Who is Morgan Freeman ?

He also realized that he didn't want to be shooting down other people.

In 2004, Freeman and others formed the Grenada Relief Fund to aid people affected by Hurricane Ivan on the island of Grenada. The fund has since become PLANIT NOW, an organization that seeks to provide preparedness resources for people living in areas afflicted by hurricanes and severe storms.

I had this very clear epiphany," he told AARP Magazine. "You are not in love with this; you are in love with the idea of this." In 1959, Freeman left the Air Force and tried his fortunes out West, moving to Hollywood to see if he could make it as an actor.

It wasn't an easy life. He took acting classes and struggled to find work.

In the early 1960s, he moved again, this time to New York City, where more petty day jobs and nighttime auditions followed.

Born June 1, 1937, in Memphis, Tenn., Morgan Porterfield Freeman, Jr. was the baby in a family of five siblings. His father was a barber and his mother, Mayme Edna, was a schoolteacher.

Humble beginnings
Not long after he was born, Morgan’s parents relocated to Chicago. While his parents struggled to find work, Freeman stayed with his maternal grandmother in Charleston, Mississippi until he was six years old. After his grandmother’s death, Freeman moved to live with his mother, who had separated from her husband.

In 1967, the same year he married Jeanette Adair Bradshaw, Freeman's big career break came when he landed a part in an all African-American Broadway production of Hello, Dolly! starring Pearl Bailey.

Early influences
As a child, Freeman spent tons of time scraping together money to go to the movies; he has said some of his earliest matinee idols were actors like Gary Cooper, Spencer Tracy and Sidney Poitier, the first African-American to win an Oscar for Best Actor.

Around that time, Freeman also performed in an off-Broadway production of The Nigger Lovers.

The chair that changed a life
When Freeman was in junior high school, he pulled a chair from underneath a girl he had a crush on. As punishment, he was ordered to take part in his school’s drama competition. To his surprise (and probably his teachers), the 12-year-old was a natural on stage, taking top honors in the program.

Some national exposure followed in 1971, when he started appearing regularly on The Electric Company, a public television-produced children's TV show that focused on teaching kids how to read.

The wild blue yonder
After graduating from school, Freeman attended Los Angeles City College and then joined the U.S. Air Force in 1955, hoping it would lead to a career in the skies. But after four years of working as a mechanic, he decided not to re-enlist. “I had this very clear epiphany,” he told AARP Magazine. “You are not in love with this; you are in love with the idea of this.” He left the Air Force and moved to Hollywood to pursue his dream of acting.

His first big break
Freeman’s first big break came in 1967, when he joined the cast in the first all-African American stage production of Hello, Dolly!, a musical in which he starred alongside such greats as Pearl Bailey, Cab Calloway and Ernestine Jackson. That was a good year for him; Freeman also married Jeanette Adair Bradshaw, his first wife, that same year.

On a show that included such current and future stars as Rita Moreno, Joan Rivers, and Gene Wilder, Freeman had some of the show's more memorable characters, like "Easy Reader," "Mel Mounds" and "Count Dracula."

“Hey, you guyyyyyyyyys!”
Freeman’s first credited film appearance was in 1971’s Who Says I Can’t Ride a Rainbow, but his first real exposure to national audiences was his time as part of The Electric Company (1971-77), a children’s TV show made by the same people who created Sesame Street. For six seasons and 780 episodes, Freeman and the rest of the cast sang and performed comedy skits to encourage younger students to read. Among his regular characters were disc jockey Mel Mounds, Count Dracula and Easy Reader (“a first-class, genuine reading freak”)

television proved to be a grueling and demanding life for Freeman. Despite some stage work, including a Tony-nominated performance in The Mighty Gents in the late 1970s, Freeman couldn't seem to break into movies like he wanted.

Paying his dues
While The Electric Company was steady work, Freeman was hoping to break into films, and his career caught a break when he landed a part as a prison inmate in the 1980 Robert Redford film Brubaker. But the film work he hoped would follow did not materialize, and Freeman retreated to television, appearing on the soap operas Ryan’s Hope and Another World, and in TV movies such as Death of a Prophet (in which he played slain civil-rights leaders Malcolm X).

When The Electric Company was canceled in 1976, Freeman saw himself staring at a career that was far from grounded. His personal life was hurting, too.

Long before the show ended, Freeman found that his marriage had started to fall apart, and he began drinking too much.

Chatting with the insane
While on the set of Brubaker, Morgan Freeman had some interesting interactions with the inmates. “When we were doing Brubaker, we were in a prison for the criminally insane. They said, don’t talk to the inmates. Well, what do you do if a guy accused of butchering his family comes up and speaks to you? You don’t refuse to talk to him.”

Freeman and Jeanette divorced in 1979.

A star is born
As the 1980s rolled on, Freeman started getting recognized for roles in which he played mentors and people in positions of authority (something that would become a theme for him as the years went on). But the role he says was his favorite was that of Fast Black, a vicious pimp in 1987’s Street Smart. “That one was about as far away from me as I can get,” he once said. That role earned him his first Oscar nomination (for Best Supporting Actor) and a glowing review from film critic Pauline Kael, who went so far as to ask the world: “Is Morgan Freeman the greatest American actor?”

A year after his divorce, Freeman's career caught a break when he landed a part as a crazed inmate in the Robert Redford film, Brubaker (1980).

However, the steady stream of film work he hoped would follow did not materialize, and Freeman was forced to retreat back to television for two hard years on the cast of the soap opera Another World.