Famous Morgan Freeman Net Worth And TV Roles

Morgan Freeman was born June 1, 1937 and he is an American actor, director and narrator. 

Morgan Freeman Biography

He was born on June 1, 1937, in Memphis, Tennessee. He is the son of Mamie Edna (born Revere; 1912–2000), a teacher, and Morgan Porterfield Freeman (July 6, 1915 – April 27, 1961), a barber, who died of cirrhosis in 1961. 

He have three older brothers. According to DNA analysis, some of his ancestors were from the Songhai and Tuareg people of Niger.

Some of his great-great-grandparents were slaves who migrated from North Carolina to Mississippi. He was later discovering that her Caucasian maternal great-great-grandfather had lived with and was buried next to Freeman’s African-American great-great-grandmother in the segregated South, as the two could not legally marry at the time.

DNA testing suggested that among all his African ancestors, just over a quarter came from the area stretching from present-day Senegal to Liberia and three quarters came from the Congo-Angola region. 

As an infant, he was posted to his paternal grandmother in Charleston, Mississippi. He moved frequently during his childhood, living in Greenwood, Mississippi; Gary, Ind.; and finally Chicago, Illinois. 

When he was 16, he contracted pneumonia.  He was making his acting debut at the age of nine, playing the lead in a school play. He then was attending Broad Street High School, a building that is now Threadgill Elementary School, in Greenwood, Mississippi. At age 12, he was winning a statewide drama competition and, while settling into school, he was discovering music and theater.

He resides in Charleston, Mississippi and maintains a home in New York City. He was obtaining a private pilot’s license at age 65 and he have  or has had at least three private aircraft, including a Cessna Citation 501, a twin-engine Cessna 414, and an Emivest SJ30.

When he was asked if he believed in God, he said, “It’s a difficult question because, as I said at the beginning, I think we invented God. So if I believe in God, and I do, it’s because I believe I’m God.” He later said that his experience working on God’s Story with Morgan Freemanhe did not change his views on religion. 

On the night of August 3, 2008, he was injured in a car accident when his 1997 Nissan Maxima rolled over near Ruleville, Mississippi. 

He and his passenger, Demaris Meyer, had to be freed from the vehicle with hydraulic tools. He was conscious after the accident and joked around with a photographer at the scene. 

He was airlifted to The Regional Medical Center (The Med) in Memphis.  He fractured his left shoulder, arm, and elbow and required surgery on August 5. Doctors operated on him for four hours to repair nerve damage in his shoulder and arm.  His publicist announced that he was expected to make a full recovery.

Although alcohol was not considered a factor in the accident,  Meyer sued him for negligence, claiming that he had been consuming alcohol, but the lawsuit was ultimately settled for an undisclosed amount. Since the incident, he has suffered from fibromyalgia.

In December 2010, he was joining President Bill Clinton, United States Soccer Federation President Sunil Gulati, and soccer player Landon Donovan in Zurich for a presentation to run for the World Cup hosting rights. 

Morgan Freeman Career

He has worked as a dancer at the 1964 World’s Fair and was a member of the Opera Ring musical theater group in San Francisco. He has acted in a touring company version of The Royal Hunt of the Sun, and also appeared as an extra in Sidney Lumet’s 1965 drama film The Pawnbroker, starring Rod Steiger.

Between acting and dancing jobs, Freeman realized that acting was what interested her. “After, my acting career took off,” he later recalled.

He made his Off-Broadway debut in 1967, opposite Viveca Lindfors in The Nigger Lovers,a show about the Freedom Riders during the American Civil Rights Movement, before making his Broadway debut in the 1968 all-black version of Hello, Dolly! which also starred in Pearl Bailey and Cab Calloway. In 1969, he was also performing on stage in The Dozens .

He had four releases in 1989. In his first, he played Sergeant Major John Rawlins in Glory , directed by Edward Zwick, about the 54th Massachusetts Regiment of Infantry, the second African-American regiment in the Union Army in the American Civil War. 

Writing for The Washington Post , Desson Thomson praised Freeman and co-star Denzel Washington for their “warm sense of brotherhood”. Glory has been nominated for five Academy Awards and won three: Best Supporting Actor for Washington, Best Cinematography, and Best Sound. 

