Actor Morgan Freeman Seriously Hurt in Car Crash

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Morgan Freeman Hospitalized after Car Wreck

 

(CNN) -- Oscar-winning actor Morgan Freeman was in serious condition but in "good spirits" at a Tennessee hospital after being involved in a car wreck in northern Mississippi Sunday night, his business partner said.

 

Freeman, 71, broke his left upper arm and suffered several other fractures and neck and shoulder injuries in the wreck, said Bill Luckett, an attorney from Clarksdale, Mississippi.

 

A woman who also was in the car was taken to the same hospital, said Angie Underwood, a spokeswoman for the Mississippi Highway Patrol. No information on her condition was released.

 

Freeman could have surgery as early as Monday evening and could need three to four months to recover, Luckett told reporters outside the Regional Medical Center in Memphis, Tennessee.

 

"He's in good spirits, but he's in some pain," said Luckett, who owns a restaurant and blues club with Freeman in Clarksdale.

 

Underwood said the wreck happened at about 11:30 p.m. Sunday on a state highway about five miles west of Charleston, Mississippi, where Freeman has a home.

 

According to The Associated Press, Mississippi Highway Patrol spokesman Sgt. Ben Williams said Freeman was driving a 1997 Nissan Maxima belonging to Demaris Meyer of Memphis when the car left a rural highway and flipped several times shortly before midnight Sunday.

 

"There's no indication that either alcohol or drugs were involved," Williams said, according to the AP. Williams said Meyer was in the car, and that both she and Freeman were wearing seat belts, Williams said.

 

Clay McFerrin, editor of the Sun Sentinel in Charleston, Mississippi, told the AP that emergency personnel "had to use the jaws of life to extract him from the vehicle."

 

"He was lucid, conscious," McFerrin told the AP. "He was talking, joking with some of the rescue workers at one point."

 

McFerrin, who told the AP he arrived at the accident scene not long after the incident, said bystanders were trying to get a look at the actor.

 

When one person tried to snap a photo with a cell phone camera, Freeman joked, "no freebies, no freebies," McFerrin told the AP.

 

The cause of the wreck is under investigation, Underwood said. Milla Borden, spokeswoman for the Memphis hospital, confirmed that Freeman was in serious condition there Monday.

 

Freeman was headed to his Charleston home when the wreck happened, said Luckett, who added that the woman in the car "is a mutual friend of ours."

 

Both had been at Luckett's home in Clarksdale -- about 35 miles northwest of the wreck site -- before the crash occurred, Luckett said.

 

Freeman won an Academy Award for best supporting actor in 2005 for his role in the gritty boxing film "Million Dollar Baby." He has been nominated for Oscars three other times, for the movies "Street Smart," "Driving Miss Daisy" and "The Shawshank Redemption."

 

He's starring in two successful summer films, the hitman drama "Wanted" and the blockbuster "The Dark Knight."

 

He recently starred on Broadway in a production of the Clifford Odets play "The Country Girl."

 

He was born in Memphis and grew up in the Mississippi Delta region, moving back to open his blues club, Ground Zero, and a restaurant in Clarksdale in 2001. In a 2005 interview with CNN, he said returning to the area was "one of the smartest moves I've made in life."

 

"My aim in life, when I graduated from high school, was to get out of Mississippi," he said. "I started coming back in about 1979, because my parents moved back, which I couldn't understand. What in the world would make you come back here? It took me about 20 years to figure that out."

 

Freeman's nonprofit foundation has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to schools in the historically poor region, and he established the club in part to preserve the Delta's musical heritage.