The scene Morgan Freeman called the greatest of his entire career: “Precious moment”
The relationships actors have with their most famous roles can sometimes be a lot more nuanced than audiences may think. For instance, a role may have led to huge plaudits for an actor and helped their career immeasurably, but if they had a miserable time making the film, they’d never love it quite as much as Cinephiles. That is precisely the scenario Morgan Freeman faced with his turn as Red in The Shawshank Redemption, for example. However, it’s not the only iconic role that Freeman has a love-hate relationship with. In fact, he once said that one of his favourite scenes of his career came while playing a part he ultimately felt was a mistake – yet also fully believed should have landed him an Oscar.
When Freeman sat down with Yahoo Movies’ Role Recall to discuss some of his most famous movies, such as Glory, The Dark Knight, and Se7en, he was, of course, also asked about Driving Miss Daisy. That 1989 comedy-drama was the movie that finally made Freeman a bona fide movie star at 52 years old and landed him his second ‘Best Actor’ nomination at the Academy Awards.
With a smile, Freeman revealed that the first thing that sprung to his mind when asked about the film was his favourite scene. It was the sequence where his chauffeur character, Hoke Colburn, first attempts to persuade the elderly Daisy Werthan – played by Jessica Tandy – to get into his car. He grinned when he remembered driving alongside the stubborn old lady, before politely telling her, “I’m just trying to drive you to the store.” Hearing Hans Zimmer’s heartwarming score in his head, which he began humming, Freeman wistfully smiled, “Precious moment.”
It was clear that Freeman has fond memories of shooting the film, and has a genuine emotional connection to that particular scene. However, throughout his career, he’s also admitted to feeling conflicted about Colburn’s character for a few different reasons.
Freeman has always maintained that he never bought into the controversy that surrounded the film upon its release when it was accused of being a retrograde depiction of race relations that romanticised the pre-Civil Rights era South. While he did have some worries when he began playing Colburn Off-Broadway in 1987, by the time he got to the film, those nagging doubts had gone away. He chose to look at the story in one specific way, telling The New York Times, “It kind of reminds me of these French movies about love. It was literally a love story. I maintain it was one of the best jobs I ever had in the movies.”
However, this didn’t mean Freeman’s experience playing Colburn was all wine and roses. He once told Piers Morgan that he was confident he would get an Oscar for the role, but he lost out to Daniel Day-Lewis for My Left Foot.
That hurt him a little, but what was worse was how he felt the role shaped his career going forward. In 2000, he told an audience at London’s National Film Theatre, “I think the big mistake was Driving Miss Daisy, actually. The character caught on – this wise, old, dignified, black man.”
From that point on, Freeman found that people could only envision him playing kindly, wise sage figures – and that’s not what he wanted his screen persona to be defined as. “Some characters become sort of bracketed, identifiable – identified – you and him,” he lamented. He then explained that people on the street would come up to him and expect him to be like Colburn in real life.
He mused, “Everywhere you go, they’re going to expect some aspect of that character out of you, and if you disappoint them too many times…” before trailing off, implying that this kind of thing had happened far too often.
