The movie that made Morgan Freeman realise “my philosophical aversion was bullshit”
No actor makes it to the top of the industry without taking at least a couple of risks, but Morgan Freeman actively resisted a standard part of any established star’s professional life for the longest time before overcoming his intentional avoidance.
Despite his career beginning in the early 1960s, Freeman was almost 50 before he finally made it big in Hollywood, when his breakthrough performance as a ruthless pimp in Street Smart landed him the first Academy Award nomination of his career in the ‘Best Supporting Actor’ category.
Ironically, the role was nothing like the characters he would soon become renowned for, with the violent and thuggish nature of Leo ‘Fast Black’ Smalls a million miles away from the kind, contemplative, and authoritative parts he’d go on to play in Driving Miss Daisy, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Unforgiven, and The Shawshank Redemption during his ascent towards the A-list in the early 1990s.
Freeman could always be relied on to deliver solid work with his effortless gravitas, regardless of whether he was the top-billed name in the cast, playing second fiddle, or lending distinguished support. However, when he was presented with the opportunity to play the same character twice for the first time ever, he wasn’t interested at first.
Gary Fleder’s adaptation of James Patterson’s bestselling novel Kiss the Girls released in October 1997, and while it wasn’t a huge hit at the box office, it was popular enough for the studio to try and get a sequel off the ground. The only obstacle that needed to be overcome, which was admittedly a pretty big one, was that Freeman didn’t want to do it.
He eventually relented and signed on for 2001’s follow-up Along Came a Spider, with the added bonus of an executive producer credit. His sophomore outing as dogged detective Alex Cross was a lot more successful than the first, earning over $100million from cinemas and illustrating that it was the right decision.
By his own admission, the only reason it took Freeman so long to agree was that he had a “philosophical aversion” to sequels, but he was ultimately won over by how much he enjoyed himself the first time around after he’d overcome his own stigmas. “I didn’t want to do the same thing twice,” he said at the time. “Then I realised my philosophical aversion was bullshit. I realised I liked Alex Cross.”
Along Came a Spider marked the first sequel in Freeman’s filmography, but once he’d crossed that self-imposed bridge, the floodgates were open and it was far from the last. Since then, he’s appeared in the two follow-ups to Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins, flop comedy Evan Almighty, Dolphin Tale 2, Now You See Me 2, along with both London Has Fallen and Angel Has Fallen, so he’s long since consigned his concerns to the scrapheap.
