Morgan Freeman Fighting for his Life in Memphis Hospital after Sunday Car Accident

Oscar-winning actor Morgan Freeman was in serious condition at a Memphis hospital after being involved in a car accident Sunday night, according to hospital officials.

Milla Borden, spokeswoman for the Memphis Regional Medical Center, confirmed that Freeman was a patient at the hospital.

CNN affilliate WMC of Memphis reported that he was in a car accident in Tallahatchie County, Mississippi, about 100 miles south of Memphis, late Sunday.

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.

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"There's no indication that either alcohol or drugs were involved," Williams said, according to the AP. Both Freeman and Meyer were wearing seat belts, Williams reported. The woman's condition was not immediately available.

Freeman was airlifted to the hospital in Tennessee.

"They had to use the jaws of life to extract him from the vehicle," Clay McFerrin, editor of Sun Sentinel in Charleston, Mississippi, told the AP. "He was lucid, conscious. 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.

Freeman, 71, 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 currently 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."

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Freeman was born in Memphis and spent part of his childhood in Mississippi. He owns a club, the Ground Zero Blues Club, in Clarksdale, Mississippi. 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 non-profit 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.