Citas

I gravitate towards gravitas.

[on his hesitation to do Telaraña (2001)] I had a philosophic aversion to it. I didn't want to do the same thing twice. Then I realized that my philosophical aversion was bullshit. I realized I liked Alex Cross. And the fact that he's black is totally incidental. That's a rare thing for a black actor to find.

[on the failure of La Trampa (2004)] It was a wonderful experience. Steve Bing was the producer and was very generous. But the movie didn't turn out very well. The director [George Armitage] fell ill and we shut down production for a few weeks while he recuperated. And I think when he came back he just didn't pick up the ball and run with it the way he should have, and the movie suffered greatly for that..

I've been living with myself all of my life, so I know all of me. So when I watch me, all I see is me. It's boring. - on why he dislikes watching his own films.

I'm not intimidated by lead roles. I'm better in them. I don't feel pressure - I feel released at times like that. That's what I'm born to do.

I was in Africa when I got the call for Los imperdonables (1992). Clint called my agency and made an offer for a western. I was like "He called for me?" It was jaw-dropping.

[on the box-office failure of Sueño de fuga (1994)] It took a long time for word of mouth to kick in because no one could say it. It was "The Shimshunk Reduction", "The Hudsucker Redemption"; I mean people just couldn't say it, which really made me angry because I knew that at the time! The movie we made was called "Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption". Isn't that a great title? But they were like "That won't fit on the marquee". So it took a year or two for people to say it. Some people still can't say it.

[on the violence in Seven (1995)] If you don't show the actual violence and the audience provides their own violence, it's much more gruesome. This is a guy who spent a lot time planning and preparing, and what was he doing? He was punishing people for their sins. He had a moral agenda. A twisted moral agenda, but do you know how many people do? People in high places.

[on the box-office failure of Amistad (1997)] People thought it was a picture about slavery. But it wasn't about slavery at all. It was about American jurisprudence. The point of the film ultimately was that the President in not the king. But I think people were like "Jesus, not another movie about slavery!" We really do have a negative response to negative history. Which is a shame.

[on the failure of La hoguera de las vanidades (1990)] I knew that movie wasn't going to work. I don't think Brian De Palma had a clue. It struck me that he didn't read the book - or that he didn't like the book. It was the one time Tom Hanks was awfully miscast. Originally, they hired Alan Arkin to play my role. I thought that was perfect casting. But then 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. I was kind of a suck-a-- for not turning it down, but they weren't going to give it back to Alan anyway. I never did get around to seeing the movie.

[on the character Hoke Colburn in El chofer y la señora Daisy (1989)] It's a tricky character, right on the edge of Uncle Remus. But I knew how to play him right away. I knew when I read it. I just saw him -- the dignity in the character. The only time I ever worried about it was when I was doing the show Off-Broadway, and all these Southerners would come back wiping their eyes and talking about how nostalgic it made them feel. How their grandmother had a chauffeur just like that. I was like "God damn it! I made these people nostalgic for the good ol' days!" But, then, I had some black friends see it, and they said, 'Oh, my grandfather was exactly like that.' So that made me feel okay..

[on working on Sueño de fuga (1994)] That was a strange production. There were moments of extreme tension on the set. Between the producers and actors, between the director and actors, between everybody. Just this personality stuff between different groups. Very strange. Let's stop talking about that one.

[on Seven (1995)] There's all this loss and angst and death and sense of helplessness in that movie - if I saw it in the theater, I probably wouldn't have liked it. I saw El club de la pelea (1999) and I didn't like it much. It's a great movie, well made, fabulous acting, but it just made me feel so bad. But David Fincher is an extraordinarily good director.

When I was doing press for Impacto profundo (1998), reporters would always ask me how it felt to play the first black president, and I'd tell them, "I'm not playing the first black president. I'm playing a president who happens to be black." Or they'd ask me what sort of research I did for the role. Research? What kind of research do you need to play the president? He's a guy. Besides, we all know what presidents are like standing up there in a press conference. Hell, you don't have to do any research to play a president.

I saw Neil LaBute's first movie, En compañía de hombres (1997), and I thought it sucked deeply. I mean, talk about a couple of scuzzy guys. Man, they were turds. But I was intrigued by the mind that would think this up and film it. Then I saw LaBute's second movie, Your Friends and Neighbors (1998). Not any better, but still intriguing. So then I got the script for Nurse Betty (2000), and I loved it and I went and met him. And it turns out he's married, has these lovely kids. He's just this big bear of a man. Cuddly, even. It didn't take any persuading to convince me to do the film.

When I got nominated for the Oscar [for Street Smart (1987)], it put rocket boosters in my career. Since childhood, all I wanted to do was make movies. I love the stage, but I wanted to be a movie actor.

Is there a movie I think I should have won the Oscar for? Yeah. All of them.

I don't know what my favorite film of mine is... But I think the most important film I was in was Tiempos de gloria (1989).

It was my idea to just do The Electric Company (1971) for a couple of years and go on. But you get trapped by that money thing. It's golden handcuffs. It gets a lot of people, including soap opera actors and commercial actors. Then, they don't want to see you in serious work. That was going to be me, having people come up to me saying "My kids love you!" I was there three years too long.

I find it difficult to watch myself... I find it boring.

I was talking to Bob Hoskins when we were making Unleashed together. We were talking about the joy of doing bad guys. And he confirmed exactly what I was thinking. With bad guys you get to let it all out. All those dark places in your psyche? You can let 'em go. When you play good guys, it's kind of boring. It's one note.

Once you've gotten the job, there's nothing to it. If you're an actor, you're an actor. Doing it is not the hard part. The hard part is getting to do it.

