The only actor who left Morgan Freeman awestruck: “I couldn’t get my head out of my butt”
Having been around the block several times and back throughout a long, illustrious, decorated, and massively successful career, there’s nothing that phases Morgan Freeman anymore, and there hasn’t been for a long time.
Turning gravitas into a deadly weapon, the sonorous star has been the epitome of silver screen cool ever since he broke through with his first Academy Award-nominated performance in Street Smart, which served as the springboard towards his eventual, current and ongoing status as one of Hollywood’s most esteemed veterans.
As hard as it might be for some people to believe, Freeman wasn’t born a world-weary exposition machine. He was a young man once, one who dreamed of making it as an actor. Things didn’t go according to the plan he’d envisioned when he spent the better part of a decade on a kids’ TV show, but he got there eventually.
Even actors with years of experience behind them can end up being overawed by the people they’re working with, as Freeman discovered when he got the opportunity to work with one of his heroes, Academy Award-winning ‘Golden Age’ stalwart José Ferrer. Never mind that he was 40 at the time, being in the Tony-winning legend’s presence was enough to leave him a nervous wreck.
“In 1978, I got this phone call, and this voice: ‘Morgan, this is José Ferrer. I have a wonderful two-character play I’d like you to read, and maybe you’d like to do it with me,'” he told Collider. “And so my jaw drops all the way down to my navel. ‘Who?’ ‘José Ferrer’. So for one week in rehearsals, I couldn’t get my head out of my butt because this is José Ferrer! I’m on stage with him, just he and I! Golly.”
The two performed in White Pelicans at the Theatre De Lys in New York, and as accommodating as Ferrer was towards Freeman fanboying over him at every turn, he needed to put a pin in it. “He would say, ‘Morgan, Morgan. You’ve got to get over this,'” which was admittedly easier said than done.
Jack Nicholson may have left Freeman starstruck, but Ferrer was something different. The former was a movie star he’d been dreaming of working alongside ever since he first gained mainstream recognition, whereas the latter was one of the most profound influences on his entire career and one who’d called him up to personally request Freeman as the other half of the two-handed production.
Freeman was almost a decade and a half into his life as a working professional actor when he was asked to tread the boards with Ferrer, but he was so enthralled by his idol that it took him a while to pull his head out of his ass and do the job to his opposite number’s satisfaction.
