Morgan Freeman - Biography

Born: Morgan Porterfield Freeman, Jr.
June 1, 1937 (age 73)
Where: Memphis, Tennessee, USA
Height: 6' 2"
Awards: Won 1 Oscar and 1 Golden Globe.
Freeman: At the 2005 Cannes Film Festival
Memphis, Tennessee, U.S.
Occupation: Actor, director, narrator
Years active:1971–present
Spouse(s): Jeanette Adair Bradshaw (1967–1979) (divorced).
Myrna Colley-Lee (1984–2007).

Morgan Freeman was born in Memphis, Tennessee, the son of Mayme Edna (née Revere) and Morgan Porterfield Freeman, Sr., a barber who died in 1961 from liver cirrhosis. He has three older siblings. Freeman was sent as an infant to his paternal grandmother in Charleston, Mississippi. His family moved frequently during his childhood, living in Greenwood, Mississippi; Gary, Indiana; and finally Chicago, Illinois. Freeman made his acting debut at age 9, playing the lead role in a school play. He then attended Broad Street High School, currently Threadgill Elementary School, in Mississippi. At age 12, he won a statewide drama competition, and while still at Broad Street High School, he performed in a radio show based in Nashville, Tennessee. In 1955, he graduated from Broad Street High School, but turned down a partial drama scholarship from Jackson State University, opting instead to work as a mechanic in the United States Air Force.
Freeman moved to Los Angeles in the early 1960s and worked as a transcript clerk at Los Angeles Community College. During this period, he also lived in New York City, working as a dancer at the 1964 World's Fair, and in San Francisco, where he was a member of the Opera Ring music group. Freeman acted in a touring company version of The Royal Hunt of the Sun, and also appeared as an extra in the 1965 film The Pawnbroker. He made his off-Broadway debut in 1967, opposite Viveca Lindfors in The Nigger Lovers (about the civil rights era "Freedom Riders"), before debuting on Broadway in 1968's all-black version of Hello, Dolly!, which also starred Pearl Bailey and Cab Calloway.