Morgan Freeman Says He’ll Overlook a Mediocre Script “If They’re Going to Pay You Enough”

Morgan Freeman. 89. One of the great and most recognizable actors of the last 40 years. From the very late ‘80s to the end of the aughts, you couldn’t escape 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. He did star in ‘Now You See Me 3’ last year, but that felt like a one-off.

I mean, just scrolling through his filmography these last ten years, I see films I’ve never beard of before, stuff like “The Poison Rose,” “Vanquish,” “Paradise Highway,” “The Minute You Wake Up Dead,” “The Ritual Killer,” “57 Seconds,” “Gunner.”

Freeman is now explaining these bewildering choices to The New York Times, and it’s quite simple, really: He’ll sign on to a movie, even if the script is mediocre, as long as the pay is good enough. 

If somebody offers you a job, it’s very nice if they’re offering you also an exciting script, but in reality, two or three things come into play. What are they going to pay you? If they’re going to pay you enough, then you overlook some of the glitches in the script that happen to be there.

Freeman recently told The Guardian that he had no plans to retire from acting, and he elaborated further to the NYT by quoting his good friend Clint Eastwood (“Don’t let the old man in”)

So, I keep working. If you can get out of bed and don’t fall down when you do it, then you just count your blessings and keep moving. So, I’ll work as long as I can — as long as somebody says, ‘Do you want to do this part?’

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 — and we probably won’t see another one like him again.

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.