The real reason Morgan Freeman never wanted to be a movie star: “That’s the essential difference”
Morgan Freeman didn’t have a traditional path into Hollywood, with a long and gruelling journey that lasted for twenty years before finding his way onto the silver screen. The actor began his acting career on the stage, starring in Broadway productions and some smaller television productions while juggling back and forth between New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco to try and find an entry point into the industry. However, his talent was hard to miss, with a calm yet authoritative voice and eternal sense of wisdom that shone through in groundbreaking performances in Driving Miss Daisy, The Shawshank Redemption and Se7en.
However, perhaps some of his success can be owed to his level-headed approach to the business, never letting himself become swept up in the glamour of the industry and instead focusing on what truly matters.
After decades in the business, Freeman has become a master of his craft and an instantly recognisable icon, revered for roles in some of the most influential films of all time. After collaborating with directors like Clint Eastwood, Christopher Nolan and David Fincher, you can imagine that it would be hard to keep your wits about you and not let the fame get to your head. However, Freeman was never interested in this side of the business and, in fact, preferred to be lesser-known due to the creative freedoms it offers an actor.
While many actors long to be famous, there are some who just long to make movies, not caring for the upsides or perks that come with notoriety and instead just pining for the one goal of bringing stories to life on the big screen. The desire to be a movie star can hinder the craft, with your image sometimes overtaking the characters you realise on screen, with audiences struggling to embrace the performance due to being so aware of who the person is behind it.
When describing the downside of being a movie star, Freeman said, “Well, first, it’s what I wanted from a very young age, I wanted to be in the movies. But as you start to watch your career go on, you realise that you didn’t want to be ‘star.’ If you are a character actor, you don’t want to be a star, because you can’t be a character.”
Things went further for Freeman: “A star very rarely gets roles like Quasimodo. Bob De Niro could walk down the streets unrecognised after he had done Bang the Drum Slowly, Godfather II and Raging Bull. He had done all these well-received movies, but he could walk down the street unrecognised. That’s character acting, when you hide, when you become the character, that’s the essential difference to me”.
This very sentiment is perhaps why actors like Joaquin Phoenix, Emma Stone and Viola Davis are so fantastic at what they do. Their decision to stay out of the limelight and avoid interactions with the press is what keeps the mystery at the heart of their performance alive. If you keep yourself in the public eye, then you are somewhat fuelling the fire of celebrity and feeding the Hollywood machine.
However, if you refrain from sharing your inner world and life with the audience, then you are protecting the magic of what happens behind the scenes and making yourself more of a blank canvas, in turn becoming more adaptable to different characters due to there being no external information to cloud the performance. This is perhaps what makes Freeman such a versatile actor – never giving too much away and remaining just mysterious enough to keep people coming back.
