Morgan Freeman - Charlie in Nurse Betty - Yenra

Biography, Filmography

Picture of Morgan FreemanThree-time Academy Award nominee Morgan Freeman (Charlie in Nurse Betty) is one of America's most accomplished actors. He has given memorable performances on screen, stage, and television.

The Memphis, Tennessee, native graduated from high school in Greenwood, Mississippi. He then moved to California, where he studied dance and theater arts at Los Angeles City College. He made his Broadway debut in 1967 with Pearl Bailey in Hello, Dolly!

For television, Freeman created the popular character Easy Reader on the classic Children's Television Workshop series The Electric Company, on which he was a regular cast member. His subsequent television credits include the miniseries The Atlanta Child Murders and the telefilm The Execution of Raymond Graham.

His stage career continued with The Mighty Gents. That performance earned him a Drama Desk Award, the Clarence Derwent Award, and a Tony Award nomination. He received further acclaim and his first Obie Award for his lead performance in the New York Shakespeare Festival production of Coriolanus. Freeman received a second Obie, as well as a Dramalogue Award, for his role as the Messenger in the acclaimed Brooklyn Academy of Music production of Lee Breuer's The Gospel at Colonus. Freeman's most recent stage appearance was as Petruchio in the New York Shakespeare Festival production of The Taming of the Shrew, opposite Tracey Ullman.

The role of Hoke Coleburn in Alfred Uhry's Pulitzer Prize-winning Driving Miss Daisy earned Freeman his third Obie. He would later receive an Academy Award nomination for playing the same role in Bruce Beresford's Oscar-winning film version, in which Freeman starred opposite Jessica Tandy. His performance in the film version also earned him a Golden Globe Award and the Silver Bear Award for Best Actor at the Berlin Film Festival.

His many film credits include Stuart Rosenberg's Brubaker, Peter Yates's Eyewitness, Paul Newman's Harry and Son, Christopher Cain's That Was Then, This Is Now, Jerry Schatzberg's Street Smart (for which Freeman received his first Academy Award nomination), Glenn Gordon Caron's Clean and Sober, Edward Zwick's Glory, Kevin Reynolds's Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Clint Eastwood's Academy Award-winning Unforgiven, Frank Darabont's The Shawshank Redemption (for which Freeman received his third Oscar nomination), Wolfgang Petersen's Outbreak, David Fincher's Se7en, and Pen Densham's Moll Flanders.

More recently, Freeman starred onscreen as Alex Cross in Kiss the Girls, directed by Gary Fleder; for director Steven Spielberg in Amistad; in Mikael Salomon's Hard Rain; and as the president of the United States in Mimi Leder's Deep Impact. He will reprise the role of Alex Cross for director Lee Tamahori in Along Came a Spider, which he is also executive-producing.

Freeman made his feature-film directorial debut with 1993's Bopha! which starred Danny Glover and Alfre Woodard. He soon after formed Revelations Entertainment, which has thus far produced the NBC telefilm Port Chicago Mutiny and the feature film Under Suspicion, directed by Stephen Hopkins and costarring Freeman and Gene Hackman.

Filmography