December 13, 2004 - Morgan Freeman has been a great actor for many years. In terms of Hollywood stardom, however, his success has come relatively late in his career, with his breakout work being in 1989's Lean On Me, Driving Miss Daisy and Glory. Over the fifteen years since, Freeman has established himself as one of Hollywood's great finds. Through memorable performances in films like Unforgiven, Seven and The Shawshank Redemption, he has proven what a wealth of talent we were all missing out on during the many years in which Freeman was relegated to smaller parts or background character roles.

Freeman keeps chugging along, and for a man of 67 years old, he's easily working as much as most of the actors half, or dare I say it, a third of his age. Maybe he's making up for lost time, but whatever the case may be, we are lucky to have him.

In Million Dollar Baby, Freeman re-teams with fellow Hollywood legend, Clint Eastwood, to play Scrap, a former boxer who lost an eye in a fight years ago and now works as a cleanup man at the gym owned by renowned boxing cut man Frankie Dunn (Eastwood). Scrap also serves as the narrator for the story, offering some backstory on Dunn's lot in life and shedding some details on the event that would change Dunn's life forever. Hilary Swank plays Maggie Fitzgerald, a female boxer who wanders into Dunn's life one day hoping for her to train him. Dunn isn't interested. "I don't train girls," he says with a grimace. But Maggie is not discouraged, and she hounds him until she (along with the help of Scrap) finally convinces Dunn to give her at least a brief chance. It turns out that Maggie is a natural, perhaps the best fighter Dunn has ever worked with. More than a boxing movie, Million Dollar Baby is a movie about redemption and about rising above the standards life has set for you.

Freeman walks into the press room with a childish grin on his face. He is known to be occasionally difficult with press. It's not in that he is mean-spirited to press, but more that he says what comes to mind and doesn't mind telling someone they've asked him a stupid question. Getting a straight answer out of him can be very difficult at times, but we tried our best.

Freeman gets a good laugh when someone uses the word "dignity" to describe him. He indicates that he just doesn't see himself that way, that his performances aren't as dependent on his own work as they are on the script and the direction. "It speaks for itself. Good scripts do. Just read it and you know who they are. It's one of those deals, you know? You get a great script and you don't really have to work. Clint called me yesterday and we were schmoozing about you all's response which has been uniformly great and he said, 'Geez. But you still haven't seen it. Maybe we shouldn't open [the movie.' (Laughs)

"You know, I give nothing. The best fun you have in creating a character is in the costume department. So once we get that, we've got the clothes and know he doesn't have much... And finding the hat, I always like to find the hat. And then props just dress the set. It's all fabulous. I happened to be reading a comic book while they were setting up and I just didn't put it down.

	-Warner Brothers Scrap (Freeman) confronts the stubborn Dunn (Eastwood)

"It's like anything. If the writer has been successful, there's stuff that you have to do. Say the words and as [Spencer] Tracy said, 'Don't bump into the furniture.' People hear that and say I'm being modest, but I am not a modest person, but I have to be truthful about what I'm doing and what I'm doing is channeling. I know it. I think perhaps not everybody believes it's easy and perhaps it's not easy for everybody. It's easy for me. If I find if I have to work at it, I've got the wrong job."