Morgan Freeman

He is the son of Mamie Edna (née Revere; 1912–2000), a teacher, and Morgan Porterfield Freeman (July 6, 1915 – April 27, 1961), a barber, who died of cirrhosis in 1961.

He has three older siblings.

Some of Freeman's great-great-grandparents were enslaved people who migrated from North Carolina to Mississippi.

Freeman later discovered that his white maternal great-great-grandfather had lived with and was buried beside Freeman's black great-great-grandmother in the segregated South, as the two could not legally marry at the time.

The DNA test suggested that among all of his African ancestors, a little over one-quarter came from the area that stretches from present-day Senegal to Liberia and three-quarters came from the Congo-Angola region.

As an infant, Freeman was sent to his paternal grandmother in Charleston, Mississippi.

He moved frequently during his childhood, living in Greenwood, Mississippi; Gary, Indiana; and finally Chicago, Illinois.

He made his acting debut at age nine, playing the lead role in a school play.

He then attended Broad Street High School, a building which serves today as Threadgill Elementary School, in Greenwood, Mississippi.

At age 12, he won a statewide drama competition, and while settling into school, discovered music and theater.

When Freeman was 16 years old, he contracted pneumonia.

Morgan Freeman (born June 1, 1937) is an American actor, producer, and narrator.

Throughout a career spanning five decades and multiple film genres, he has received numerous accolades, including an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award, and a Screen Actors Guild Award as well as a nomination for a Tony Award.

Freeman was born on June 1, 1937, in Memphis, Tennessee.

Freeman graduated high school in 1955, but turned down a partial drama scholarship from Jackson State University, opting instead to enlist in the United States Air Force.

He served as an Automatic Tracking Radar repairman, rising to the rank of airman first class.

After serving from 1955 to 1959, he moved to Los Angeles, California, and took acting classes at the Pasadena Playhouse.

He also studied theater arts at Los Angeles City College, where a teacher encouraged him to embark on a dance career.

Freeman worked as a dancer at the 1964 World's Fair and was a member of the Opera Ring musical theater group in San Francisco.

He acted in a touring company version of The Royal Hunt of the Sun, and also appeared as an extra in Sidney Lumet's 1965 drama film The Pawnbroker starring Rod Steiger.

Between acting and dancing jobs, Freeman realized that acting was where his heart lay.

"After [The Royal Hunt of the Sun], my acting career just took off," he later recalled.

Freeman made his Off-Broadway debut in 1967, opposite Viveca Lindfors in The Niggerlovers, a show about the Freedom Riders during the American Civil Rights Movement, before debuting on Broadway in 1968's all-black version of Hello, Dolly! that also starred Pearl Bailey and Cab Calloway.

In 1969, Freeman also performed on stage in The Dozens.

He rose to fame in the 1970s for his role in the children's television series The Electric Company. Freeman then appeared in the Shakespearean plays Coriolanus and Julius Caesar, the former of which earned him an Obie Award.

Beginning in 1971, Freeman starred in the PBS children's television show The Electric Company, which gave him financial stability and recognition among American audiences.

His work on the show was tiring, so he quit in 1975.

Television producer Joan Ganz Cooney said that Freeman loathed appearing in The Electric Company, saying "it was a very unhappy period in his life".

Freeman later acknowledged that he does not think about the show, but he was grateful to have been a part of it.

In 1978, he received a nomination for the Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play for his role as Zeke in the Richard Wesley play The Mighty Gents.

His other Oscar-nominated roles are in Street Smart (1987), Driving Miss Daisy (1989), The Shawshank Redemption (1994), and Invictus (2009).

Notable roles include in Glory (1989), Lean on Me (1989), Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991), Unforgiven (1992), Se7en (1995), Amistad (1997), Gone Baby Gone (2007), and The Bucket List (2007).

He made his directorial debut with the drama Bopha! (1993).

He founded film production company Revelations Entertainment with business partner Lori McCreary in 1996 where he produced numerous projects including CBS political drama Madam Secretary from 2014 to 2019.

Known for his distinctive voice, he has narrated numerous documentary projects, including The Long Way Home (1997), March of the Penguins (2005), Through the Wormhole (2010–2017), The Story of God with Morgan Freeman (2016–2019), Our Universe (2022) and Life on Our Planet (2023).

Freeman went on to receive the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in Clint Eastwood's sports drama Million Dollar Baby (2004).

He also portrayed Lucius Fox in Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight Trilogy (2005–2012) and starred in the action films Wanted (2008), Red (2010), Oblivion (2013), Now You See Me (2013), and Lucy (2014).

He has also been awarded the Kennedy Center Honor in 2008, an AFI Life Achievement Award in 2011, the Cecil B. DeMille Award in 2012, and Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award in 2018.

Born in Memphis, Tennessee, Freeman was raised in Mississippi, where he began acting in school plays.

He studied theater arts in Los Angeles and appeared in stage productions in his early career.