Morgan Freeman (born June 1, 1937) is an American actor, producer, and narrator. Freeman won an Academy Award in 2005 for Best Supporting Actor with Million Dollar Baby (2004), and he has received Oscar nominations for his performances in Street Smart (1987), Driving Miss Daisy (1989), The Shawshank Redemption (1994), and Invictus (2009). He has also won a Golden Globe Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award.

Freeman has appeared in many other box office hits, including Glory (1989), Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991), Seven (1995), Deep Impact (1998), The Sum of All Fears (2002), Bruce Almighty (2003), The Dark Knight Trilogy (2005–2012), Wanted (2008), RED (2010), Now You See Me (2013), The Lego Movie (2014), and Lucy (2014). He rose to fame as part of the cast of the 1970s children\'s program The Electric Company. Noted for his deep voice, Freeman has served as a narrator, commentator, and voice actor for numerous programs, series and television shows. He is ranked as the fifth-highest box office star with $4.31 billion in total box office grosses, an average of $74.4 million per film.

Morgan Freeman was born on June 1, 1937 in Memphis, Tennessee. He is the son of Mayme Edna (née Revere; 1912–2000), a teacher, and Morgan Porterfield Freeman, a barber, who died on April 27, 1961. He has three older siblings. According to a DNA analysis, some of his ancestors were from Niger. In 2008, a DNA test suggested that among all of his African ancestors, a little over one-quarter came from the area that stretches from present-day Senegal to Liberia and three-quarters came from the Congo-Angola region. Freeman was sent as an infant to his paternal grandmother in Charleston, Mississippi. He moved frequently during his childhood, living in Greenwood, Mississippi; Gary, Indiana; and finally Chicago, Illinois. When Freeman was 16 years old, he almost died of pneumonia.

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