Sitting down to talk to Morgan Freeman, it would be easy to feel you’re getting a private audience with God, a part he played in “Bruce Almighty” and its sequel and one that seems to fit his calm presence and awe-inspiring career. But the 75-year-old Academy Award winner is so sweet, so down to earth, you quickly realize that he suffers from no deity complex himself! Freeman, who’s about to reprise his role as Lucius Fox, Bruce Wayne’s friend and CEO in “The Dark Knight Rises,” also manages to fit smaller, quirkier films into his busy schedule. His newest such film is Rob Reiner’s “The Magic of Belle Isle,” in which Freeman plays Monte Wildhorn, a famous Western novelist who, through a series of painful life events, finds himself in a very dark place. More interested in drinking than writing these days, the now wheelchair-bound Wildhorn rents a lakeside cabin for the summer in picturesque Belle Isle. When he meets his neighbors, a single mom (Virginia Madsen) and her three young daughters, he is closed off at first, but he eventually begins a journey that helps him reclaim his own passion and inspiration.

When I met up with Morgan Freeman at a hotel in Beverly Hills, I told him how I watched him religiously as a kid, not on film but when he was a cast member on the beloved PBS children’s show, “The Electric Company,” which ran for several years in the 1970s. Freeman appeared in the comedy sketch show opposite Rita Moreno and Judy Graubart, who was a friend of my family.

Morgan Freeman: Oh, Judy! Jennifer of the Jungle! She was so funny!

MSN Movies: So these days how do you go about choosing what films you do?

Well, there are a lot more ingredients now than just getting a job! I always look at who the director is, who do I want to work with, the other actors in the film, and, of course, the script—if the story is good and the character is compelling. 

You made “The Bucket List” with Rob Reiner. Was the chance to work with him again a big draw for this film?

Absolutely! I love Rob, both as a director and as a person. He’s hug-alicious! People like that are just real, there’s no pretense on or off the set. And Rob always has a very warm and happy set. He’s an even-tempered person himself, so his crew acts accordingly, they’re never running scared like you see on some sets. Same thing for the actors. Rob Reiner has so many remarkable qualities—I call him my cinematic Mahatma!

You have a lot of scenes with the three young girls in this film (Madeline Carroll, Emma Fuhrmann, and Nicolette Pierini). Do you find it more of a challenge working closely with child actors?

What I generally do if I sense that a young person is a little awed in my presence is I go to work to “un-awe” them. It doesn’t take very much! I’ve never had a problem working with young people—I was a child actor myself, so I give them a lot of latitude. Really, all you ask of any actor is to come prepared.

I was happy to see Virginia Madsen in the film, we don’t see enough of her on screen. What can you say about working with her?

She’s just radiant. A lovely, lovely actress and a lovely person. Virginia had a lot of surprising turns on set—she’d often do little things that you weren’t expecting which really added a lot to our scenes.

What do you hope people take away from this film?