Morgan Freeman is featured in Shakespeare Uncovered: Taming of the Shrew with Morgan Freeman, which airs Friday, February 6 at 9PM EST (check local listings).

Academy Award winning actor Morgan Freeman is one of the most recognizable figures in American cinema. His works are among the most critically and commercially successful films of all time. Freeman ranks 2nd among worldwide top-grossing actors of all time, with his films having earned over $4 billion in cumulative ticket sales. Whether a role requires an air of gravitas, a playful smile, twinkle of the eye, or a world-weary, yet insightful soul, Freeman’s ability to delve to the core of a character and infuse it with a quiet dignity has resulted in some of the most memorable cinematic characters committed to film.
In 2005 Freeman won the Best Supporting Actor Academy Award for his role in “Million Dollar Baby.” Freeman also received an Academy Award nomination in 1987 for Best Supporting Actor for “Street Smart,” in 1994 for Best Actor for “The Shawshank Redemption,” and in 2010 for Best Actor for “Invictus.” He also won the Golden Globe for Best Actor for his performance in “Driving Miss Daisy” in 1990.

Freeman was honored with the Cecil B. DeMille Award at the 2011 Golden Globe Awards. That same year, Freeman received the 39th AFI Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2000, Freeman received the coveted Kennedy Center Honor for his distinguished acting, and was honored with the Hollywood Actor Award from the Hollywood Film Festival.

In 2010, Freeman won the National Board of Review Award for Best Actor for his performance as Nelson Mandela in “Invictus.” In addition to his Academy Award nomination for Best Actor, he also received a Golden Globe nomination and a Broadcast Critics Association nomination. The picture was produced by Revelations Entertainment, the company he co-founded in 1996 with Lori McCreary with a mission to produce films that reveal truth. Since its inception, Revelations has continued to be the frontrunner in the field of digital technology.

Revelations’ features include the recently completed “Ruth & Alex,” “Invictus,” “The Code,” “The Magic of Belle Isle,” “Levity,” “Under Suspicion,” “Mutiny,” “Bopha!”, “Along Came a Spider,” “Feast of Love,” “10 Items or Less,” “Maiden Heist” and the Peabody Award winning ESPN 30 For 30 documentary, “The 16th Man.”
Freeman is an executive producer with McCreary on the new Revelations Entertainment series “Madam Secretary” for CBS, starring Téa Leoni, which debuted in September 2014.

Freeman hosts and is an executive producer for the Revelations Entertainment, three time Emmy nominated series “Through the Wormhole with Morgan Freeman,” which show completed its fifth season on Science Channel.
Upcoming films in which Freeman will be seen include “The Last Knights” and Revelations’ “Ruth & Alex.” He is currently filming Focus Features’ “London Has Fallen.”

Most recently, Freeman starred in “Lucy,” “Dolphin Tale 2,” “Transcendence,” “The Lego Movie,” “Last Vegas,” “Now You See Me,” “Oblivion,” “Olympus Has Fallen” and “The Dark Knight Rises.”

Freeman recently narrated the IMAX documentary “Island of Lemurs: Madagascar” and Science Channel’s “Stem Cell Universe with Stephen Hawking.” He will be heard narrating the upcoming history documentary “We The People.” Past narrations include two Academy Award-winning documentaries, “The Long Way Home” and “The March of The Penguins.”

Freeman’s other credits include “Dolphin’s Tale,” “Born to be Wild 3D,” “The Dark Knight,” “The Bucket List,” “Glory,” “Clean and Sober,” “Lean on Me,” “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves,” “Unforgiven,” “Se7en,” “Kiss the Girls,” “Amistad,” “Deep Impact,” “Nurse Betty,” “The Sum of All Fears,” “Bruce Almighty,” “Nurse Betty,” ”Coriolanus,” “Attica,” “Brubaker,” “Eyewitness,” “Death of a Prophet,” and “Along Came a Spider.”

After beginning his acting career on the off-Broadway stage productions of “The Niggerlovers” and the all African-American production of “Hello Dolly”, Freeman segued into television. Many people grew up watching him on the long-running Children’s Television Workshop classic “The Electric Company,” where he played the ironic Easy Reader among several recurring characters. Looking for his next challenge, he set his sights on both Broadway and the silver screen simultaneously and quickly began to fill his resume with memorable performances.

In 1978 Freeman won a Drama Desk Award for his role as Zeke in “The Mighty Gents.” He also received a Tony Nomination for Best Performance by a Featured Actor.
His stage work continued to earn him accolades and awards, including Obie Awards in 1980, 1984 and 1987 and a second Drama Desk Nomination in 1987 for the role of Hoke Colburn, which he created for the Alfred Uhry play “Driving Miss Daisy” and reprised in the 1989 movie of the same name.

In his spare time, Freeman loves the freedom of both sea and sky; he is a long-time sailor and has earned a private pilot’s license. He also has a love for the blues and seeks to keep it in the forefront through his Ground Zero club in Clarksville, Mississippi, the birthplace of the blues. In 1973 he co-founded the Frank Silvera Writers’ Workshop, now in its 37th season. The workshop seeks to serve successful playwrights of the new millennium. He is a member of the Board of Directors of Earth Biofuels, a company whose mission is to promote the use of clean-burning fuels. He also supports Artists for a New South Africa and the Campaign for Female Education.

Freeman has been named on the Forbes “Most Trustworthy Celebrities” list each of the five times it has been published since 2006.