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There was something strange about the way Morgan Freeman ended up in hospital this week, and it wasn't just the revelation that the Oscar-winning actor, a motor-racing fanatic with a fleet of expensive supercars, had sustained a selection of "serious" injuries by crashing a beaten-up 1997 Nissan Maxima.
Freeman broke his shoulder, arm and several ribs after veering off a freeway near Charleston, Mississippi, shortly before midnight last Sunday (local time).
The vehicle flipped several times and came to rest in a ditch. But it soon emerged that he hadn't been the only person who'd needed to be cut from the wreckage.
Sitting alongside Freeman was a younger woman called Demaris Meyer, who described herself in police reports as his "friend". She was the owner of the vehicle, she said, but had asked the 71-year-old star to drive because she hadn't been sure of the way to his holiday home in the Mississippi delta.
It didn't take long for reporters to start asking exactly what Freeman was doing alone with this 48-year-old female "friend" so late on a Sunday night. Little was known about Meyer's identity, except that she was apparently a keen gardener (several tools were flung around the wreckage) and was also very much not Freeman's wife of 24 years, Myrna Colley-Lee.
On Wednesday, their questions were answered. Bill Luckett, Freeman's lawyer and business partner, revealed to the TV show Access Hollywood that his client is "involved in a divorce action". He added: "For legal and practical purposes [Freeman and Colley-Lee] have been separated since December of 2007."
Besides adding an intriguing footnote to any future biography of the actor, this news _ which effectively demonstrates that one of the world's most bankable film stars can end his marriage without anyone but close friends finding out _ provides a fascinating insight into modern celebrity divorce.
In this age of Paul McCartney and Heather Mills, or Charlie Sheen and Denise Richards, or Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger, it seems almost unthinkable that Freeman could quietly separate from his wife without gory details being plastered across the world's media. But that seems to be exactly what happened. For six months, in which time he starred in The Dark Knight, one of the most hyped films of all time, and the blockbuster Wanted, Freeman did a textbook job of keeping his private life private. Barely a peep was heard in public about the state of his relationship with Colley-Lee, the former costume designer with whom he shared a 50ha ranch near his childhood home in Mississippi.
Even as he was announcing plans to play Nelson Mandela in one of the most eagerly awaited films of the year, or flitting into the nearby town of Clarksdale to share a drink with regulars at the blues club and restaurant he owns, Freeman managed to keep his personal turmoil to himself.
He wasn't alone. In recent months, a slew of Hollywood divorces have slipped onto the public record, with barely a flicker of interest from the supposedly feral celebrity media. Liv Tyler has separated from her husband Royston Langdon; Robin Williams is divorcing his film-producer wife of nine years, Marsha. Even Bill Murray's divorce from his wife Jennifer, which seemed destined to publicly air lurid details about the Lost in Translation star's personal failings, was swept under the carpet.
"Celebrities whose marriages, in their intimate details, become public knowledge are usually steering the attention themselves," says Professor Richard Sherwin, of New York Law School. "The motives may vary: leverage in the negotiation or settlement process, personal revenge, or publicity for publicity's sake."
The PR industry may also use personal scandal to stoke interest in a star at exactly the time that, say, an important film is being released. "Having a client in the press can certainly boost a film's numbers," says Cherie Kerr, a California PR who specialises in high-profile divorce cases. "Look at the recent Batman film, with what happened to Heath Ledger and Christian Bale, and now Morgan Freeman. It didn't hurt."
There is, of course, one final thesis: a failure by the local media to do sufficient digging. "In America right now, the mainstream papers have a very high-church attitude to this kind of news," says Mark Borkowski, author of The Fame Formula, a book about the Hollywood PR industry.
"It's completely different to the UK where there's a highly competitive newspaper market. Here, they have a regionalised press, and they insist on fact-checking that slows down the speed a story breaks at. "
Right now, as he lies in hospital, Morgan Freeman has at least one thing to be thankful about.
- INDEPENDENT
