Morgan Freeman is still surprised by the scripts people send him, he says." I have this reputation for gravitas and all, so a lot of the stuff I get will be on that level. You know, the character who is wise, the person people go to for his advice, blah blah."
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
He shouldn't be too taken aback, and he knows it. He has a famously mellifluous voice, and he has played God - in the comedy Bruce Almighty and its sequel - and Nelson Mandela (in Invictus). But this doesn't mean he's going to be drawn to gravitas forever, he says. "I try not to do that particular type of role, it gets boring."
His new film, released in Australia this week, is 5 Flights Up, in which he co-stars with Diane Keaton - and it's her presence that was a good reason to do this particular film. He's been wanting to work with her for a few years, he says.
5 Flights Up is the story of a New York couple, Alex and Ruth, who are beginning to realise that their Brooklyn apartment is not going to be their home forever. They begin to look elsewhere for a place, and they open their apartment to prospective buyers, with often comic results. Meanwhile, New York is in gridlock after a bridge accident, a suspected terrorist is on the loose. And, much to the couple's distress, their beloved dog becomes ill.
Freeman was always ready to take on what he describes as "a nice little love story". It's story, rather than character that he looks for in a script, he says, And with 5 Flights Up "once you get the other ingredient, the person you're going to get play the wife, then it sort of gels. Once we got an OK from Diane Keaton I was hot to trot, because I really, really, really like her.
"We met in 2008, when I was working on Broadway," he says. Freeman was starring opposite Frances McDormand and Peter Gallagher in a Mike Nichols revival of The Country Girl, the play by Clifford Odets about a once-great actor on the verge of a comeback. "Diane was one of the people who came to see it and then came backstage to say hello. And we agreed then that we wanted to work together, it was just a matter of finding the right project."
He calls 5 Flights Up "one of those stories that has some soul and depth, but is not too heavy". It is based on a 2009 novel by Jill Ciment called Heroic Measures. Many of the elements in the story are the same, although Ciment's characters are not an interracial couple.
In the film, Ruth recalls that when she and Alex married, their relationship was illegal in 30 states. As they contemplate leaving the home that has meant so much to them, they both remember incidents from the past, some fondly, some with pain. In these flashbacks, the roles are played by two younger performers: Ruth is Australian actress Claire van der Boom, and Alex is Korey Jackson.
5 Flights Up is also a love letter to New York, and to the importance of connections with a place. Morgan has been a New Yorker, and he knows the city well, but he doesn't live there any more. If there's any place he feels attached to, he says, it's his home in Mississippi. "I have deep roots there, my roots run deep there for many generations. I have a sense of belonging there."
His career has encompassed theatre and film, blockbusters and dramas, science fiction and comedy. It's a long, varied CV, but it began slowly: at a low ebb in the 1980s, he considered applying for a taxi driver's licence, before taking a role in the daytime soap Another World. After two years there, he was cast in a feature, Harry And Son. Things began to take off in earnest when he created one of his best-known roles, chauffeur Hoke Colburn in Driving Miss Daisy. He was in the first production, off Broadway, in 1987.
His first Oscar nomination came in 1987, for the role of a hustler in Street Smart, opposite Christopher Reeve. He was nominated for Driving Miss Daisy and The Shawshank Redemption, but he had to wait until Million Dollar Baby (2004) to win. It was one of three films he has made for his friend Clint Eastwood.
Freeman is shooting a movie at the moment; speaking from New York after a day on set, where he's making Going In Style, the remake of a 1979 movie about three elderly men in straitened circumstances who decide to rob a bank. The trio consists of Freeman, Alan Arkin and Michael Caine. Ann-Margret is also in the cast. It's the sixth time Caine and Freeman have made a movie together.
There are now no unsatisfied ambitions, he says. "Over the past 20-some years in the movies, I've pretty much done all I can do. I could wish I was still young enough to do some of the action stuff I've wanted to do, but other than that, I can't think of anything to wish for."
5 Flights Up is now screening.
