“It wasn’t just a job”: the 2006 role Morgan Freeman called “heaven-sent”
At the end of the day, just like every other profession, acting is a job. Plenty of stars treat it as more of a calling, but Morgan Freeman has never been under any illusions as to what the goal is.
Again, just like every other profession, the goal is making money. It’s all well and good to prioritise art over commerce, but anybody in any walk of life would be an idiot to turn down millions of dollars for a few weeks’ work in favour of spending months in isolation and earning a pittance.
Freeman has never embraced the method, and he’s not the kind of actor who’ll go to exorbitant lengths to immerse themselves into character, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t good at his job. An Academy Award and a Golden Globe from five nominations apiece proves it, but the man also loves to get paid.
Honestly, who doesn’t? For every passion project like Glory, Unforgiven, and Invictus that’s given the veteran the opportunity to stretch his dramatic muscles to breaking point, there’s always a Fallen sequel, a Now You See Me, or one of his many straight-to-video genre films to fall back on, and those give him the leeway and financial security to luxuriate in the wealth and status that comes with being Morgan Freeman.
Those paycheque gigs have become the rule rather than the exception in recent years, but there was one unexpected role that the Street Smart breakout called a gift from above. An independent dramedy about a faded Hollywood star who researches a comeback role by working in a supermarket doesn’t sound like something the man upstairs would view as a priority, but the king of exposition disagreed.
“I don’t know if you know that I complain so much about all the gravitas that comes my way,” he explained, underlining his frustrations with constantly being cast as Morgan Freeman-esque characters, who only exist to propel the plot forward through info dumps made digestible by his leisurely voice.
“I was looking for something light, comical, and this was just like heaven-sent,” he admired. “Everybody on the movie was on it for the same purpose. It wasn’t just a job, it was an undertaking; without the gravitas.” At the end of the day, he’s playing an old fella who bags groceries, but each to their own.
Beyond being gifted to him from the heavens, which it wasn’t really, since he also produced 10 Items or Less through his Revelations banner, Freeman also tried to change the course of cinema history. At the time, nobody really noticed, and even fewer people cared, but with the benefit of hindsight, he was onto something.
Writer and director Brad Silberling’s dramedy made history as the first movie to be released via digital download while it was still playing in cinemas, and in an age where theatrical windows are growing shorter, streaming has taken over, and the pandemic saw Warner Bros debut its entire 2021 slate on big and small screens simultaneously, Freeman was miles ahead of the curve.
