In his role as a street singer in Threepenny Opera he received his first review, a positive one in the San Francisco Chronicle, but soon returned to New York City. In 1966 Morgan Freeman was given the opportunity to replace one of the leads in The Royal Hunt of the Sun, Peter Shaffer's play about the conquest of the Inca. He subsequently appeared in George Tabori's The Niggerlovers off-Broadway, and, through Stacy Keach's intervention, got in touch with agent Jeff Hunter, who got him a part as Rudolph in an all-black version of the musical, Hello Dolly.
In 1969 he appeared in plays in Boston, Philadelphia, and New York City, starring in Purlie at the American National Theatre and Academy. That same year he played Easy Reader on The Electric Company, a public television show designed to help children learn to read. He played this role for the next five years. When he returned to the stage to play Zeke in Richard Wesley's The Mighty Gents (1978), he earned a Tony nomination, a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Feature Actor in a Play, and a Clarence Derwent Award for Best Newcomer. Newsweek reviewer Jack Kroll said of his performance, "Morgan Freeman paints a shadowing portrait of ultimate despair."
In 1979 he had a supporting role in Julius Caesar with the New York Shakespeare Festival and was soon selected to play the title role in Shakespeare's Coriolanus. For this performance and for his role as a chaplain in Mother Courage and Her Children, he received Obie Awards. His first significant films were prison themed, particularly in ROBERT REDFORD's Brubaker and in Attica (both 1980), a TV movie about the violent inmate revolts at the New York State penitentiary. More significant film roles were to follow later in the decade. In 1987 he won a Golden Globe award for his role in Street Smart and appeared as Hoke Colburn in the stage version of Driving Miss Daisy, which really enabled his development as a screen actor.
Aside from his affecting performance with Jessica Tandy in the film adaptation of Driving Miss Daisy (1989), which earned an ACADEMY AWARD nomination, Morgan Freeman had few leading roles, but his work as a character actor was dependable and steady. He costarred with Matthew Broderick and DENZEL WASHINGTON in the Civil War drama Glory (1989). He was the Moorish sidekick of KEVIN COSTNER in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991), for example, and CLINT EASTWOOD's sidekick in Unforgiven (1992). Unfortunately there is no Academy Award category for Best Sidekick, and despite Morgan Freeman's fine performance in Unforgiven, GENE HACKMAN won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. Morgan Freeman was nominated for the Best Actor Oscar, a Golden Globe, and a Screen Actors Guild award for his performance in The Shawshank Redemption (1995). The following year he appeared in two films, Moll Flanders and Chain Reaction, but both films were failures, critically and financially.
In 1997, however, in Kiss the Girls Morgan Freeman played a cop chasing down a serial killer in a role much like his role in Seven (1995). Also in 1997, he played a freed slave who defends the Africans who slaughtered their white captors while on a slave ship to America in STEVEN SPIELBERG's Amistad. The film, a box-office success, earned Morgan Freeman an Image Award from the NAACP for Best Supporting Actor. Following this success, he played the president of the United States in Deep Impact (1998), which suffered at the box office because of its similarity to Armageddon. About Morgan Freeman's performance, Richard Schickel wrote in Time magazine, "You find yourself hoping that when Armageddon arrives, someone as sensible, humane, and good-fatherish as Morgan Freeman is in the White House." This role earned Morgan Freeman yet another Image Award from the NAACP.
Playing against his good-guy image, Morgan Freeman took the role of the leader of a group of villains in a small Midwest town in Hard Rain (1998) but was not so successful. In Along Came a Spider (1999), Morgan Freeman played a role similar to his character in Kiss the Girls. Morgan Freeman has also appeared in trendy films such as Nurse Betty (2000), where he plays a minor role as a hit man who prides himself for his professionalism and wants to be seen in contrast to the younger hit man played by Chris Rock. In Under Suspicion (2000), Morgan Freeman played opposite fellow character actor GENE HACKMAN, essentially a two-man filmed play consisting of a cat-andmouse game between the two characters. The film, which was jointly produced by Hackman and Morgan Freeman, grossed more than $250 million.
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1. Abbot and Costello were very popular during the sound era
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