Morgan Freeman is in no hurry. He was once — not any more. Sitting back amiably, he accepts the praise and rewards that didn’t arrive until he was 50. He dispenses humorous good sense in his grits-and-gravy voice, with only a slight undertone of sharpness.
Since spending time with him is one of the most pleasant and instructive things to do in Hollywood, work just flows toward him. Right now, he’s acting in one movie, “Nurse Betty,” and producing another, NBC’s “Mutiny.”
In a random survey of 589 motion picture producers, only one said, “I was asked to do this out of the blue. NBC just threw a dart at the board and came up with me.” That’s modest Morgan Freeman, who adds, “I’m not even the hands-on guy. All I did was just set it up and walk away.”
“Mutiny” tells the true story of 50 black sailors prosecuted by the Navy in 1944. Their crime was refusing to return immediately to dangerous munitions jobs after an explosives-laden ship blew up off San Francisco, killing 320 — the worst stateside disaster of World War II. Michael Jai White plays one of the sailors’ leaders and Joe Morton plays Thurgood Marshall, who defended the men.
Sipping a brunchtime amaretto coffee in a Beverly Hills hotel, Freeman, 61, projects an enviable serenity. The freckles sit comfortably on his unwrinkled face, and smiles come easily. If he were president for real (he played the role in “Deep Impact”), he would represent the Sensible Party. Discussing “Mutiny” (in which he doesn’t appear), he says, “These men stood up for their rights, with some dignity. They stood like men instead of lying down and being whupped like dogs. The Navy made examples of them, on the theory that someone had to pay. The Navy called it mutiny — but was it really? Perhaps the white commanders were at fault. Whatever, they went after the black men under color of authority.”
In 1989 Freeman starred in “Glory,” which also was about black men’s wartime efforts. “Since the Emancipation Proclamation,” he says, “black people have been praying and hoping and fighting for total inclusion. Every time a war comes along, here’s a shot!” Freeman’s right fist hits his left palm with some force. “We’d join right up. Afterwards — until Vietnam — no matter what the courage quotient, we were disarmed.”
Freeman himself, who served four years in the Air Force in the 1950s, comes from Mississippi. “My connection to racism was tenuous,” he says. “I was just generally afraid of white people, not necessarily for any reason, except that if you were in the jungle you’d be afraid of wild animals. Why should you be afraid of guys in white sheets? I didn’t know, but I was. The law was backing the evil side, which then acted under color of authority.”
After Freeman hit paydirt with his much-praised performance as a pimp in “Street Smart” and his Oscar-nominated turn in “Driving Miss Daisy,” he moved out of New York, landing eventually back in Mississippi. He has a 120-acre farm, where he raises horses.
He says, “Once you know your history, you have to say, `This is mine. This country belongs to me.’ I went back to Mississippi and found myself welcomed with open arms. `Why did you come back here of all places?’ everybody wanted to know. I said I just liked it there, and from the governor on down, they said, `We’re very happy.”‘
When he’s not at home in Tallahatchie County, Freeman can be found on his boat sailing in the Caribbean. That is, he’s on the boat, but he can’t be found. “I can’t be reached,” he says. “I’ve dropped off the edge of the Earth. At sea, I really depend on me. When it’s rough and ugly or even scary and terrifying, all the other things drop away.
“I was born with the ability to make believe. I don’t give myself any credit, that’s just the way I was made. If it’s unreal, I can do it. I cope less well with the real. Hence, alone on the boat.” Freeman was at sea for most of 1998. “I was on hiatus, and I wasn’t,” he says. “I felt I was too much in the public’s face. I thought I’d back away from the public before they backed away from me. I made four movies in a row” — “Deep Impact,” “Amistad,” “Kiss the Girls” and “Hard Rain.” “Nurse Betty,” a dark comedy in which he plays an assassin who falls in love with his intended victim, Renee Zellweger, is his first film in 18 months.
He learned where he stands with the public from its reaction to “Hard Rain.” He says with resigned amusement, “I’m pigeonholed now. I’m a super-good guy. I’ve become this great sanctified figure. Sure, I’ve been bad, but my badness always gets qualified.
“When they tested `Hard Rain’ before they released it, I died in that version. Because of what the audience said, they changed the film so I didn’t. They called and said, `Come back, Morgan, we’ve got to make you good.’ The audience wants me to be good, or at least not to die bad. Spencer Tracy had the same problem, you know.”
Becoming a Spencer Tracy for our times is far beyond what Freeman aspired to as a young actor. He recalls, “I was in New York in 1965 trying to get work as a dancer. I lived in an artists’ compound, and I remember in March of that year watching this other dancer get his W-2 forms together. He had made $10,000 in 1964! `God, if the time ever comes when I make that much, hey, forget about it!’ My income was about $2,500.”
After scrabbling hard for another quarter century, including five years as Easy Reader on “The Electric Company,” Freeman finally made it. Why? “What do you believe in?” he replies. “Fate, God, kismet — what governs us? Luck. Luck is your only savior. Pluck has something to do with it, but luck decides. One section of the ocean is calm, another section is stormy.
“When you’re young, you dream, and your dreams are based on what you see on `Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.’ You get inputs that build up one side of the picture. You don’t get the alcoholism and the drug overdose. You don’t see one thing that’s happened to me, the fact that your lucky success points up others’ unlucky failure.
“I was lucky that my time came when I was best prepared for it to come. I didn’t have enough sense, not enough control over myself, back when I wanted success so badly. I would have handled it poorly then. I hope I’m doing better now.”
