Morgan Freeman in SAG Awards speech: This is beyond an honour

Morgan Freeman accepts the Life Achievement Award onstage during the 24th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards show at The Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles. Pic/AFP

After an illustrious career of more than five decades, veteran actor Morgan Freeman has taken home the biggest honour in the entertainment industry. The 80-year-old actor, who was honoured with the Screen Actors Guild's Life Achievement Award, acknowledged how momentous this achievement was for him. In his acceptance speech, he said, 'These moments in life usually call for an entire litany of thank yous. I can't do that because I don't know all of your names, so I won't try. This is beyond an honour. This is a place in history. I want to say thanks to SAGs for this enormous honour'.

After a couple of playful jokes with award presenter Rita Moreno, and the necessary thank yous, Morgan went on to give a few adjustments that could be made to the SAG statue in the future years. 'I wasn't gonna do this, but I'm gonna tell you what's wrong with this statue. It works from the back. From the front, it's gender-specific. Maybe I started something', shared Freeman.

Rita, who was presented with this award five years ago by Freeman, called the actor a 'national treasure'. She said, 'Morgan is way more than just an actor, narrator, producer, humanitarian. This man is a national treasure. Morgan likes to say that if you become a star, people are going to go to see you. And if you remain an actor, they're going to go see the story you are in".

Freeman rose to fame in the 1970s with a part of children's TV show 'The Electric Company' and in the following decades has become one of the highest box office stars of all time; he has raked in USD 4.316 billion total box office gross, an average of USD 74.4 million per film. Morgan won an Oscar in 2005 for his role in 'Million Dollar Baby' (2004), and he has received Oscar nominations for his performances in 'Street Smart' (1987), 'Driving Miss Daisy' (1989), 'The Shawshank Redemption' (1994) and 'Invictus' (2009).

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