Morgan Freeman, star of Ben-Hur, talks God, motivation and guacamole
Down-to-earth as ever, the veteran actor says there’s no secret to playing divinity on screen – ‘read the freaking script’ – and that acting is a job that sometimes throws up extraordinary roles
Morgan Freeman, the velvet-voiced doyen of some of America’s best-loved movies, not to mention one of the suavest actors in the business, sometimes lets his cool crown slip.
The 79-year-old famously nodded off on camera during a 2015 interview and was upbraided earlier this year for “drooling” over a producer during a video interview.
This week it was a loud, gassy burp that elicited gales of shocked laughter from a handful of journalists gathered in a Beverly Hills hotel to hear Freeman talk about his latest movie, Ben-Hur.
“Pardon me, I just had guacamole,” the twice-divorced father-of-four said in his irresistible, pancake-syrup timbre, impish glint in his eye, looking anything but embarrassed.
Freeman, the apotheosis of debonair Hollywood superstardom when he’s not reliving his lunch, knows he can get away with a lot in interviews.
Since his inauspicious, uncredited debut as “man on street” in Sidney Lumet’s 1964 movie The Pawnbroker, Freeman’s 79 films – one for every year – have made US$4.3 billion at the box office.
That’s more than the GDP of 10 African countries and about the same as the combined receipts of the films of Al Pacino and Robert De Niro.