Morgan Freeman is an American actor, producer, and narrator. In a career spanning six decades, he has received numerous accolades, including an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award, as well as a nomination for a Grammy Award and a Tony Award. He was honored with the Kennedy Center Honor in 2008, an AFI Life Achievement Award in 2011, the Cecil B. DeMille Award in 2012, and Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award in 2018. In a 2022 readers' poll by Empire, he was voted one of the 50 greatest actors of all time.
Born in Memphis, Tennessee, Freeman was raised in Mississippi, where he began acting in school plays. He studied theater arts in Los Angeles and appeared in stage productions in his early career. He rose to fame in the 1970s for his role in the children's television series The Electric Company. Freeman then appeared in the Shakespearean plays Coriolanus and Julius Caesar, the former of which earned him an Obie Award.