Read the freaking script, that's how you prepare," he said. "People say 'Well you've played God - how did you prepare for that?'" he said, affecting an exaggerated look of face-in-palm exasperation. "Divine is not that hard to play if you want to know the truth of the matter," Mr Freeman confides. The crowd on Monday wanted to know if he had any advice on playing divinity for the Brazilian actor Rodrigo Santoro, who portrays Jesus in the chariot-racing epic. Next up is Ben-Hur, in which Mr Freeman swaps the white suit he donned to play God in Bruce Almighty and its sequel for an unkempt set of dreadlocks and the robes of a Nubian sheik. Numerous other milestones in American cinema dot Mr Freeman's career, from David Fincher's brutal noir thriller Seven in 1995 and Christopher Nolan's Batman films to his acclaimed portrayal of Nelson Mandela in 2009's Invictus. Many critics believe he should have won Best Actor a decade earlier for his stunning turn as aging con Ellis Boyd "Red" Redding in The Shawshank Redemption, perhaps his most famous role. He has been nominated five times for Academy Awards but had to wait until 2005 to bring home the Supporting Actor statuette for Million Dollar Baby. That's more than the GDP of 10 African countries and about the same as the combined receipts of the films of Al Pacino and Robert De Niro.
Since his inauspicious, uncredited debut as "man on street" in Sidney Lumet's 1964 movie The Pawnbroker, Mr Freeman's 79 films - one for every year - have made $4.3 billion at the box office. Mr Freeman, the apotheosis of debonair Hollywood superstardom when he's not reliving his lunch, knows he can get away with a lot in interviews. "Pardon me, I just had guacamole," the twice-divorced father-of-four said in his irresistible, pancake-syrup timbre, impish glint in his eye, looking anything but embarrassed. On Monday it was a loud, gassy burp that elicited gales of shocked laughter from a handful of journalists gathered in a Beverly Hills hotel to hear Mr Freeman talk about his latest movie, Ben-Hur. The 79-year-old actor famously nodded off on camera during a sit-down with Seattle's Fox affiliate KCPQ in 2013 and was upbraided earlier this year for "drooling" over WGN producer Tyra Martin during a video interview. Morgan Freeman, the velvet-voiced doyen of some of America's best-loved movies, not to mention one of the suavest actors in the business, sometimes lets his cool crown slip.
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