MORGAN FREEMAN / ACTOR

It’s not too much to call Morgan Freeman, 60, the top actor in town– certainly not in tiny Charleston, Miss., where he lives. Even when the town is Hollywood, credits from “Driving Miss Daisy” and “Glory” to “Seven” and three Oscar nominations put him in a select group of most-respected figures. Starring roles in “Kiss the Girls” and the upcoming “Hard Rain” and “Amistad” will complete his year.

INSIDE TIPS: “I was schmoozing with Dick Zanuck, and he said, ‘It’s sad, but studio executives will tell you that in the long run it’s cheaper to gamble making one $80-million movie than four $20-million movies.’ Hey, go figure!”

WISHFUL THINKING: “I still think smaller films are going to get more popular with the studios. One coming out is from Robert Redford, ‘The Horse Whisperer’–strictly a character-driven story, which is what he’s good at.”

IN DEVELOPMENT: “I have a real good property I bought, a book called ‘Taft’ by Anne Patchet. And I’m getting ready to direct another picture, ‘A Day No Pigs Would Die,’ a book by Robert Peck, a children’s story. But it’s small, falls into the category Zanuck was talking about. You have a great little story, and the studios sympathize but say it’s difficult to cough up the money.”

MESSAGE MOVIES: “I think I’ve done films that are considered important: ‘Glory,’ and I’ve been told by many people that ‘Lean on Me’ was important. And now ‘Amistad,’ which to me is a national treasure. It’s going to be amazing–comes out in December. Going to be a great Christmas present.”

SECRET AMBITION: “I’m worried about being squeezed into one thing–the quintessential good guy. They tell me audiences don’t want to see me as a bad guy, they don’t want bad things to happen to me. But [in] the first movie that got me out [to Hollywood], ‘Street Smart,’ I was a mean machine. I scared people. I loved that.”

ROLE PLAYING: “I’m not a pioneer–just benefiting from the whole notion … of open casting. The world we live in now is not the one we lived in 20 or 30 years ago. I don’t think of [race] as an issue at all now. Hard to even discuss it.”

MULTIPLEXLESS: “Where I live we don’t even have a theater. I have to travel to other towns nearby to see a movie, and I’m so high-profile that it becomes difficult. In my hometown I wouldn’t have any problem, but in the little bigger places, they’re not big enough to be jaded.”