"Mediocre" movies, explained: Morgan Freeman shares why he signs on

There are very few actors still working who can claim a CV like Morgan Freeman. He's spent over six decades in the business, knocked out more than 100 films, and delivered so many legendary performances it's difficult to keep count. At 89 years old, he's got no plans to quit. You'd assume by this point, he could cherry-pick his roles. Actually, Freeman's always been pretty upfront about how the sausage is made — sometimes it really is about the money, not the art.

Morgan Freeman has appeared in more than 100 feature films over a career spanning some 60 years.

Regrets and Rough Rides

Freeman's spoken before about movies he'd probably rather erase. One that comes up is Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991), which they shot in the freezing northern English winter — can't blame him for not missing that. He also tore up his knee doing a minor stunt, and apparently it never truly healed. That's not exactly a morale boost for any job. Then there's The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990). Freeman replaced Alan Arkin as Judge Leonard White, and in his own words, the swap was strictly for optics. 'They thought they had to be politically correct and make the judge black. So they fired Alan Arkin and hired me. Not a great way to get a role,' he told Far Out Magazine. Not subtle, but you get the point — even for an Oscar winner, casting politics can get absurd.

Not that any of it stopped him turning out the goods. Take The Shawshank Redemption (1994) — which nabbed him a Best Actor Oscar nomination. Freeman says the atmosphere during filming was 'particularly trying' with tension and cliques everywhere. Frankly, it sounds like the only escape plan required was for the cast and crew.

Why Say Yes to a Dud?

Now, Freeman rarely slates the scripts themselves in public, but some of his roles — think The Poison Rose, Wanted, Just Getting Started, and The Contract — have attracted a fair bit of criticism. In fairness, maybe the casting was a mistake, perhaps the writing never gave him much to work with, or maybe you just can't turn some material into gold, no matter how reputable you are. According to what he told The New York Times, sometimes it's down to a simple equation:

This is how Morgan Freeman put it to The New York Times, no box office spin — just honesty:

'If somebody offers you a job, it's very nice if they're also offering you an exciting script, but in reality, two or three things come into play. What are they going to pay you? If they're going to pay you enough, then you overlook some of the glitches in the script that happen to be there.'

It's not just Freeman, either. He reckons any actor in his shoes would probably do the same — take the part, and then try to fix whatever's wrong on the page. Sometimes, he'll bring up issues and the filmmakers will work to sort it. Seems straightforward enough, but there are times when actors just fudge it in the moment. Freeman has a story about The Lego Movie, where directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller found one of his ad-libbed, slightly exasperated lines so hilarious, they kept it in the finished product. He'd had enough tinkering with his lines and, straight from the booth, blurted out, 'All right, we gotta write all that down 'cause I'm not gonna remember any of it, but here we go.'