If there’s anyone we trust with advice on aging, it’s Morgan Freeman and Clint Eastwood.
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Watch The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon on NBC weeknights at 11:35/10:35c and next day on Peacock.
Freeman, who will turn 89 in June, says he only has one good hand and one good foot. But he’s feeling fine for nearly 90, and he shared how he keeps age from catching up with him during his February 25 Tonight Show appearance. He actually got the advice from Eastwood, who is 95, and shared it with Jimmy Fallon.
“Never let the old man in.”
Presumably, the old woman should be kept out as well, but either way the advice seems to be working for Freeman. The actor and producer is promoting The Gray House, a new TV miniseries he produced with Kevin Costner about the Civil War. And he’s still playing golf, even if he admits he’s not playing it well.
“How’s your golf game?” asked Fallon, also an avid golfer.
“Sucks,” Freeman said simply.
“See that hand?” he said, nodding towards his left. “It won’t hold a golf club. So I’ve only got [the right] to golf with. How good can it be?”
“Do you still walk the course?” Fallon asked.
“Uh, no,” said Freeman. “I also got a bad foot.”
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Morgan Freeman doesn’t think his iconic voice is special
Despite being a prolific voiceover artist and the literal voice of God in the minds of anyone who’s seen the movies Bruce Almighty or Evan Almighty, Freeman refused to admit he sees his voice as anything other than ordinary.
“It’s special to you,” he told Fallon. “It ain’t special to me.”
“Really?” Fallon asked. “But you’re the voice of God!”
“Please,” said Freeman.
He shared that he “went to college for about 20 minutes” at Los Angeles City College (where Eastwood also studied), and one particular instructor who helped with his “voice and diction.”
“A lot of people speak up higher in their voice box than they could,” Freeman explained, going on to say that the instructor “dropped my voice about an octave.”
Fallon’s attempt at dropping his own voice about an octave nearly made Freeman walk out of the interview.
“I think your voice is about as low as you’re ever gonna get it,” he said, to Fallon’s dismay. “That wasn’t a put-down. I meant that you speak normally. Your voice is in a normal pitch.”
“Oh, thank you,” said Fallon. “I thought you were saying I’m never gonna go through puberty, which I didn’t. I skipped over. I never let the old man in, you know what I’m saying?”
“Can I leave now?” Freeman joked. It wasn’t the first time Freeman’s deep voice has been a point of focus on The Tonight Show. In 2014, Fallon asked Freeman to talk after sucking on a helium balloon, with hilarious results.
Morgan Freeman Chats with Jimmy While Sucking Helium
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Clint Eastwood’s advice inspired a country song by Toby Keith
Toby Keith shared a golf cart in with Eastwood in 2018 and heard the same inspiring advice that Freeman took to heart. He ended up writing a song called “Don’t Let the Old Man In,” which Eastwood used in his movie The Mule.
The song was released in 2019, but after Keith’s death in February 2024, it hit the charts again. It reached no. 1 in country digital song sales as fans found new meaning in the track.
I knew all of my life
That someday it would end
Get up and go outside
Don’t let the old man in