He was next starring in the comedy-drama Driving Miss Daisy ,alongside Jessica Tandy and Dan Aykroyd. Based on Alfred Uhry’s play, in which he previously appeared, he reprises his role as Hoke Colburn, a chauffeur to a Jewish widow. The film was a commercial success, grossing $145 million worldwide. 

Film critics were mostly positive; Henry Sheehan of The Hollywood Reporter opined that him and Tandy’s performances complemented each other while retaining their “individual star quality”.  The film was nominated for nine Academy Awards, including Best Actor for him. 

His third release was the biographical drama Lean on Me , in which he plays the principal of an underperforming, drug- and crime-ridden New Jersey high school. Jane Galbraith of Variety magazine thought Freeman’s casting was “wonderful” . 

Finally, in 1989, he starred in Walter Hill’s Johnny Handsome , a drama in which he plays a New Orleans police officer. 

In a 1990 interview, he said that Glorywas one of his favorite releases: “Black’s legacy is just as noble, it’s just as heroic, it’s just as full of adventure and conquest and discovery as anyone else’s. It’s just that no one knows.” 

In 1990, he was providing the voice of Frederick Douglass in The Civil War, a television miniseries about the American Civil War.

That year, he also was starring in the critically panned Bonfire of the Vanities .

In the summer of 1990, he was playing Petruchio, a role he had been thinking about for six years, in Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew , which opened at the Delacorte Theater in New York City.

In 1991, he was having a supporting role in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves , an action adventure that was starred by Kevin Costner. 

The film was a commercial success, but received mixed reviews from critics; The New York Times ‘s Vincent Canby thought that he portrayed Azeem with “wit and humor” despite the “confusing” plot.  He was also narrating The True Story of Glory Continues, a documentary about the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment. 

In 1992, he was appearing in Clint Eastwood’s western Unforgiven , which won four Academy Awards, including Best Picture.

The film follows William Munny Eastwood, an aging outlaw and assassin who takes one more job with his old friend Ned Logan. Unforgiven was widely acclaimed, with one reviewer calling his performance “outstanding”. 

​​The Power of One was his second film in 1992, loosely adapted from Bryce Courtenay’s 1989 novel of the same name, in which he plays boxing trainer Geel Piet. 

In 1993, he was making his directorial debut with the drama Bopha! , which tells the story of a black policeman ( Danny Glover ) during the apartheid era in South Africa. 

Hal Hinson of The Washington Post wrote, “Freeman presents the father-son dynamic with great skill and very little fuss. There is no hysteria in his approach; instead, he sticks to the facts, relying on his cast to provide the thrill.

The result is a surprisingly powerful and revealing film.” Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times also praised Freeman’s direction, but thought the film was “more predictable than powerful“. 

Morgan Freeman Filmography

 TV Roles:

• The Long Way Home (1997)
• March of the Penguins (2005)
• The Story of God with Morgan Freeman (2016)
• The Story of Us with Morgan Freeman (2017)

Morgan Freeman Awards And Nominations

He has been recognized by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for the following performances:

• 60th Academy Awards: Best Supporting Actor, nomination, for Street Smart (1987) 
• 62nd Academy Awards: Best Actor, nomination, for Driving Miss Daisy (1989) 
• 67th Academy Awards : Best Actor, nomination, for The Shawshank Redemption (1994) 
• 77th Academy Awards: Best Supporting Actor, Win , for Million Dollar Baby (2004) 
• 82nd Academy Awards: Best Actor, nomination, for Invictus (2009)

Morgan Freeman Net Worth

His net worth is $200 million 2021.

In 1997, him and his business partner Lori McCreary was founding Revelations Entertainment, a film production company. 

They also was founding ClickStar in 2006, a movie download company, with investment from Intel Corporation. 

He owns and operates Ground Zero, a blues club in Clarksdale, Mississippi, and is the former co-owner of Madidi, a fine dining restaurant in the same city.

Morgan Freeman Personal Life

He was married to Jeanette Adair Bradshaw from October 22, 1967 to November 18, 1979 and subsequently married Myrna Colley-Lee on June 16, 1984.

The couple separated in December 2007  and divorced in September 15, 2010.  He has four children: Alfonso, Deena, Morgana, and Saifoulaye.

Freeman and Colley-Lee adopted Freeman’s granddaughter from her first marriage, E’dena Hines, and raised her together.

On August 16, 2015, Hines, 33, was murdered in New York City.