As a young man, Freeman had aspirations of being a fighter pilot. However, a stint in the U.S. Air Force (1955–59) proved disappointing, and he turned his attention to acting. He made his Broadway debut in an all-Black production of Hello Dolly! in 1967. In the 1970s he continued to work on the stage and also appeared on the educational children’s television show The Electric Company as the character Easy Reader. Freeman’s performance in the film Brubaker (1980) and on the soap opera Another World (1982–84), along with several enthusiastic reviews for his theatrical work in the early 1980s, led to more challenging film roles.
Freeman’s portrayal of a dangerous hustler in Street Smart (1987) earned him his first Academy Award nomination, for best supporting actor. He was later nominated for a best-actor Oscar for his work in Driving Miss Daisy (1989), in which he re-created the role of Hoke after first performing it onstage. He evinced a disciplinarian principal in Lean on Me (1989), a hard-hearted Civil War soldier in Glory (1989), and an aging gunslinger in Unforgiven (1992). He made his directorial debut with the anti-apartheid film Bopha! (1993). A third Oscar nomination came for his soulful turn as a convict in The Shawshank Redemption (1994).
Freeman later appeared in several crime dramas, including Se7en (1995), Kiss the Girls (1997), and Along Came a Spider (2001)—the latter two based on James Patterson novels—as well as The Sum of All Fears (2002). He won an Academy Award for best supporting actor for his performance as a former boxer in Clint Eastwood’s Million Dollar Baby (2004) before appearing as Lucius Fox, a research-and-development guru, in Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins (2005). Freeman reprised the latter role in the sequels The Dark Knight (2008) and The Dark Knight Rises (2012). In Rob Reiner’s The Bucket List (2007), he and Jack Nicholson played terminally ill cancer patients who make the most of their remaining time.