“One of my heroes”: the actor Morgan Freeman called an “absolute master”
When Morgan Freeman found himself on a movie set in 1996 acting opposite one of his heroes, he could finally see firsthand what he’d always loved about that performer. For years, he had marvelled at this British star’s ability to convey a multitude of emotions by seemingly doing very little on-screen. It lent his roles a subtlety and a unique stillness that Freeman had always aimed for in his own performances.
To Freeman, that incredible stillness, which often belied a raging torrent underneath, is the hardest thing for any screen actor to accomplish convincingly. It’s a completely different skillset from what an actor may use if performing on stage, because that performance has to be calibrated for the people in the back row to appreciate. On film, though, an actor can afford to be more restrained, because the cameras can pick up these smaller, more realistic emotions.
Indeed, Freeman first picked up on Anthony Hopkins’ incredible stillness when he watched The Remains of the Day in the early ’90s, just as his own movie career was taking off. “Learning how to be still, to really be still and let life happen,” Freeman marvelled to Film Freak Central. “That stillness becomes a radiance. It’s all about eloquent stillness. I’ve told Hopkins that that performance was one of the great lessons for me as an actor.”
To his delight, it didn’t take too long for Freeman to be cast alongside Hopkins, and this is where it confirmed for him that the iconic Welsh star “is one of my heroes”. Hopkins played President John Quincy Adams in Steven Spielberg’s 1997 slave ship drama Amistad, with Freeman cast as Theodore Joadson, a composite character representing several African-American businessmen and abolitionists who fought tirelessly to outlaw slavery.
Getting a look at Hopkins’ method up close was revelatory for Freeman, whose admiration for Hopkins grew each and every day. “Every time we finished the shot, we’d hug,” he smiled. “He is the absolute master of minimalist work. He does it all without seeming to do anything.”
Fascinatingly, working with Hopkins revealed that he and Freeman shared a similar approach to acting, beyond a desire to be as minimal as possible on-screen. Both men were the same age and had lived through several different trends in acting, such as “the method” and a heavily improvised approach to material. Neither of these veterans bought into these practices, though, preferring not to overthink things like so many stars have done over the years. In fact, they championed a no-nonsense tactic that is the very essence of simplicity.
When Freeman was asked if he had any difficulty getting into character as Joadson, a mix of several real-life figures, he shrugged to the Los Angeles Times, “Nothing more complicated than learning the lines and putting on the costume…Really, there’s no mystery to the process beyond saying the lines and letting them define who you are.”
An excited Hopkins, who was part of the same interview, couldn’t have agreed more. He’d always been rubbed the wrong way by method acting, and couldn’t understand why more actors didn’t just learn their lines, show up, and deliver them. He felt a return to a more traditional method of acting would be very welcome, musing, “I think it’s got to go back to what was told to us when we first learned Shakespeare. That if you speak the verse, you don’t have to amble around looking for subtext. You know? Just say the lines.”
