“I was thoroughly hooked”: Morgan Freeman recommends three of his favourite books
Despite holding all the potential to be an incredibly lucrative enterprise for both parties, Morgan Freeman has yet to follow in the footsteps of many peers by lending his dulcet tones to the world of audiobooks.
With one of the most recognisable voices in pop culture and a legendary side hustle as a voiceover artist and narrator extraordinaire, there’s a lot of money being left on the table by the veteran’s absence from imbuing literary works with his signature silky smooth tones.
Freeman has starred in his fair share of page-to-screen translations over the decades, with one of the most famous coming when he lent his distinguished gravitas to Stephen King adaptation The Shawshank Redemption, which is just the tip of a very large iceberg.
The Bonfire of the Vanities, Kiss the Girls and its sequel Along Came a Spider, Under Suspicion, Dreamcatcher, Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy, Timur Bekmambetov’s Wanted, and Ben Affleck’s Gone Baby Gone are just some of the actor’s projects that originated on the printed page, but he’s never been given the chance to star in a version of his three most recommended titles.
Known to be a voracious reader, Freeman was quizzed on which books he’d recommend to readers during a Reddit AMA, where he used as the basis for a multi-generational answer. “I would recommend different books to different people,” he explained. “For a young person I would say Moby Dick. For a more romantic person I would recommend Great Expectations. For the very young reader I would recommend Black Beauty.”
Freeman’s love of Herman Melville’s aquatic odyssey is well-known, with the Academy Award winner admitting that it inspired his lifelong love of both the sea and sailing its open waters. He’s been an able-bodied seaman for over half a century, but the opportunity to take part in retelling the story has never come across his desk.
He does hold John Huston’s 1956 movie with Gregory Peck in the highest esteem as one of his favourite-ever movies, though, so that might be why he’s never felt the compelling urge to realise a childhood fantasy and take his own stab at Moby Dick.
Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty has been brought to the screen countless times, too, most recently with the 2020 iteration starring Kate Winslet as the voice of the titular steed that released exclusively on Disney+. It might be one for the younger reader by his estimation, but if it comes recommended by Freeman himself, then age is but a number.
He’s never popped up in a Charles Dickens adaptation, either, not that it prevented him from anointing Great Expectations as a must-read for anyone carrying at least some hint of romantic inclinations to round out his trio of top-tier classics.
