“It was the first book I read”: the novel that changed Morgan Freeman’s life
One of the many benefits that come with being a successful actor who dabbles in producing is that passion projects are a lot easier to get off the ground. And yet, despite being an avid reader all of his life, Morgan Freeman has never been involved in an adaptation of any of his favourite books.
While that’s no doubt the case for many veterans of stage and screen, whether they’re Academy Award-winning legends or not, it’s nonetheless curious that several of the novels Freeman holds closest to his heart have been repurposed across film and television countless times, and he’s never been a part of any of them.
Herman Melville’s Moby Dick is at the top of the pile, with the 1956 feature starring Gregory Peck also doubling as one of his all-time favourite movies, underlining his appreciation for the material. Not only that, but it also instilled in Freeman a lifelong love of the sea, which has been one of his hobbies since he was a young man.
His side-line as a sailor has manifested in some morbid ways, too, with the actor’s signature gold earring always being worn because of an old tradition that hypothetically covers his funeral costs were he to be killed at sea and wash ashore somewhere where nobody knew who he was.
Of course, there can’t be many places on the planet where Freeman can go unrecognised, but that doesn’t mean he’s willing to give up his superstitions. Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations is another firm favourite alongside Peter Matthiessen’s At Play in the Fields of the Lord and Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible, but his introduction to the boundless possibilities of literature didn’t start there.
Instead, Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty served as a young Freeman’s entry point into a world where his imagination had no limits, and he’s never forgotten. “It was the first book I read,” he told the New York Post. “I don’t recall if it was a librarian who suggested it or if I just stumbled on it, but the idea of reading a book – not a comic book – was a part of it.”
This happened in the early 1940s “when all we had for entertainment was radio and the movies,” and for someone who began their life in modest surroundings, “reading was a big deal.” Since being published in 1877, Black Beauty has been a regular fixture on screens big and small, but perhaps Freeman didn’t want to sully his cherished childhood memories by mounting an adaptation of his own.
Since he began his acting career in the early 1960s, there have been three movies, two animated features, and a TV series based on Sewell’s heart-warming tale. For Freeman, it endures as the novel that changed his life by acting as his induction to a fondness for the written word that he’s maintained for the last eight decades.
