Morgan Freeman Defies Labels

At 68, He's A Dynamic Presence From Hollywood To Clarksdale

(CBS) 
His social and political views are at times surprising and he pulls no punches.

He says he finds Black History Month “ridiculous.”

“You're going to relegate my history to a month?” asks Freeman. “I don't want a Black History Month. Black history is American history,” he says, noting that there are no white or Jewish history months.

How can we get rid of racism?

“Stop talking about it. I'm going to stop calling you a white man,” Freeman says to Wallace. “And I'm going to ask you to stop calling me a black man. I know you as Mike Wallace. You know me as Morgan Freeman. You wouldn't say, ‘Well, I know this white guy named Mike Wallace.’ You know what I'm sayin’?”

Freeman’s convictions make for lively dinner conversation with his wife. Myrna and Morgan met 25 years ago when both were struggling in the world of New York theater. Today, few people know him better than she does.

Asked if her husband is a narcissist, Myrna Freeman says he is an egoist.

“Narcissist strikes me as somebody who's in love with themselves. I don't see him as in love with himself. He's more full of himself,” she says laughing. “He’s self-absorbed.”

And criticism doesn’t bother him?

“Not that I've ever noticed,” she says.

“I don't get criticized. I'm the greatest living American actor,” Morgan Freeman interjects, laughing. “Ask anybody.”

He is joking, of course, but film critics say his Oscar last year was long overdue. Freeman acknowledges he’s happy finally to have one, but he finds the annual Oscar race demeaning to the nominees.

“At the end of this process four of us are going to be losers. I kind of resent it,” says Freeman. “Who likes feeling like a loser, you know? That's why, you lost that one, you lost that time. Oh, you think it's finally your time to win one. Win…what are you going to win? I win a doorstop, you know?”

When he’s at ease, Freeman is playful, but when it comes to his off-camera pursuits, he’s serious.

Take his pursuit of learning to fly, for example. He always wanted to learn to fly and finally decided to do it when he turned 65. Now, he can pilot himself across the country.

One destination he sometimes flies to is The Virgin Islands, to get back to that sailboat.

Asked if he would rather be working or on his sailboat, Freeman says, “All my life, all my life that I can, as far back as I can remember, I saw my first movie when I was six years old. And since then I wanted to do that. I wanted to be a part of that.”

He is a man who makes you believe he has got it all.

“But I can say that life is good to me. Has been and is good. So I think my task is to be good to it. So how do you be good to life? You live it,” says Freeman.

[Click at right to watch CBSNews.com's exclusive Reporter's Notebook, in which Mike Wallace talks about his interview with Morgan Freeman, and an excerpt from the interview.]