual calls of “Action” and “Cut”, the director simply whispers, “Alright, go ahead” and “That’s enough of that”.
It’s easy to imagine John Huston doing the same. The veteran director of films like The Maltese Falcon, The African Queen, and Chinatown was known for his low-key approach to directing, though he more than made up for it by forcing them to travel to the most difficult locations possible. Humphrey Bogart, who starred in several of the director’s most successful films, deplored Huston’s penchant for harsh, isolated location shoots and productions that ran woefully behind schedule due to the constraints of the environmnet. During their months-long shoot for The African Queen in what was then the Belgian Congo, the crew lived off-grid and dealt with illness, insects, and monsoon season. On balance, many actors might have preferred a run-of-the-mill tyrant as their director.
In contrast, Eastwood’s reputation is decidedly more low-key. As Hanks’ comments suggest, the toughest thing about working for him as an actor may come down to the personal insecurities that the actor brings to the project rather than a harsh working environment created by the director.
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