Is ‘Glory’ the most important project of Morgan Freeman’s career?
There are few faces in Hollywood that are quite as familiar as Morgan Freeman. Since the actor took his first steps into the industry in the 1960s and 1970s, he has become a near-constant presence on our cinema screens. During that time, he’s amassed a truly mammoth filmography that ranges from Academy Award-winning dramas to modern blockbusters.
Freeman has never allowed himself to be restricted by genre — he’s starred in comedies and thrillers aplenty and even ventured into the superhero realm. However, he does show a preference for projects with character-focused screenplays and for roles that he can well and truly sink his teeth into. His filmography is littered with lofty characters that require him to immerse himself in the story.
Take Invictus, for example. In 2009, Freeman linked up with western aficionado Clint Eastwood, who swapped his usual position in front of the camera for a spot in the director’s seat. Starring alongside Matt Damon, Freeman took on the huge task of portraying South African activist Nelson Mandela on-screen.
Undeterred by the pressures that accompanied the role, Freeman delivered a stellar performance in the biopic and earned a nod from the Academy. His acting credits are full of huge roles like this – he even took on the task of playing God himself in Bruce Almighty. With so many important features and characters to his name, it seems impossible to pick out which one comes out on top, but Freeman has a definitive answer.
When IGN asked the actor to pick out the most important project of his career, Freeman instantly answered with one of his earlier efforts, 1989’s Glory. The film also starred Matthew Broderick and Denzel Washington. Directed by Edward Zwick, the film focused on the American Civil War, and particularly on the Black soldiers who made up the 54th Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry.
The film received widespread praise upon its release, including a couple of Academy Award nominations, but it wasn’t the subsequent success that influenced Freeman’s decision. Glory takes the title of the most important project in his catalogue because of its subject matter. War movies have shown a tendency to only feature white casts, downplaying and diminishing the involvement and effects on non-white soldiers.
Glory counteracted this with its focus on a Black regiment. It was a topic and an area of history that had rarely been discussed or highlighted before, which is why Freeman felt so proud of the project. “I had such reverence for that movie when we were making it,” he shared, “And I still do today. It’s such an important film to me because it shows us a part of American history that few people knew about.”
Freeman went on to acknowledge that a number of other movies he has starred in since the release of Glory have been important to him but that none had affected him quite “as dearly”. It’s easy to see why — Glory was a particularly significant contribution to the war genre, a piece of history that had often been left in the shadows.
Even since the release of Glory, the war genre largely remains whitewashed. Over 30 years have passed, and countless war films have appeared on our television and cinema screens, but still, so few have focused on the stories of Black soldiers. Glory remains just as important now as it was in 1989.
