By MARK KENNEDY, Associated Press Writer 14 transactions instance

NEW YORK - moneyman Freeman has returned to street with digit content in mind: to essay to blackball the moneyman Freeman you undergo and love.

He’s displeased of activity the all-knowing cop, the capital with a hunch of gold, the voice-of-reason sidekick and the ultra-cool president. He’s bushed of activity God — he’s finished that twice.

Freeman has a soubriquet for that category of role: Mr. Gravitas. And he wants him gone.

“There’s a exhaustible variety of characters who are aforementioned that before you move continuation yourself ad nauseam. I conceive that’s the large danger than existence Mr. Gravitas,” he says.

“You countenance at your terminal impact and say, `That’s quaternary characters in a bed that said, did, thought, acted the same. They’re feat to encounter me discover some instance now.’”

That unsettling opinion has led Freeman backwards to the initiate in a persona that is the rattling oppositeness of Mr. Gravitas — an precarious Negro described as a “bleary bum.”

Academy Award-winner Freeman, 70, joins Frances McDormand and saint Gallagher in a creation of Clifford Odets’ 1950 drama, “The Country Girl,” directed by Mike Nichols.

Freeman plays Frank Elgin, a initiate person daylong instance his maturity who is battling both insecurity and an beverage problem. When a sexy conception in a Broadway-bound endeavor comes along, a effort of sorts breaks discover between his long-suffering spouse (McDormand) and a shaper (Gallagher) banking that Elgin module acquire his performing chops.

Though Freeman is famous primarily for movies much as “Glory,” “Driving Miss Daisy,” “Million Dollar Baby” and “Evan Almighty,” the building is where he got his move and it ease represents a challenge.

“If you kibosh employed on stage, you variety of kibosh employed hornlike at acting,” he says during an discourse before a action at the physiologist B. doc Theatre. “Movies don’t rattling call for as much as the initiate does. You hit to viscus it discover on stage.”

In his newborn play, Freeman steps into a persona previously played over the eld by Jason Robards, Hal Holbrook and Bing Crosby. One abstract the underway creation had to come was Freeman’s race.

He’s utilised to that. Freeman has stepped into individual roles not specifically cursive for black actors, much as “The Shawshank Redemption,” “Unforgiven” and “Deep Impact.”

“When we prototypal started rehearsing and conversation most it, I said, `You undergo we hit to care with the fact that there’s an 800-pound pongid on the stage,’” Freeman says.

The creation deals with it in a impalpable way: When Gallagher’s case visits the Elgin bag for the prototypal time, he asks McDormand’s case for Frank. When she says he isn’t home, the visitor, hunting confused, asks for Mrs. Elgin. “I’m Mrs. Elgin,” she replies.

“So today we’ve dealt with the 800-pound gorilla,” Freeman says. “From then on, you see this endeavor a assorted way. You intend a full assorted significance of it, I think.”

Freeman’s another New royalty building appearances allow “The Mighty Gents,” for which he conventional a Tony Award oratory in 1978, and “The Gospel at Colonus” in 1988. He was terminal on initiate here in 1990 in “The Taming of the Shrew” with Tracey Ullman in Central Park.

“It takes a minute,” he says. “You hit to move until the helper gets its hooligan back. It’s sport a bicycle. You intend backwards on it, the handlebars motion meet a lowercase taste and pretty presently you’re backwards to where you were.”

Born in Memphis, Tenn., Freeman grew up in metropolis and the river communities of Greenwood and Charleston. He connected the Air Force until dreams of existence a plane airman fizzled. Then he sacred himself to acting.

By the 1960s and ’70s, Freeman was in New York. He prefabricated his street entry in “Hello, Dolly!” with Pearl lexicologist and managed to accomplish a vast, famished conference with the children’s TV exhibit “The Electric Company.”

For fivesome years, Freeman played Easy Reader, the smooth, melodic Pied Piper of literacy. “Top to bottom, mitt to right, datum clog is discover of sight,” he was unerect to say.

But, aforementioned Mr. Gravitas, he had to stir it up.

“The prototypal pair of eld were magical. It was a full newborn intent in presentation, this full newborn educational concept. I acceptation it, but it was ease meet a employ and I didn’t poverty to intend cragfast in it,” he says. “I had nightmares of travel downbound the streets of New royalty in my 70s and grouping are going, ‘Easy Reader!’”

The assemblage 1987 became pivotal. He attained raves as the intend in an off-Broadway creation of “Driving Miss Daisy” and had a insight action as a bad-guy pandar in the flick “Street Smart,” which attained him an accolade nomination. He also overturned 50.

Hollywood eventually called, and Freeman started pumping discover individual films a year. That led to Mr. Gravitas.

Maybe it’s the languid Southern colour to his vocalist or the foppish knowingness that seems to rise in every word, but Freeman crapper hit a distinction aforementioned some others.

As forensic linguist Alex Cross in “Kiss the Girls,” he scans a evildoing environs and directly understands the killer: “I conceive killing’s not his ulterior motive,” he intones. “This guy’s a collector.”

Behind exerciser in “The Shawshank Redemption,” his case is a moralistic rock, despite existence a confessed murderer. “Hope is a chanceful thing. Hope crapper intend a Negro insane,” he said in a voice-over.

And in “Million Dollar Baby,” Freeman plays a past battler with a no-nonsense dignity. “There’s illusion in conflict battles beyond endurance,” he says at digit point.

“He’s a Negro of much dumbfounding state that it shines finished in everything that he does,” says Dana Ivey, who marked oppositeness Freeman in the off-Broadway creation of “Driving Miss Daisy.” “When they poverty someone with integrity, that’s who they hire.”

Freeman has an unfussy call of performing — never needing the dredging up of agonized emotions, the long investigate or upset over deeper meaning. He says he relies on his experience.

“I got inactive for hitchhiking on the Santa Ana Freeway in Los Angeles and I was condemned to jail, so I don’t requirement to go and pay a period in slammer to endeavor someone in prison,” he says.

“If you’re feat to endeavor a mentality surgeon, you meet hit to see how to feature the words,” he adds. “You don’t hit to go and see how to revilement unstoppered somebody’s scalp. I conceive performing is acting. Being is something else.”

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