‘This is my journey’: Morgan Freeman sets his sights on homelessness in Peckham in new documentary

On A sunny London day three months ago Morgan Freeman was striding across the most famous zebra crossing in the world.

The Oscar-winner was in town to explore the city’s homelessness crisis with a Peckham barber who is trying to improve the lot of the city’s rough sleepers one haircut at a time.

The actor was at Abbey Road to sing the praises of The Beatles, specifically the satellite broadcast of June 25, 1967, when they performed All You Need is Love to a global audience of half-a-billion.

That heady Summer of Love, the future star of Driving Miss Daisy, Seven and The Shawshank Redemption was working at a little theatre in Vermont.

He and his peers believed the Fab Four’s message: love was the only thing required to end war, poverty, oppression. “It’s easy, right?” Freeman ponders. But then he adds: “Was I really naive to think that love can change the world?”

Standing outside Abbey Road Studios Freeman proclaimed in that distinctive, sonorous voice beloved of seemingly 1,000 movie narrations: “This is my journey — to discover the ties that bind us and the common humanity inside us. This is the story of us…”

Now, in the ballroom of the Beverly Hills Hilton, Freeman is talking to me about The Story of Us, his new, globe-trotting documentary series which had prompted his trip to London.

The National Geographic six-parter is the follow-up to The Story of God. Does the new show mean that the actor — who has twice played the Man Upstairs — has given up on God?

“What kind of question is that?” the quietly charismatic 80-year-old replies good-naturedly. “We could have done more God, but we’d have had to go to different parts of the world… Papua New Guinea, China…”

Instead Freeman opted to come to London.

The first episode of The Story of Us, with the theme of “love”, starts and ends here. Freeman and his camera crew were drawn to the capital by the pioneering street work of Joshua Coombes.

The Peckham-based social activist has been patrolling London’s streets for three years, offering a free haircut to any homeless person who wants one.

The 30-year-old listens as he snips, noting the names and stories of individuals routinely ignored by society, then posting their mini-biography — and “before” and “after” pictures — on Instagram.

“That’s why I begin every post with: ‘This is Stewart… this is Martin…’” Coombes tells me. “That’s the first thing: let’s give them their identity back. Then we hit rewind and tell their story.”

The Devon-raised former punk guitarist has launched a social media campaign, #DoSomethingForNothing, which encourages others to do as he’s done: give over something, anything, to help people less fortunate.

He’s now active in 10 countries, hair-cutting while sofa-surfing, his tonsorial trips funded by non-profits, charities and brands.

It was this blossoming international profile that, a year ago, first brought Coombes to the attention of Freeman and his Los Angeles-based production company, Revelations Entertainment.

“Joshua is a Samaritan,” says Freeman, who’s sitting next to Coombes in the ballroom. “He’s out there trying single-handedly to change people’s ideas about just life itself.

"His motto, ‘Do something for nothing’, reminds me so much of Nelson Mandela. His task in life is probably to do as much as you can for others for nothing.”

High praise indeed, and the self-effacing Coombes — who does a good job of seeming just another beardy, beanie-wearing hipster — squirms at Freeman’s words.

Still, he has indeed given over his life to his cause since embarking on this mission in 2015. Then he was just another newly trained hairdresser, based in Clapham salon Willie Smarts.

“When I became a hairdresser I realised the importance of that human connection — making someone look good and feel good.

"And seeing all the homelessness around London, it was just an obvious thing to me: these guys need a haircut. So I just put my clippers and scissors in my bag and started doing it every Sunday.”

His first client was a young Anglo-Asian called Darak. “Same age as me, incredibly charismatic, but he had good days and bad days — he had drug issues but he was trying really hard to deal with them. I had a rapport with him.

"After the haircut we kept in touch, and I went to see a support worker with him. Last time I saw him he had a girlfriend, he’d moved out of London and he wasn’t on the street any more.”

Darak, Coombes says, and the interaction afforded by a 30-minute haircut, “changed things for me”. Within a year he’d abandoned the salon and gone full-time on the streets.

“It’s not about patting yourself on the back,” he points out. “It’s about dropping your normal routine and doing something for someone else. And for me,” he acknowledges, “it’s like therapy.”

Coombes’s social media-fuelled campaigning is rippling out. As you read this he’s in Paris, cutting hair and working on a second eBook with French photographer Valérie Jardin (they’ve already published an eBook of portraits and stories from New York; this summer they’re exhibiting their work in a Minneapolis art gallery).

Coombes is also developing a podcast, and he’s in demand as a speaker — he recently gave a talk to sixth formers at Scottish private school Gordonstoun, Prince Charles’s alma mater.

Meanwhile, others have been inspired by #DoSomethingForNothing. Jade Statt, a Hertfordshire veterinarian, has launched Street Vet UK, which cares for homeless people’s dogs; Chris Leamy, a Wall Street banker by day, has an evening gig going out and playing guitar for homeless people; and Paul Avila distributes “Walkmans and headphones to the inhabitants of Skid Row in downtown LA”.

Still, for all that, Coombes was understandably shocked to receive the email from Revelations Entertainment.

But after three years pounding the streets he’s quick on his feet and quick-witted. Once he’d agreed to participate in The Story of Us, “of course I made Morgan come to me in Peckham, ’cause that’s where I live!” he grins.

“To be honest I still wasn’t sure it was going to happen,” he admits. “You’ve heard his narration in what feels like every film since you were young.”

But he booked him, and he came. “It was surreal seeing Morgan Freeman walk around Peckham,” especially when word of the acting legend’s presence in SE15 quickly spread and a crowd gathered.

“It was insane!” recalls Coombes of the day’s filming. “They had to shut the street. Within minutes everyone was out of every shop. But he was so cool with it.

"As we were walking, this car screeched to a halt and someone shouted, ‘Oh my God it’s Morgan Freeman!’ I asked him if he was OK with that. He just shrugged and said, ‘At least they said my name. Some people just shout “God!” at me’.”

As for “God” himself, Freeman is as busy as ever — he was also in London last year courtesy of his day job, filming Disney’s upcoming The Nutcracker and the Four Realms.

Why, then, make these undoubtedly arduous globe-trotting documentaries that take him to some of the world’s most challenging spots, and to Peckham?

What propels him to take on these big, amorphous, metaphysical quests to tell the story of “us” via a south London activist barber?

“I think I have always been a little full of myself,” he replies with a twinkle. “I’m not joking.”

The Story of Us With Morgan Freeman starts on Sunday at 9pm on National Geographic.