Morgan Freeman has had an impressive and highly varied career on stage, television and screen that began in the mid-'60s in an off-Broadway production of The Niggerlovers and a 1968 Broadway performance as Purlie opposite Pearl Bailey in an all-African American production of Hello Dolly! He went on to have a successful career both on and off-Broadway playing everything from musicals to contemporary drama to Shakespeare.

Before studying acting, the Memphis-born Freeman attended Los Angeles Community College and served a five year stint with the Air Force (1955-1959). On television, he is remembered for playing "Easy Reader" on the PBS children's educational series The Electric Company from 1971 through 1976. Freeman made his movie debut in the light-hearted children's movie Who Says I Can't Ride a Rainbow? (1971). But for his work on the PBS, show, 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. His subsequent '80s films were generally undistinguished until he played the dangerously emotional pimp in Street Smart (1987) and earned his first Oscar nomination. Between 1982 and 1984, he was a regular on Days of Our Lives. Following the success of Street Smart, Freeman's film career 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), in which Freeman reprised his Obie winning role of a dignified, patient Southern chauffeur and earned his second Oscar nomination for his efforts. In 1989, he also played a tough and cynical gravedigger who joins a newly formed regiment of black Union soldiers helmed by Matthew Broderick in Glory. Freeman has been one of the few African American actors to play roles not specifically written for black males as can be seen in Kevin Costner's Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991) where he played Robin's sidekick and in Clint Eastwood's violent western The Unforgiven. In 1993, Freeman tried his hand at directing with Bopha, the story of a black South African cop who is alienated from his son by apartheid. The following year, the actor received a third Oscar nomination for playing an aged lifer in the prison drama The Shawshank Redemption. Other notable film roles include a turn as a world-weary detective working with a cocky new partner in Seven (1995).