![\"Morgan](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Morgan-Freeman-Far-Out-Magazine-1140x855.jpg\")
<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
(Credits: Far Out \/ Nathan Congleton)<\/p>\n
Sun 28 September 2025 23:30, UK <\/p>\n
Sat in the quiet dark of his first cinema experience, a young Morgan Freeman<\/a> was left beguiled by the big screen.<\/p>\n Rural Mississippi was as far away from his new hometown of Chicago as one could have hoped to imagine, and the culture shock hit the young Freeman hard. His previous home in the southern state didn\u2019t even have indoor plumbing or a phone line; the big city was a mind-blowing experience. But perhaps the most dazzling facility on offer was the cinema. <\/p>\n Heartwarmingly, on the day the little boy went to his first film, he \u201cimmediately fell in love\u201d with the process of watching movies on the biggest screens possible. \u201cThey were such magical places,\u201d he remembered of that fateful afternoon. From that day forward, he did everything he could \u2013 including collecting used soda bottles for recycling \u2013 to cobble together enough money for his next movie ticket. Soon, he was convinced, \u201cI was going to be an actor or a bum.\u201d There would be no middle ground.<\/p>\n A lot is to be said for our formative experiences in film. Often, the movies we loved as children are the ones that stay with us for the rest of our lives. And for more than eight decades, Freeman has kept that first picture as his number one movie. \u201cThe first movie I ever saw was King Kong,\u201d he recalled with a warm smile. \u201cIt scared the daylights out of me. I was six and had dreams for a long time about that ape.\u201d<\/p>\n Thankfully, the fear didn\u2019t put Freeman off watching movies. The scenes were electric, and they hit every nerve in his body as the notion of heroes and villains on screen became an enticing prospect he couldn\u2019t ignore: \u201cMy number one favourite film was the first film I ever saw,\u201d he reiterated to\u00a0Rotten Tomatoes\u00a0in 2011. \u201cThat film is the original King Kong. It\u2019s still, I think, the best King Kong.\u201d<\/p>\n But while movies offered a chance of escapism and perhaps an ill-advised view on society, Freeman was left hurt by their exclusionary casting. \u201cMy value system was put in place by the movies,\u201d he admitted to Variety in 2018. \u201cI was hit hardest by the science-fiction movies, the future. Up until the \u201860s and \u201870s, science fiction and fantasy totally left Blacks out.\u201d<\/p>\n Once again, though, instead of letting something negative put him off movies, Freeman knew that the magic of cinema was something everyone of every race and creed could enjoy. So, he resolved to do everything he could, through his acting career, to \u201cchange people\u2019s attitudes about Black people, about us as Americans<\/a>; about America itself.\u201d <\/p>\n This is why, when he first broke into film in the \u201870s, he steadfastly refused to star in Blaxploitation films, and why he never lost the childlike wonder that came with watching King Kong on that magical cinema screen. He knew right then and there that his future lay in the movies, and he smiled, \u201cWhen you want it, you can get it.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Related Topics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out \/ Nathan Congleton) Sun 28 September 2025 23:30, UK Sat in the quiet dark of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":167102,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[96,23524,36297,2839,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-167101","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-king-kong","10":"tag-morgan-freeman","11":"tag-movies","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=167101"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167101\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/167102"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=167101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=167101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=167101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}