Morgan Freeman has spoken about the car accident that made him realize he needed a pacemaker and ultimately ended his sailing career.
The legendary actor, now 87, spoke about the life-changing event during an appearance on Dax Shepard’s podcast, The Armchair Expert.
Shepard asked the actor about a car accident that occurred in 2008 while he was driving a 1997 Nissan Maxima.
“I’m more struck by the thought that you drive a nine-year-old Nissan,” Shepard told him.
Freeman said he was driving someone else’s car when he suddenly “just fainted.” After a series of tests, doctors determined that Freeman likely had atrial fibrillation (AFib), which caused the loss of consciousness. According to Johns Hopkins Medicine, the condition is “a type of arrhythmia, or abnormal heartbeat.”
Morgan Freeman looks at the camera | (Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images)
“Then they put a pacemaker in me,” Freeman said on the podcast, adding: “For the scale of the accident, I came out relatively unscathed.
“It was really bad. I flipped the car, I think it rolled over,” the actor added.
Freeman also described how the accident broke his arm so badly that he now has platelets in the bones and nerve damage.
However, as a result of a shoulder injury, Freeman developed neuralgia, which led to the “landmark” decision to retire from sailing.
According to Medline Plus, neuralgia is “a sharp, stabbing pain that runs along a nerve, caused by irritation or damage to the nerve.”
“The last time I was on my boat, I couldn’t park it… One day I was out with friends and I couldn’t get the boat back to port,” Freeman said. “That experience is humbling.”
“It’s heartbreaking. I’ve retired from sailing,” the 87-year-old actor added.
During his podcast appearance, Freeman also spoke about an injury he sustained on the set of David Fincher’s thriller “Se7en.” The 1995 “Glory” actor was running through a field in one of the film’s final scenes when he tripped and injured his ankle.
“I also twisted my ankle pretty badly at the end of the run. It wasn’t like running on flat ground,” Freeman said. “I twisted my ankle, and then we probably did that throw seven or eight times.
“I pulled the tendon so hard I never got it back. That’s why my foot tends to tip over a lot,” Freeman added.
He is often considered one of the greatest actors of all time and won an Academy Award in 2004 for his role in Million Dollar Baby. Freeman also won a Golden Globe for his role in the 1989 film Driving Miss Daisy.