Morgan Freeman
Actor, Director and producer

Born:  June 1, 1937 (age 78), Memphis, Tennessee, United States 

 Freeman joined the air force after high school to become a fighter pilot. He later realized it wasn't what he'd wanted, and began his acting career. After years of small parts and limited success, he began to land big roles and win critical and popular acclaim


Early Passion for acting:

As a kid, Freeman spent a good portion of his time scraping together enough money to see movies, where he formed an early admiration for actors like Gary Cooper, Spencer Tracy and Sidney Poitier. It was by chance that Freeman himself got into acting. Was in junior high school and, as punishment for pulling out a chair from underneath a girl he had a crush on, Freeman was ordered to participate in the school's drama competition. Freeman loved to act, flying—in particular the idea of being a fighter pilot—was in his heart of hearts. And so, upon graduating high school in 1955, Morgan turned down a partial drama scholarship and joined the U.S. Air Force.
Before studying acting, the Memphis-born Freeman attended Los Angeles Community College and served a five-year stint with the Air Force from 1955 to 1959. After getting his start on the stage, he worked in television, playing Easy Reader on the PBS children's educational series The Electric Company from 1971 through 1976. During that period, Freeman also made his movie debut in the lighthearted children's movie Who Says I Can't Ride a Rainbow? (1971).

Freeman's television and feature film appearances through the '70s were sporadic, but in 1980, he earned critical acclaim for his work in the prison drama Brubaker. He gained additional recognition for his work on the small screen with a regular role on the daytime drama Days of Our Lives from 1982 to 1984. For much of the rest of the decade, Freeman took on roles that earned him some acclaim—but not the big, powerful jobs that would garner A-list attention. There was a part in the 1984 Paul Newman film Harry and Son, and he was narrator for the TV mini series, The Atlanta Child Murders among other roles.



Hollywood Star:

In 1987, Freeman's fortunes changed when he was cast in the film Street Smart, which placed the actor on the screen as the volatile pimp Fast Black. The role proved to be huge success for Freeman, earning him an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor. Two years later,  Freeman's film career duly took off and he appeared in a string of excellent films that began with the powerful Clean and Sober (1988) and continued with Driving Miss Daisy (1989),  earned more acclaim—a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor and a second Oscar nomination , he also played a tough and cynical gravedigger who joins a newly formed regiment of black Union soldiers helmed by Matthew Broderick in Glory. The acclaim he won for that role was replicated with his portrayal of a high school principal in that same year's Lean on Me.   By the 1990s, Freeman was starring in such big budget films as 1994's The Shawshank Redemption, Seven (1995) and Deep Impact (1998).
 In 1993, Freeman demonstrated his skills on the other side of the camera, making his directorial debut with Bopha!, the story of a South African cop alienated from his son by apartheid and  The following year, the actor received a third Oscar nomination as an aged lifer in the prison drama The Shawshank Redemption 


Personal Life:

Freeman was married to Jeanette Adair Bradshaw from October 22, 1967, until November 18, 1979.
He married Myrna Colley-Lee on June 16, 1984. The couple separated in December 2007. Freeman's attorney and business partner Bill Luckett announced in August 2008 that Freeman and his wife were in divorce proceedings.  On September 15, 2010, their divorce was finalized in Mississippi. Freeman and Colley-Lee adopted Freeman's stepgranddaughter from his first marriage, Edena Hines, and raised her together. On August 16, 2015, 33-year-old Hines was murdered in New York City.
In 2008 the TV series African American Lives 2 revealed that some of Freeman's great-great-grandparents were slaves who migrated from North Carolina to Mississippi. Freeman discovered that his Caucasian maternal great-great-grandfather had lived with, and was buried beside, Freeman's African-American great-great-grandmother (in the segregated South, the two could not marry legally at the time). A DNA test on the series stated that he is descended in part from the Songhai and Tuareg peoples of Níger.