The only actor who made Morgan Freeman jealous

(Authors: Far Out / YouTube Still)

Mon 18 Nov 2024 17:45 UK

Morgan Freeman worked with some of the greatest actors of all time. Robert De Niro, Jack Nicholson, Gene Hackman, Helen Mirren – the list goes on. After six decades in the business, he knows a good actor from a movie star, and he knows what performers are lucky enough to be both.

Freeman is also one of them, though he almost certainly wouldn’t call himself one. Having started working in the theater in the 1960s, he was arguing with Shakespeare long before his Hollywood breakthrough in 1989 with Glory and Miss Daisy is driving. He commanded as much respect in the industry from the start as David Fincher too scared to call him to offer him the lead role in his film Se7enand he even got one of the most coveted endorsements an actor could ask for, when Hollywood great Sidney Poitier said without any doubt that Freeman was “one of the greatest actors in the world”.

For a star who commands so much respect from his peers, it’s not something to be taken lightly when Freeman pays it forward and praises someone else. In 2019, he did so, telling Variety that Denzel Washington is so talented that he’s jealous. At the time, it had just been announced that Washington would be the recipient of an AFI Lifetime Achievement Award, an award that has been honored by the likes of Orson Welles, Meryl Streep and Freeman himself.

“Denzel is more than worthy of this honor,” Freeman told rosette. “He is one of the people in film that I admire and envy the most, because he embodies the three qualities that this profession requires: perseverance, versatility and charisma.”

The actors go way back in time, even before they starred together in the civil war drama Glory in 1989. A decade before the film, Washington had recently graduated from acting school when he landed a small part in a play Coriolanus at the New York Shakespeare Festival. Freeman played the main role in the play, and Washington staged a chivalrous scene with him. He later recalled trying to convince the older actor to prolong the fight so Washington could have more stage time, and that Freeman cut him down to size with one wordless look.

Freeman may not have realized his young co-star’s potential at the time, but he certainly changed his mind by the time they appeared together in Glory decades later.

As far as Washington is concerned, the respect is mutual. He can have rejected opportunity to work with Freeman again when he was offered the role in Se7enbut it was not because he did not admire his own Coriolanus co-star Speaking about his first meeting with the actor at the Kennedy Center Honors in 2008, Washington said Freeman had a “divine sense of timing” and a “perfect ear for nuance.”

Although many moviegoers would love to see the two friends and acting legends together again, the outlook has become less hopeful in recent months after Washington announced his plans to retire within the next few years. Freeman, who is in his late 90s, has not announced plans to retire.

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