To the point
| Carrie Devorah/For The Examiner |
Oscar winner Morgan Freeman had several things with him for his luncheon address at the National Press Club on Tuesday — a gorgeous camel hair blazer, a limo waiting for him outside, that mellifluous baritone voice of his. What he didn’t have was a speech.
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“An actor needs a script,” he explained. “And your problem here today is I don’t have a script.”
After speaking for less than five minutes on his efforts with the Grenada Relief Fund, Freeman went right to questions, during which he wasn’t much more forthcoming.
Are there other causes you’re interested in? “No.”
What advice would you give to other aspiring actors? “Act.”
Not that all was lost: He did reveal that his greatest influence is Sidney Poitier; that his favorite character was Fast Black from the 1987 film “Street Smart,” which put him on the map as an actor; and that Clint Eastwood is the “benchmark for directors.”
He also said nowadays, “people send me scripts that fit a certain mold. People don’t want me to be a bad guy, people don’t want me to die or get hurt.”
After his Press Club appearance, Freeman made his way to the Capital Area Food bank in Northeast to hand out brown bags of food to poor senior citizens along with volunteers from the National Institutes of Health.
And in the evening, he attended a screening of his new film, “The Bucket List,” at the Ronald Reagan Building.
