HOLLYWOOD -- If Morgan Freeman had his druthers, he'd rather be making tracks or waves than movies.

"I have a boat down in the Caribbean and she's calling me all the time.

"She's sitting down there tied to the dock, going: 'Come sail me, Morgan' and I have a ranch in Mississippi with horses on it and they're always calling me, too," says Freeman.

Despite such distractions, Freeman, 64, continues to work at a demanding pace.

On Friday, he stars opposite Ashley Judd in the military courtroom drama High Crimes. Next month, he joins Ben Affleck for The Sum of All Fears, the newest of Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan political thrillers.

Freeman recently completed shooting his role in the Stephen King sci-fi adventure Dreamcatcher, has provided one of the voices for the animated feature Tusker and is working with Billy Bob Thornton and Holly Hunter in Levity.

"I'm an actor. I was born to act. I was born to pretend. It took me a very long time to get to the position I'm at now. I'm not going to throw it away just to ride my horses or sail my boat. I'll have plenty of time to do that when my latest 15 minutes of fame is up."

He won't even take six months off to join friends on a planned sailing expedition in the South Pacific.

"I never take down time. It's enforced on me. There could conceivably come a time when I won't get offers any more."

He already has a plan should that day arrive: "I would downsize. I'd get rid of the cars, then the horses, then the ranch. But I would keep the boat because the boat is life to me. If you are on the ocean, you are going to survive almost any catastrophe the world has to offer -- droughts, famine, plague, locusts, earthquakes, even an asteroid."

Freeman is not only an actor, rancher and sailor, but an impresario. He owns a blues club, Ground Zero, in Clarksville, Miss.

"I studied music in high school where I learned to play the saxophone but it didn't turn out to be my forte. Still, I love music, which is why I opened my club. I love to listen to real musicians play and when it's in my club, it's a bit like they're in my house."

Hollywood holds no allure for Freeman.

"I lived in Hollywood for 18 months in 1959 and '60. I left and never went back. I didn't like anything about it."

Freeman spent the early '60s in San Francisco which he recalls "was and still is a beautiful city, but there was no work for me. I was a musical theatre actor at the time and my dance teacher told me I'd have better luck in New York and he was right.

"That's where my career really took off."

During the 1980s, he was an award-winning stage actor doing small roles in such films as Eyewitness, Brubaker and That Was Then, This is Now.

Then came his Oscar-nominated turn as a pimp in Street Smart and, suddenly at 50, Freeman became a film star. He won Oscar nominations for Driving Miss Daisy and The Shawshank Redemption.

"I still consider myself a character actor, but agents, directors and studios consider me a star.

"I now have a screen image that's wrapped around things like dignity and honour, so I don't get offers to play villains or roles where my character is killed. It's the price you pay when you become a celebrity instead of just an actor."

In High Crimes, Freeman plays Charlie Grimes, a once-respected defence attorney whose ongoing battle with alcoholism has robbed him of his reputation. He is the only one willing to help Judd, a successful lawyer, when she is forced to defend her husband (Jim Caviezel) when he is accused of murder.

"I was never an alcoholic, but there was a time when I drank too much. I never had a physical need for alcohol like Charlie does, but I understand that kind of addiction because I was a smoker and that was a really hard habit to kick. I had a need for nicotine. I got pains in my chest because my body wanted that crap so bad.

"The only thing harder I ever did than give up smoking was to become a professional actor. That really was against all odds, but it's what I wanted and I guess I wanted it desperately enough to keep on fighting and struggling when it would have made more sense just to give up and admit defeat."


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