hollywood elder statesmen

Morgan Freeman Keeps Things Real at Actors Roundtable

This man laughs at actors who haven’t smoked crack.

Actors Colin Firth, Nicolas Cage, Morgan Freeman, Peter Sarsgaard, Stanley Tucci and Christopher Waltz answered James Lipton-esque questions — “Why do you act?” — from The Hollywood Reporter during a roundtable interview-cum-discussion. Freeman, the group’s elder statesman at 72, kept things from getting too armchair artsy-fartsy, saying “Isn’t there a big, 800-pound gorilla missing here? Money, money, money,” when the group was discussing the costs and benefits of a career in acting. He also clipped Cage’s wings when he was boasting about drinking between scenes while filming Leaving Las Vegas.

Cage: The other thing is, I wasn’t sure I could play the part totally sober, which I was. In “Leaving Las Vegas,” I had a few drinks between scenes to get to a certain feeling, to get to a certain truth. But with this I was trying to look at it more impressionistically from a landscape of maybe 25 years ago to see what would come out of that filter of my imagination.




Freeman: Did you ever try crack?




Cage: No.




Freeman: You should. (Laughs.)




We sincerely hope that it was knowing laughter, not just normal Morgan Freeman cutting-you-down-to-size laughter.




Awards Watch: Actors roundtable [THR via NYT/Carpetbagger]

Morgan Freeman Keeps Things Real at Actors Roundtable