Morgan Freemans wife called it quits

Morgan Freeman and his wife of 24 years, Myrna Colley-Lee, have filed for divorce, according to the actor's longtime business partner.


Bill Luckett, who co-owns a restaurant and blues club in Clarksdale, Miss. with Freeman, says the split was in the works way before Freeman's Sunday night car crash with female passenger Demaris Meyer, 48.


A tabloid reported that Freeman, 71, and his wife have been separated since December 2007. The National Enquirer claims Colley-Lee consulted a divorce attorney after hearing that Freeman cheated on her with "a close family friend."


“Myrna was terribly upset when she heard Morgan had become intimate with a woman who had been her friend,” a source told the National Enquirer.

Yesterday, Luckett told USA Today that he and the actor have been friends with Demaris "for some time."

Freeman was driving her Nissan Maxima when he lost control of the vehicle and it flipped over several times before landing in a ditch near his home in Tallahatchie County, Miss.


Bill Rogers, a retired police officer who was the first to arrive at the scene, said Freeman managed to relay that he and Meyer were headed to his home in Charleston, a small town some 90 miles south of Memphis.


"He said that they were friends and she had offered him a ride home and she didn't really know the way and so he was going to drive the vehicle," Rogers told the Associated Press Tuesday. "They said they were coming from Clarksdale."

Freeman and Luckett's Ground Zero Blues Club and Madadi restaurant are in Clarksdale. Norris, the manager of Ground Zero, said Wednesday that Freeman had not been there the night of the accident. No one at Madadi was available for comment, according to the AP.

Freeman suffered a broken arm, broken elbow and minor shoulder injuries during the crash. He had surgery Monday on his left arm and hand, but his recovery is expected to take months. Luckett says Freeman will have to wear a neck brace for six to eight months, and his arm will take several months to heal.

Luckett also said earlier reports of Freeman having a severed nerve in his arm were not true. "Nothing was severed. A nerve can be bruised or stretched. It was injured but not severed," he said.

Freeman could be released in the next few days from the Elvis Presley Memorial Trauma Center at the Regional Medical Center in Memphis.