[Accepting his UCLA Tracy award]: To be included among this group of highly accomplished actors is just magical.

I'm very worried about what's going on in the world at the moment because we have this Napoleonic president; by Napoleonic I mean he's a man who just seems to need to search himself. It doesn't make sense. I don't have any love lost on Saddam Hussein. If he needs to be removed from office, fine. You have to find the right way to do it, but going to war, nah, with the people. To do what. What is the real reason? Because he's harboring weapons of mass destruction? So it is with North Korea. Why are we acting to acquiesce to this? We do not need the Iraqi oil. We have Kuwait oil. It's the same pool. That's why Kuwait's there. That's why Kuwait was set up. You think that country could exist there without somebody backing it? We're talking about a piece of Iraq. So, we keep this. That's my noise. I am terribly upset about the whole thing.

You know, I was hanging out with Sidney Poitier and we were trying to decide if he or I were the better actor. We decided it was me as I convinced the world I could sing. (Freeman debuted on Broadway in 1968 in "Hello, Dolly!")

Stop talking about it. I'm going to stop calling you a white man. And I'm going to ask you to stop calling me a black man. - when asked how to get rid of racism in an interview with Mike Wallace on 60 Minutes (1968).

Ridiculous... I don't want a Black History Month. Black history is American history. - when asked what he thinks of Black History Month on 60 Minutes (1968).

The American Indians have this saying. 'Look at the day, look at the sunlight, the grass and the trees! It's a good day to die!'

You couldn't possibly try to entertain all of the people who seem to be offering you entertainment. Because most of them want some compensation for it.

[upon waking up face down in a door way and not knowing how he got there] I recognised that it had become a problem, so I just quit. I do have self-control. Once I realise that I've got to change something I just do it.

If you wake up and the snow is knee-deep outside, you are not filled with rage. It's just something that you've got to cope with. If you're living in a situation it's the only situation that you know, and you've got to deal with it.

I don't have to work. I could stop and never have to worry about paying the rent. I'm working for the joy of doing it.

Sometimes, you want to upset an audience so you can engage them. I've done so-called Hollywood films, and I know that it's all about wanting the audience to feel upbeat, give them a happy ending. But they also like complete stories. If your story's complete it doesn't have to have a happy ending.

They say there's no fool like an old fool. But blessings be upon my wife because I think without her, I'd be somebody's fool by now.

If you live a life of make-believe, your life isn't worth anything until you do something that does challenge your reality. And to me, sailing the open ocean is a real challenge, because it's life or death.

[upon getting work as an off-Broadway actor in 1967] I made $70 a week as an actor and I'd been making $60 in L.A. Making more than that as an actor was just unbelievable to me. I never went back to typing but had some real lean times in-between. But I didn't have to go to work for anybody else. I didn't have to wash dishes, I didn't have to wait tables, I didn't have to drive a cab or wash cars. I deliberately left myself nothing to fall back on. If you've got a cushion, where you land, you stay. You can't climb a mountain with a net. If you've got the net, you'll let go.

I work about half the year. I'm just a guy who enjoys his work and enjoys working with people who enjoy their work. When that happens you get a bonding situation and if it come out with a good product, then that ties you even closer together. It's almost like a great love affair.

I've never been a mechanic. Throughout my life, what I have been is an actor, a pretender. I do have the wife and the family and the stuff like that but on the other hand, I'm - knock on wood - outstandingly healthy.

I think we all have a private bucket list. It may not be written down, but I'm constantly checking them off. I just checked off Jack Nicholson. Every day was a holiday because I've been praying at the temple of Jack ever since Mi vida es mi vida (1970). I had a chance to ride with him on the Warner Brothers plane with Clint [Eastwood]. I got to jawing what a fan I was, and as actors will do, he expressed how he liked my work. Then we started talking about how we could make a sequel to [the 1973 Nicholson film] El último deber (1973). But that didn't pan out.

My aim in life, when I graduated from high school, was to get out of Mississippi. I started coming back [to Mississippi] in about 1979, because my parents moved back, which I couldn't understand. What in the world would make you come back here? It took me about 20 years to figure that out.

I'm not a campaigner or a crusader for ending racism, or anything for that matter. I believe you should live your life according to your own tenets. If there are people you don't like, avoid them. But not liking people based on generalities is stupid.

No, but a lot of roles I refuse because it's not me. -- on if he ever feels he's been miscast.

Isn't there a big, 800-pound gorilla missing here? Money, money, money. You work all your life so you don't have to wash dishes or sweep floors or pump gas, and still pay the rent. That's very germane to what you call a career.

I don't know about anyone else, but my kids didn't have me. I was busy trying to be somebody. Now I have all these debts to pay. -- on the personal toll being an actor can take on a person.

I don't think that anything where you start off with something is an art form. If you start off with a blank page or a blank canvas or a blank slab or a blank stone, you're going to create something. If someone brings it to you and says, "Can you enlarge upon it?".

I'm not good at anything else. Certainly not golf. -- on why he is an actor.

The fact that the people who are making the decisions about moviemaking are not moviemakers is a big problem.

I don't do accents. But I was going to have to do some sort of accent and do my best to sound like Mandela. I really fretted over that because he's an iconic figure. If you screw it up you've screwed it up. But once we got into production, it all fell into place. -- on the toughest aspect of preparing for "Invictus"

I don't like tension on a set -- at all, of any kind.

Tiempos de gloria (1989) does what I think movies are best at, and that is giving you a lesson in history. Glory is a story that nobody knew. It's American history that was completely ignored, and there is an awful lot of that. It is because the people who tell the story tell their own story. So if you ever ask, any time down the line, that's always the film I'll be most proud of.