"The biggest problem with major works is that it takes years of hard work to get the script. "But the film is still in the pipeline somewhere. "Shekhar has gone on to other projects and he's no longer associated," Freeman confirms. It was first mentioned as long back as 2002 with Shekhar Kapur pencilled in as the man to direct. I asked him about his long-trailed project concerning Nelson Mandela, and dramatising the autobiography of the man. What scares me is actors who forget they are pretending." "We're pretenders, we know we're pretenders. Was Freeman intimidated by Kingsley at all, or rather the somewhat obvious revisit to his Sexy Beast persona? What was it like being in the room with that level of hissing, spitting evil? "Oh, heavens, no, we're actors," he smiles. Without wishing to give too much away, the two men, both hellbent on destroying the other, are in a room together and are being "encouraged" towards a more truthful state of mind by Bruce Willis (like Freeman, a late addition to the casting).
The director, the Brit Paul McGuigan, who also made the equally visceral Gangster No 1, has picked out a scene towards the end as a particular favourite. And the ultimate bad guy is high on his list. There is, it's evident, a thirst for playing bad in him. His latest film, Lucky Number Slevin, features him as a blackhearted gangster in a showdown with an equally blackhearted gangster foe played by Ben Kingsley.
But now he wants a break from being good. He won a best supporting Oscar in Million Dollar Baby. No wonder that when Nelson Mandela was asked who should represent him in the movies, the first name on his lips was the Tennessee-born veteran who at the age of 68 seems at the peak of his game. His celebrated roles in The Shawshank Redemption and his omniscient narration in March of the Penguins add to the perception that Morgan Freeman is a different class of actor, an actor whom the public instinctively warms to as a good man, possibly even a holy man. In Bruce Almighty he wears a smart white suit and gets to be God.
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