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LOS ANGELES -- Morgan Freeman has one less thing to do before he dies.
"This," he says, jerking a thumb in the direction of his Bucket List co-star Jack Nicholson, "has been on my own bucket list for a long time."
The two Oscar winners, both 70, star in Rob Reiner's dramedy about two soon-to-croak geezers who jot down a checklist of ambitions.
The goal? Do them before they "kick the bucket."
Still, Freeman isn't quite as literal as his character.
"I think your bucket list is not written down, but written somewhere else on you -- in your heart. It's the things you check off in life as you do the things you want to do -- if you get to do the things you want to do."
One would think Freeman, certainly, has led a life fulfilled.
The key?
He recognized from an early age what he wanted to do and has spent more than a half-century doing it.
"I knew as a young teenager what I wanted to do. I got sidetracked because I also thought I wanted to be an adventurer so I joined the air force to be a fighter pilot," he says.
"I was 21 years old and when I had the opportunity to sit in a plane and said, 'This ain't it.' There was only one other choice in my life and that was acting. Whatever else was going to happen after that, I was lasering in on acting."
RESPECTED
And laser he did -- for decades with nominal success, as anyone who grew up in the 1970s watching him on the children's TV show The Electric Company knows. Since those days, of course, Freeman has earned a place among the most respected thespians in the world.
Still, for all his accolades and celebrity, he remains an enigma to more than just moviegoers.
"He's a mysterious man," Nicholson says.
"Since we got on so well, I wondered why we hadn't seen very much of each other over the years. Now I know. 'Where have you been, Morgan?' 'Well, I was in Belgrade.' The man moves and flies. He's a man of mystery."