We all know what Morgan Freeman sounds like. Whether it’s a movie, a TV show, or even a commercial, as soon as his narration comes over the speakers we can instantly recognize the voice. The actor recently sat down on an episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live to explain just how he gained his legendary voice. Check it out below to hear for yourself.
Who would’ve thought that a video of Morgan Freeman talking about how he learned to talk could sound so good? It’s objectively a fairly mundane story, but I’ll be god damned if Mr. Freeman doesn’t sell it with every fiber of his being. He tells Jimmy Kimmel and the rest of the audience that he went to school at Los Angeles City College in order to learn how to become an actor. During this time of formal education he had a vocal coach who taught him how to properly pronounce every last syllable of a sentence in full. Morgan Freeman praises this coach’s tutelage, taking very little credit for his vocal talents and attributing it to the lessons he learned under his unnamed mentor.
Morgan Freeman is incredibly gracious and humble with how he describes it, but at the same time we feel like he’s not exactly giving himself enough credit. Any one of us could study for years and never even come close to sounding as majestic as Morgan Freeman. He may have studied to get where he is today, but he was also born with a set of pipes that would one day make him god… literally.
Morgan Freeman’s voice has made him a legend in the acting community. Whenever a film needs someone to sound like an authority or beacon of wisdom, he’s almost always the man they call. Between films like The Shawshank Redemption, Bruce Almighty, and Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight trilogy, he’s become known as the sage to the weaker, unwise members of a given ensemble. His voice is so damn smooth that it even made flightless birds interesting in March of the Penguins.
The majesty of Morgan Freeman’s voice has become such a joke in and of itself that even Family Guy could easily poke fun at it:
We all have our talents. Morgan Freeman has always been a gifted actor, but his voice has made him the beloved legend we know him as today. No one knows where his immaculate vocal chops will take him next, but we can only imagine that – wherever he goes – it will sound utterly amazing.
