Morgan Freeman
On Pasta, Pepper and Potential Oscar Material
By Tamara Yousry
Jan 2006

Recently in Egypt for the 29th Cairo Film Festival, Hollywood superstar Morgan Freeman talks exclusively to Enigma…
He may be an Academy award winner, highly respected by the Hollywood community and the world over but the truth is, Morgan Freeman started out as an average ‘kinda’ guy in the ‘50’s who laboriously worked his way to the top. Born in Memphis Tennessee, he went from being an Air Force mechanic to one of the most prominent figures in modern US cinema, starring in countless blockbusters including The Shawshank Redemption, The Sum of All Fears, Seven, the brilliant Driving Miss Daisy and most recently Million Dollar Baby for which he won a long deserved Oscar.  Recently in Egypt for the Cairo Film Festival, Yasmine Shihata and I had a quick lunch with him and discovered just how down to earth and funny this Hollywood star really is.

Adistinguished looking tall man, with black hair going silver, we meet Freeman as he hurries out of the press room, surrounded by a swarm of bodyguards. In a dark suit, he looks every bit as handsome and authoritative as he does onscreen. He looks at us and nods, indicating our interview can begin. “So,” Yasmine begins as we try to keep up
with him. “What made you
so confident about coming to the Middle East at a time when so many Americans
are afraidto visit?”

“Confident?” Freeman asks as we board an escalator. “What’s so confident about that? Listen,” he he continues in an oh-so-serious tone, “terrorism occurs around the world, right? The world is dangerous; there’s a war in Iraq of course, but the rest of the world, is the rest of the world. You could be in London, Paris or New York with bombs going off there too. To tell you the truth I think having taken part in this conflict is part of the problem actually, but it’s political and I don’t really want to
get involved in that.”

Say no more. Freeman does not like discussing politics. Yet he is so disarmingly honest, or as another journalist once put it “calmly demeaning”, he gives gravity to any topic. Well almost any. Trying to avoid politics I settle on asking him about his impressions of Egypt. “Well, I hate to sound like this, but my overall impressions are of the women. They’re just a bunch of beauties!” He also tells us he’s having a wonderful time in Cairo, and he’s been able to fit in some of the sites, including the pyramids, on his way to various
functions.
We finally arrive at the restaurant. We order our food, Freeman wants a specific type of pasta but they don’t have his exact order, so he sulks for a split second before deciding on the spaghetti. “Let’s talk about Clint (Eastwood),” I decide. “I know you are very much inspired by him as an actor and director. I heard on set he serves as more of a guide rather than a director, who is constantly on top of his actors and you respond really well to that. Can you
elaborate?”

“Well, the thing about Clint,” Freeman says buttering a slice of Ciabatta, “Is that he doesn’t direct actors, he directs the movie. He doesn’t spend a whole lot of time coming onto the set and telling you, ‘give me a little bit more of this’, or, ‘let’s try it this way’. He says, ‘Anytime you’re ready.’ That’s how he starts, and you shoot and then he says, ‘Stop’. A lot of directors, who have never acted, have no idea what they’re talking about; they’re looking for something but they don’t know what it is, particularly if they’re writer-directors. They think that because they wrote the script they know the characters. That might be so if you don’t hire anybody else to do it, but if you hire somebody else to act it, then you gotta let it go. I get
so warped.”

We delve into a slightly different topic: Movies which are POM (Potential Oscar Material). “You’re shooting yourself in the foot if you’re trying to make a movie and you’re thinking about something like that,” he tells me, seemingly slightly agitated that I don’t already know this. “You can never know what POM is; nobody knows what POM is…nobody! Anyway you do the work and let it speak for itself. You can’t go around saying that ‘this is POM’ because it could turn out that nobody even mentions you. You can have a gut feeling that
it’s gonna be great, but that doesn’t
spell success.”

At that point, while Freeman is desperately still trying to get his point across to us, a waiter with a name tag reading ‘Mohsen’ comes round with a salad dish and mumbles something to him in a language I cannot decipher. “Yeah! Whatever you’re bringin,” Freeman says in American. “What colour?” Mohsen interrupts once again, referring to either the yellow or red pepper slice. “Ahhh, it doesn’t matter, they all taste alike,” replies Freeman, by which point I am holding back a fit of giggles extremely entertained at the Egyptian waiter-Hollywood superstar scenario unfolding before us
over a piece of pepper.

“Do you want another Oscar then,” pipes up Yasmine, referring to his award for the hit blockbuster Million Dollar Baby. “Want doesn’t figure into it,” Freeman explains between bites of squid. “If an opportunity comes to be nominated, it simply has to do with the work you do and not the work you’re gonna do; you know what I’m saying?” It’s anti-climactic, as far as he’s concerned, to get the award. “To get a nomination means you did outstanding work. To get an award is arbitrary, y’know?” Erm, well no, not really, but we’ll take your
word for it Mr. Freeman. This actor is
on fire.
“But isn’t receiving an Oscar flattering for an actor as it means you’re the best? At least that year…” continues Yasmine. “You can’t be the best,” he insists. “There is no best. How can you be the best? If you’re the best this year then you’re the best next year, right? It’s like a football game. You’re
working with other people, y’know?”

The rest of the hour we spend discussing his upcoming project Unsung, a movie he is producing about history’s 761st tank battalion during WWII; a historical event, he says, which nobody even knows about. We talk about the fact he’s an extrovert, how he never has time for a vacation, but when he does, he takes it in the Caribbean and how he would like to co-produce a movie in Egypt but its deterred by all of the
 country’s red tape.

And then it gets quiet. Freeman has had a long day and asks his publicist if it’s time for his post-lunch nap. Within minutes we are getting up, shaking hands and saying our goodbyes. And before we know it Freeman disappears with his entouragein tow, in true Hollywood fashion.