Some people might dismiss Morgan’s Freeman’s early career woes as less than tragic considering how they led to his current stardom. But considering Freeman’s humble upbringing, it becomes clear that his difficult, pre-fame years were an easy time to give up. But rather than break him, that time shaped him into who he is.
Freeman didn’t grow up in complete poverty, but he also didn’t exactly have it easy. His father was a barber and his mother a teacher. The two moved to Chicago when Freeman was very young because of the pressures of the Jim Crow South in the 1930s and ’40s, while Freeman stayed behind with his grandmother. When Freeman was 6 his grandmother died, and he moved to Chicago with his mother, who by then had separated from his father. Perhaps driven by a need to escape reality, Freeman grew up obsessed with movies.
All this is to say: Early, injurious childhood patterns can either repeat in adulthood and ruin a life, or be broken. It would have been the simplest thing in the world for Freeman to throw in the towel at any point from 1959, when he left the Air Force, all the way to 1987 when he got his role in “Street Smart.” After all, if Freeman was doing the kind of odd jobs that he alluded to in his interview with The Guardian, he wasn’t exactly living a lavish life. But persistence paid off, even amidst continued disappointments.
