Nelson Mandela’s favourite Morgan Freeman movie: “He talked about loving it”
Playing one of the most important figures in modern history is daunting enough as it is, never mind when the actor embodying the role gets the subject’s personal seal of approval. As his Academy Award nomination attests, Morgan Freeman was more than up to the task of doing justice to Nelson Mandela.
Several actors had played Mandela before, including Danny Glover, Dennis Haysbert, and Sidney Poitier, but none of them got the personal seal of approval. That instantly put Freeman in a class of his own while also dialling up the pressure for the veteran to deliver a performance worthy of the endorsement.
Clint Eastwood’s Invictus had been more than a decade in the making, and the ball started rolling when Mandela was promoting the release of his memoir, Long Walk to Freedom. As Freeman recalled, he was asked who should play him when the inevitable biopic was made. “And he said he wanted me,” he shared. “So it became. That was the whole sanction, right there.”
Freeman would only agree if he “was going to have access to him,” a request Mandela was happy to grant. They met multiple times over the years and developed a friendship, only for a straightforward adaptation of Long Walk to Freedom to be abandoned in favour of Eastwood adapting John Carlin’s nonfiction book that focused on the social ramifications of the 1995 Rugby World Cup.
The actor was recognised with a nomination at almost every major awards ceremony for a performance that comfortably ranks as one of his best, vindicating Mandela’s preferred casting. Was it his favourite of Freeman’s movies, though? Nope, he was revealed to be more of a Shawshank Redemption man.
That’s fair enough when Frank Darabont’s prison drama is one of the most universally beloved movies ever made, and that information didn’t come from Freeman either. Instead, Tim Robbins told Vanity Fair that when he had the pleasure of meeting Mandela face-to-face, he was quick to celebrate the Stephen King adaptation.
“I swear to god, all over the world – all over the world – wherever I go, there are people who say, ‘That movie changed my life,'” he said before turning the subject to Mandela. “When I met him, he talked about loving Shawshank.” Considering that the movie was released in the same year Mandela told the world he wanted Freeman to play him in a film based on his life, maybe it was the timeless prison drama that convinced him.
Freeman has grown increasingly irritable over the years with people wanting to constantly ask him about The Shawshank Redemption, but it’s probably safe to say that he didn’t have any issues with the picture he’s long since grown weary of discussing taking pride of place as Mandela’s personal favourite among his back catalogue.
