Featured Image Credit: Sky HISTORY
Topics: Celebrity, Film and TV
Tom Wood
Morgan Freeman has confirmed that he has no desire to stop acting and retire any time soon, despite his advancing years.
Here's the trailer for Freeman's latest project:
The 86-year-old was speaking ahead of the release of a new documentary film called 761st Tank Battalion: The Original Black Panthers, documenting the story of an all-black group of US soldiers who became heroes in World War Two, despite the institutional racism that they faced from their own countrymen.
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Freeman was in the US military himself back in the 1950s, so the subject is clearly close to his heart, but - after leaving the army - he made a career pivot into acting and the rest - as they say - is history.
He’s one of the biggest stars in the world, having featured in classic movies such as The Shawshank Redemption, Invictus, The Dark Knight Trilogy, and his Oscar-winning turn in Million Dollar Baby.
But, time comes for us all, and despite the fact that he clearly keeps himself very busy for a man of 86, Freeman has no plans to retire from showbiz any time soon.
Despite many people he knows calling it a day, Freeman doesn't seem to have even thought about winding things up.
He told LADbible: “Well, if I can go pedal to the metal that’s what I’ll keep doing.
“This business has a way of slowing you down on its own, you don’t have to [do it yourself].
“You can - I have friends who have just thrown in the towel and said, ‘that’s it for me’, but I don’t see myself doing anyway in the near future.”
In the new documentary, Freeman unveils the story of the 761st Tank Battalion - famous for their black panther logo - who never expected to be sent into battle at all, but found themselves fighting across Europe during the Second World War, eventually making heroes of themselves.
Along the way, they encountered serious opposition, not only from the Nazis, but also from their own side.
It’s a tale of triumph over oppression and racism, as well as uncovering some of the hidden histories and stories that simply haven’t been told about the involvement of black soldiers in the US armed forces at that time.
Clearly, it’s a subject that is important to Freeman, who admits: “If you want your history to be told, you’ve got to tell it yourself.”
For the actor, that meant delving into his own family history and finding out what happened to three members of his own family who went off to the war with little to no record of what actually happened to them while they were out there.
761st Battalion: The Original Black Panthers premieres on Sunday, 1 October at 9pm on Sky HISTORY. The documentary is already available to watch on HISTORY in the US.