Surprisingly, he turned down acting scholarships when he graduated from high school, and in 1954 joined the air force, an institution that had only recently been desegregated. "I had a partial scholarship to two places, but I had a great need to get out of where I was and see more of the world, which outweighed everything else for me then. I was very much in transition."
After five years in the service, he spent the 1960s trying to learn his trade, doing stints with acting and dance troupes in Los Angeles and San Francisco before settling in New York, working on stage and snagging the occasional small movie part. Of the blaxploitation boom that drew black actors to Hollywood in droves in the early 1970s, he says: "For me there was nothing attractive or interesting or rewarding about blaxploitation, so I stayed in New York." By the mid-70s, he was an established stage actor, drawing good notices in The Taming of the Shrew and Coriolanus, until he retired from the stage when his movie career took off.
After Street Smart and Driving Miss Daisy, Freeman found himself heavily in demand before settling into a sort of "Bad-Back Pack" of older actors who are never out of work, many of whom have been his co-stars: Gene Hackman (his Unforgiven nemesis), Jack Nicholson (soon to be seen with Freeman in The Bucket Club, about two old farts who escape the terminal ward and do everything they never had the guts to do before they kick the titular pail), Clint Eastwood (who may soon direct Freeman for the third time, as Nelson Mandela) and Anthony Hopkins (a fellow adherent of the "just act, dear boy" school of performance). Though he probably works a little too often for his own good, one can hardly blame him for trying to make up for his long early career in the wilderness. Plus, he gets all the plum roles anyway.
You've played God and the US president, I tell him. Do you feel guilty about taking food from the mouth of Sean Connery? "Oh, no," he laughs, "Up here it's every man for himself! But yes, I played the president in Deep Impact. You feel like the press accepts without question, but one interviewer asked me, 'What's it like to play a black president?' And I said, what on earth do you mean - it's like playing the president! I think that's the difference between me and a lot of other actors. I just don't think so much in those terms."
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