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Morgan Freeman is an actor for whom filmmakers will bend over backwards to work with.
The rare case of an actor who achieved fame late in life, Freeman spent years on the stage and on the children’s television programme The Electric Company, before a few breakout roles announced him as a transcendent star on the rise. Freeman’s star status was only aided by the fact that he tended to be cast in pretty good projects, where, between Driving Miss Daisy, Unforgiven, and Million Dollar Baby, he has appeared in three different films that have won the Academy Award for ‘Best Picture’.
The last of these three winners, Million Dollar Baby, also won Freeman his first Academy Award for ‘Best Supporting Actor’. He couldn’t have been more popular in this period in the early 21st century, as he had starred in several box office hits like Kiss The Girls, Se7en, and Deep Impact. In addition to becoming a popular voice who appeared in many commercials and documentaries, he starred in The Shawshank Redemption, a film that continued to develop a cult audience after underperforming in theatres.
It wouldn’t be easy to get Freeman to sign on to a film because of how busy his schedule was, but that didn’t stop Christopher Nolan from setting his expectations high. As he had been tasked by Warner Bros with retooling their most popular superhero franchise, Nolan felt that Freeman was the perfect choice to play Lucius Fox in Batman Begins.
“As I started to write the character of Lucius, I did something that I’ve always avoided doing in the past, really, which is I did write with Morgan Freeman in mind,” Nolan said, “To try to write characterisation around an actor can be limiting, and I tried not to make it limiting. I wrote a part I hadn’t seen him play before, but I knew that I really wanted him in there, and I pursued him for many, many months.”
While Nolan is now the most powerful director in the world, he wasn’t nearly as famous at the time that Batman Begins was in production. Following had only been an indie sensation, Memento had been his first artistic breakthrough, and Insomnia was received as a moderate, if not overwhelming success. Nolan risked writing with Freeman in mind, as there was a strong chance that the Oscar-winner would turn him down.
“Whatever he tells you now, he was very difficult to convince,” Nolan said, “I actually flew to Memphis to meet with him in person and really explain why the part needed him, and eventually, he said yes and turned up. I was quite relieved when he actually turned up to shoot because I had begun to believe it were never going to happen.”
One of the many reasons that Batman Begins stood out from previous adaptations of the character was that it explored elements of Batman’s backstory for the first time, and included characters that the films by Tim Burton and Joel Schumacher had cut out. There had been other actors who had played Alfred Pennyworth and Jim Gordon, but Freeman was the first to embody Fox and is now responsible for the most iconic interpretation of the character.
