Morgan Freeman Got Pacemaker After Passing Out in Car Crash—’Heartbreaking’

Morgan Freeman has spoken out about the car accident that made him realize he needed a pace maker and eventually end his sailing career.

The legendary actor, 87, spoke about the life-changing incident during an appearance on Dax Shepard’s podcast, The Armchair Expert.

Shepard questioned the actor about the car crash that happened in 2008 while he was driving a 1997 Nissan Maxima. “I’m more struck by the notion that you’re driving a nine-year-old Nissan,” Shepard told him.

Freeman said he was driving someone else’s car when, all of a sudden, he “just passed out.” After a series of tests, doctors told Freeman he potentially had experienced an atrial fibrillation (AFib), which caused to him lose consciousness. This condition is “a type of arrhythmia, or abnormal heartbeat,” per Johns Hopkins Medicine.

“They put a pacemaker in me after that,” Freeman said on the podcast, adding: “I was relatively unscathed with how bad the accident was.

“It was very bad. I rolled the car over, I think it tumbled,” the actor added.

Freeman also described how he broke his arm so badly in the accident that he now has a plate in it and a lot of nerve damage.

But, as a result of this injury to his arm, Freeman developed neuralgia, which led to the “heartbreaking” decision to give up sailing.

Neuralgia is a “sharp, shocking pain that follows the path of a nerve and is due to irritation or damage to the nerve,” according to Medline Plus.

“The last time I was on my boat, I couldn’t park it … I went out with friends one day, and I couldn’t get my boat back into the slip,” Freeman said. “That’s a humbling experience.”

“Heartbreaking. I walked away from sailing,” the 87-year-old actor added.

During his appearance on the podcast, Freeman also spoke about injuring himself on the set of David Fincher’s thriller movie, Se7en. The Glory actor was running across in a field in one of the final scenes of the 1995 movie when he tripped and hurt his ankle.

“I also twisted my ankle so bad running across the field there at the end. It was not like running on level ground,” Freeman said. “I sprained my ankle and then I think we did this shot seven or eight times.

“I stretched my tendon so badly, that it’s not back again. So my foot tends to roll 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 an Golden Globe Award for 1989’s Driving Miss Daisy.