Morgan Freeman Once Felt Dying While Acting Would Be the Perfect Way to Go
Actor Morgan Freeman is one of Hollywood’s most iconic stars with several notable movies under his belt. His passion for acting and the film industry is so deep that he once confided he wouldn’t mind dying while performing.
Morgan Freeman once explained why he preferred acting in films
Freeman isn’t a stranger to acting on stage. As is the case with quite a few actors, he got his start in theater. According to an old interview Freeman did with The New York Times, Freeman received his first notable role in 1967 in a Broadway play.
After putting in a considerable amount of work performing on stage, The Shawshank Redemption star would eventually get his big break with movies. Which was his goal all along, especially since Freeman considered work in movies easier than work in plays.
“I really spent 20 years in theater trying to get into the movies,” Freeman said. “From childhood that’s what I wanted to do. Mostly I don’t want to do stage. It’s too much work. Movies, you do a little work, make a lot of money and move on. I like that. And I think I’ve paid my dues.”
Morgan Freeman once shared he couldn’t dream of a better way to go than to die acting
Freeman enjoys the craft of acting so much that he wouldn’t mind living out his last moments doing a performance. Freeman referenced what happened to comedian Dick Shaw as an ideal death. Shaw ended up experiencing a fatal heart attack while doing a bit in 1987.
“He (Dick) dropped dead and he got a laugh! You couldn’t dream of a better way to go. I’m not worried about anything,” he once told The Daily Telegraph (via Tribute) about his own mortality.
Despite Freeman’s passion for acting, he preferred to only act in films. For him, doing stage plays was out of the question.
“I will never set foot on anybody’s live stage again,” he said. “Two months into performances we would go on stage, look at each other and go, ‘What the f*** are we doing here?'”
Freeman had the same attitude towards doing television shows.
“It’s a job, 9 to 5, five days a week,” he said.
Why Morgan Freeman once decided to do a stage play despite hating theater
Although Freeman was glad he was able to do movies, acting in films for too long came with a consequence. To Freeman, when an actor stuck around films for too long, the audience might always see them as a movie actor.
“Earlier in your career you’re more chameleonlike,” he said. “Nobody knows you. You can shape-shift and pull it off, but after a while, and this is the whole stardom thing, after a while it doesn’t come across. You get boxed in in film.”
It’s partially for this reason that Freeman would later agree to do the Broadway play The Country Girl. The Se7en star had become weary of the types of characters he was playing on screen. So he turned to theater to break the pattern.
“There’s a finite number of characters who are like that before you start repeating yourself ad nauseam. I think that’s the bigger danger than being Mr. Gravitas,” he once said according to CBS. “You look at your last work and say, ‘That’s four characters in a row that said, did, thought, acted the same. They’re going to find me out any minute now.'”
