Morgan Freeman is often cast as the voice of authority, and 'Lucy' is no different
He has become Hollywood's go-to guy for gravitas, but Morgan Freeman's career is a mix of high and low art
He's played presidents, professors, doctors and judges. He was God in Evan Almighty and Nelson Mandela in Invictus. Yet Morgan Freeman is the first to admit he's not so special in real life. "The only thing I've ever been really good at, if I can toot my own horn here, is pretending to be something I'm not," he says, modestly, in that rich, comforting baritone - one of the reasons he's so frequently cast as the voice of authority.
His latest film, Lucy, begins with Freeman's character, neurology expert Professor Norman, explaining the human brain - espousing the commonly held theory that we only use 10 per cent of the organ. "I subscribe to it because it's hopeful to subscribe to it; that at some point or other we may access more of the brain," he tells me. "But on the other hand, that might not be the truth. The truth may be that we use quite a bit more of the brain than 10 per cent of it."
Arguably, you may not need to use much more than the requisite 10 per cent to follow Lucy, a typically frenetic action film from Luc Besson, the French director behind The Fifth Element, Léon: The Professional and La Femme Nikita. The story sees Scarlett Johansson play the title character, an exchange student in Taipei who becomes a drug mule for gangsters peddling an experimental narcotic. When it leaks into her stomach, it expands her brain capacity to superhuman levels.
It's not the first time Freeman has worked with Besson. In 2005, they made Unleashed, a crime drama co-starring Jet Li Lianjie, which Besson wrote but didn't direct. "I met him [Besson] then and I liked him a lot. And the moviemaking experience just made me like him more. He's really terrific and very easy to work with," the actor says.
Given that Unleashed arrived in the year he won his only Oscar to date - for Clint Eastwood's boxing saga Million Dollar Baby - it's been understandably overlooked. Still, this little passage symbolises Freeman's career, which is a mix of high and low art.