Morgan Freeman on How His Acting Coach Helped Him Hone His Signature Voice: ‘Relaxation Is the Key'

Morgan Freeman attributes his iconic voice to a former acting coach who taught the legendary actor to "relax" his vocals.

To promote season two of spy thriller series Special Ops: Lioness, on Wednesday (October 23), the 87-year-old Academy Award winner was a guest on The Jennifer Hudson Show. While Freeman discussed his six-decade career, also giving advice to aspiring performers, Hudson asked him if his voice was "always" the deep, resonant one that fans have heard for years.

"No, heavens, no," The Shawshank Redemption star said around the 2:40-minute mark of the clip below. "I grew up in the South, so my voice was maybe a half octave or an octave higher than it is [now]. I had a very thick southern accent."

But it was while taking acting classes at Los Angeles City College during the evenings that a voice instructor "tore down" and "fixed" Freeman's voice to deepen it.

"There are ways to do it." Freeman said. "Relaxation is the key. I learned to relax this part here, and you do that by yawning a lot. You open your mouth wide and that kind of relaxes the throat."

Freeman explained that by following his technique "a few times" that "you're going to realize–you may not hear it, but other people hear it. 'Oh, his voice is lower than it used to be.'"

Freeman added that he was also taught how to do "chicken wings" to open up his chest and give the "lungs more room."

"You're doing that in class, obviously, you're doing it every day for a few weeks, six maybe. Then something's going to happen," he concluded.

Freeman attended LACC in the early 1960s and has spoken on his golden voice throughout the years, like during his 2007 appearance on Late Night with Conan O’Brien, where he denied that it was a "natural gift."

"When I studied Acting 101 at LACC, Los Angeles City College, and I had a very...It turned out that it was a very fine acting, not acting, but voice coach, voice instructor," Morgan said around the 2:15-minute mark of the clip below. "He gave us voice and diction and voice development."