{"id":148007,"date":"2018-01-22T02:59:17","date_gmt":"2018-01-22T07:59:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=148007"},"modified":"2018-01-22T02:59:17","modified_gmt":"2018-01-22T07:59:17","slug":"morgan-freeman-accepts-life-achievement-honours-at-sag-awards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2018\/01\/22\/morgan-freeman-accepts-life-achievement-honours-at-sag-awards\/","title":{"rendered":"Morgan Freeman accepts life achievement honours at SAG Awards"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"(Photo:<\/a>
“Morgan Freeman. Mr. Elegant. Morgan Freeman. Mr. Debonair. Morgan Freeman playing Dracula. With fangs coming out of his mouth,” Moreno said (Photo<\/a>: Morgan Freeman\/Facebook<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

LOS ANGELES — Morgan Freeman first stood on a stage when he was 8 years old, playing Little Boy Blue in a pageant. That’s when he knew he wanted to be an actor.<\/p>\n

More than seven decades later, the now 80-year-old Freeman accepted a lifetime achievement award Sunday from the Screen Actors Guild for the much larger roles he’s played in his career, including his Oscar-winning performance in \u201cMillion Dollar Baby.\u201d Freeman was nominated for Oscars four other times, including for his work in \u201cShawshank Redemption\u201d and \u201cDriving Miss Daisy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Actress Rita Moreno, who presented Freeman with the honour, recalled another lesser-known role Freeman played, acting with her in 1971 on the children’s show \u201cThe Electric Company.\u201d She had the audience laughing about a role that would surprise some for the smooth-as-silk, dulcet-voiced Freeman.<\/p>\n

\u201cMorgan Freeman, Mr. Elegant. Morgan Freeman, Mr. Debonair, Morgan Freeman playing Dracula. With fangs coming out of his mouth,\u201d Moreno said to laughs before impersonating the creepy voice Freeman would use. \u201cAnd he talked like this: ‘Hello, little girl. I come all the way from Transylvania to scare the daylights out of you.\u201d<\/p>\n

On a more serious note, Moreno said Freeman was more than just an actor, narrator, producer and humanitarian. \u201cThis man is a national treasure,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Freeman’s acceptance speech was short. Donning a black baseball cap, Freeman said he wouldn’t try to thank everyone he should because he couldn’t remember all their names.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is beyond honour,\u201d Freeman said. \u201cThis is a place in history.\u201d<\/p>\n

Backstage, Freeman recalled a tough time in his career, in the early 1980s.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought my 15 minutes were up … I needed to get a job,\u201d he said. \u201cBy the time I got down to the moment when you make that decision — give it up — something happened. Paul Newman came along.\u201d<\/p>\n

Freeman was in Newman’s 1984 film \u201cHarry & Son,\u201d a gig that turned Freeman’s career around.<\/p>\n

It was almost too late.<\/p>\n

Earlier Sunday, Freeman said that if acting hadn’t worked out for him, he once thought of a career in driving.<\/p>\n

\u201cI used to imagine myself being a chauffeur because there came a time I thought it was all over,\u201d Freeman said in a Facebook video taken from inside his car ride to the show. \u201cI thought my career had reached its pinnacle, its peak.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was seven years later that he did become a chauffeur of sorts — driver Hoke Colburn in \u201cDriving Miss Daisy.\u201d<\/p>\n

About his award for lifetime achievement, Freeman wondered back stage if there was a hidden message in it.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe inference might be, ‘Get off the stage, you’re done,\u201d’ he said as reporters laughed. \u201cIt might, you don’t know. My hope is that’s not the case, that they’re saying, ‘Congratulations so far.\u201d’<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

LOS ANGELES — Morgan Freeman first stood on a stage when he was 8 years old, playing Little Boy Blue …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":148016,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,106],"tags":[44283,44282,44284,44285],"class_list":["post-148007","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","category-hollywood","tag-little-boy-blu","tag-morgan-freeman","tag-rita-moreno","tag-the-electric-company","mauthors-amanda-lee-myers","mauthors-the-associated-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148007","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=148007"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148007\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/148016"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=148007"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=148007"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=148007"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}