Morgan Freeman: it’s an insult to be called African-American

Morgan Freeman has played Nelson Mandela, the US president (three times) and, of course, God. He is, as you would expect, thoughtful and humble. He even sports a grey beard. On Instagram his biog says: “That actor whose voice you recognise” — and, aged 85, he still talks like low, rumbling thunder.

Only one thing shocks me. And it’s not his two gold earrings. It is that, after years of trying, I’m finally talking to him. Freeman, the embodiment of 60 years of Hollywood history, has not given an interview in decades.

He is chatting to me from his home on the Alabama Gulf coast, because of A Good Person, a film he has made with the young British star Florence Pugh. The reviews have been, shall we say, mixed — far from the peak Freeman of The Shawshank Redemption, Unforgiven, Glory, Invictus, Driving Miss Daisy, Seven and Million Dollar Baby. He plays Daniel, a former cop who suffers a tragedy and must bring up his granddaughter. Yet the melodrama has its tender moments, especially when Freeman and Pugh share a screen.

It is, at least, Freeman’s 117th film. Nobody seems sure how many he has made. How does he pick them? “Sometimes you just work to pay the rent,” he says. Perhaps this is why he avoids interviews. Then he expands. “When my career started in film I wanted to be a chameleon. I remember De Niro early on, doing very different parts. Almost unrecognisable as the same actor. I had opportunities like that. But as you mature in this business, eventually you become a star. Then you’re pretty screwed in terms of referring to yourself as a character actor. You play a lot of the same type of role — people hire you and say, ‘It’s you that I want.’ And you live with it.”