How Morgan Freeman Developed His Voice | Late Night with Conan O’Brien

[Applause] oh [Music] that's nice nice that never gets old everything no not that one yeah let me just uh say that i'm sorry about your habit i didn't know that about wit which is this oh the wine yeah yeah it gets me through the day you should use a glass like that by the way that was a great bit oh thank you thank you very much just giving you one more compliment that i want to shut up yeah um you gave a commencement speech at your alma mater in 2000 i i spoke yeah perfectly i read it you're very intelligent oh thank you thank you very much thank you thank you very much you're welcome you said that with a little bit of the air of despite what we've all seen all these years like any great actor you can convey so much wordlessly uh i i had hope not to that time uh well thank you so much so much to talk about uh you know we were talking about this today and you know i brought up uh i've been a fan of yours for so many years i think you may have the best voice of any actor on the planet right now uh you have a terrific mellifluous voice of course has been featured in shawshank redemption uh march of the penguins you know where we and and i was just thinking about it today this is something that did you did you always have that voice no is it a natural gift no no it's not a natural gift at all i don't think any voice is a natural gift you you someone helps you get it really yeah that never occurred i mean honestly never occurred to me that that's something that you that you worked on how would you what was your voice like before you started it was it was high i had a very thick southern accent i was raised in mississippi and um thank you very much we need that um no when i studied uh acting 101 uh at uh lacc you know los angeles city college and i had a there it turned out that it was a very fine acting uh not acting but voice coach voice instructor he gave us voice and diction and voice development and voice development is where he starts working you down in your registry he says everybody most people talk a bit higher than their normal right here yeah and i've i mean i've always i notice voice just because i've never i've never liked mine and so i when i hear someone with a terrific voice i think how do they do that how did they get there how are they able to have that voice why don't you like your voice it sounds great and you have well it sounds very annoying to me right hi folks how are you nice to see you you know that's what it sounds like to me that's my own maybe self-hate uh coming through but uh okay again you don't have to say anything what were we going to talk about if we hadn't talked about voice uh we were going to talk about so many things first of all you uh so revered as an actor who are the actors that you really love the most who love the most who inspires you as a every actor who works inspires me i'm a big thief right i uh i i our addiction coach was very good yeah yes i mean [Applause] you understand what i'm saying here um when i was a kid i lived in the movies i that was where i went uh if i wasn't reading a book i was going to the movies and every actor that i saw from jimmy wakeley all the way to howard duff victor mature i watched with the idea of one of these days i'm going to be able to do that the only person i can't uh do that with is james cagney and clark gable and well what they had was this dialogue affinity you've listened to clark gable dialogue comes out of him like that and it's all clear i can't do it but you you say you watch some of these actors and you say you're a thief you take something that you like that they're doing which i think is the same any creative process i mean maybe maybe you know but it's it's just learning how to control yourself i think because you know i used to watch victim mature movies i don't know if anybody ever saw like a kiss of death samson and delilah vic mature had this habit of i mean if he was going to show any kind of emotion he'd just pop his scalp back you know he'd be looking at you and then you would say something that meant something he'd go [Laughter] [Applause] that's great though i think you have to i think it's true in music as well musicians say they listen the first number one job to becoming a great songwriter is to listen to everybody and you sub consciously or subconsciously you take what you like you take what rings what's true and what you need yeah i i'm pretty sure that's true they say about writing you want to write you better read right so yeah well it's the same in this business too everybody's i'm the sum of everybody i watched who inspired me growing up and some of it's conscious some of it's unconscious but i think that's true but now i'm going to pop my skull back all the time yeah look at it okay do you have to tell me something surprising you have to give me shocking news right now okay shocking news yes you're good at what you do [Applause] i guess you're not supposed to do it over and over again you can if you're trying to make a point vibrate my hair maniacally

Channel: Conan O'Brien

Views: 322,376

Keywords: Late Night with Conan O’Brien, late night with conan obrien, late night with, conan classic, best of, late night, original, comedy, sketch, humor, funny, celebrity, interview, first, late late show, late, night, show, special, classic, talk show, talk show hosts, triumph the insult comic dog, andy richter, max weinberg, morgan freeman

Id: RIiNuLgUInk

Length: 6min 18sec (378 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 16 2021