Morgan Freeman (born June 1, 1937) is an American actor, director, and narrator. He is known for his distinctive deep voice and various roles in a wide variety of film genres. Throughout his career spanning over five decades, he has received multiple accolades, including an Academy Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, and a Golden Globe Award. He is the recipient of the Kennedy Center Honor in 2008, the AFI Life Achievement Award in 2011, the Cecil B. DeMille Award in 2012, and the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award in 2018.

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. In 1978 he received a nomination for the Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play for his role as Zeke in the Richard Wesley play The Mighty Gents.

Freeman went on to receive the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in Clint Eastwood's sports drama Million Dollar Baby (2004). His other Oscar-nominated roles were in Street Smart (1987), Driving Miss Daisy (1989), The Shawshank Redemption (1994), and Invictus (2009). Notable roles include in Glory (1989), Lean on Me (1989), Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991), Unforgiven (1992), Se7en (1995), Amistad (1997), Gone Baby Gone (2007), and The Bucket List (2007). He also portrayed Lucius Fox in Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight Trilogy (2005–2012). He also starred in the action films Wanted (2008), Red (2010), Oblivion (2013), Now You See Me (2013), and Lucy (2014).

Known for his distinctive voice he has narrated numerous documentary projects including The Long Way Home (1997), March of the Penguins (2005), Through the Wormhole (2010-2017), The Story of God with Morgan Freeman (2016-2019), and Our Universe (2022). He has directed the drama Bopha! (1993). He also founded film production company Revelations Entertainment with business partner Lori McCreary in 1996.

Early life
Morgan Freeman was born on June 1, 1937, in Memphis, Tennessee. He is the son of Mamie Edna (née Revere; 1912–2000), a teacher, and Morgan Porterfield Freeman (July 6, 1915 – April 27, 1961), a barber, who died of cirrhosis in 1961. He has three older siblings. According to DNA analysis, some of his ancestors were from the Songhai and Tuareg people of Niger. Some of Freeman's great-great-grandparents were slaves who migrated from North Carolina to Mississippi. Freeman later discovered that his Caucasian maternal great-great-grandfather had lived with, and was buried beside Freeman's African-American great-great-grandmother in the segregated South, as the two could not legally marry at the time. The DNA test suggested that among all of his African ancestors, a little over one-quarter came from the area that stretches from present-day Senegal to Liberia and three-quarters came from the Congo-Angola region.

As an infant, Freeman was sent to his paternal grandmother in Charleston, Mississippi. He moved frequently during his childhood, living in Greenwood, Mississippi; Gary, Indiana; and finally Chicago, Illinois. He made his acting debut at age nine, playing the lead role in a school play. He then attended Broad Street High School, a building which serves today as Threadgill Elementary School, in Greenwood, Mississippi. At age 12, he won a statewide drama competition, and while settling into school, discovered music and theater. When Freeman was 16 years old, he contracted pneumonia.

Freeman graduated high school in 1955, but turned down a partial drama scholarship from Jackson State University, opting instead to enlist in the United States Air Force. He served as an Automatic Tracking Radar repairman, rising to the rank of airman first class. After serving from 1955 to 1959, he moved to Los Angeles, California, and took acting classes at the Pasadena Playhouse. He also studied theater arts at Los Angeles City College, where a teacher encouraged him to embark on a dance career.