From the very late ‘80s to the end of the aughts, you couldn’t escape Morgan Freeman’s presence on the silver screen. He was in Oscar contender after Oscar contender, the go-to character actor of his heyday, and then, poof, he became less visible.
However, it’s not like he’s retired either. Case in point, all the straight-to-VOD movies he’s been making these past 10 years. Scrolling through his filmography, the last true “Hollywood” year Freeman had was in 2016, and that’s when “Now You See Me 2,” “London Has Fallen,” and “Ben-Hur” came out.
One could theorize that his bewildering absence from mainstream films had to do with the 88-year-old actor being accused of sexual harassment in 2018. In a Time magazine interview, around the time of the accusations, Freeman said, “My life is at risk of being undermined.” However, it seems like the story against Freeman didn’t stick, with the Screen Actors Guild deciding against revoking Freeman’s lifetime achievement award after careful investigation.
Regardless, Freeman has now been screen acting for more than six decades. The depth, gravitas, and authenticity he’s brought to his best work is hard to match. It’s the type of magnetic presence that commands attention.
Given his age, you’d expect Freeman to slow down, and rest on his laurels, but he tells The Guardian that he has little interest in retirement:
Sometimes the idea of retirement would float past me but, as soon as my agent says there’s a job or somebody wants you or they’ve made an offer, the whole thing just boils back into where it was yesterday: how much you’re going to pay, where we’re gonna be? The appetite is still there. I will concede that it’s dimmed a little. But not enough to make a serious difference.
Freeman is back in “Now You See Me, Now You Don’t,” which hits theaters this Friday, and is destined to top the box office, but his glory days are now far gone. I mean, he’s 88 — why should we expect anything more from this legendary actor who has given us classic after classic?
Freeman had a peak streak of well-celebrated performances between 1989 and 2009: “Glory,” “Unforgiven,” “The Shawshank Redemption,” “Seven,” “Amistad,” “Nurse Betty,” “Million Dollar Baby,” “Batman Begins,” “The Dark Knight,” “Gone Baby Gone,” and “Invictus.”
It was an impressive stretch of films, and his influence on the history of cinema has already been firmly established.