Morgan Freeman paid a heartfelt homage to the late actor Gene Hackman at the 2025 Academy Awards.

After that, he introduced an emotionally powerful “in memorian” piece in which he paid respect to people like Maggie Smith, Jeff Baena, and David Lynch.

In addition, James Earl Jones and other Hollywood icons were honored, along with Shelley Duvall.

Viewers may question why Freeman was wearing just one black glove during the poignant scenes.

The legendary personality has previously discussed why he must wear the glove.

Viewers began to wonder why he was wearing it.

“What happened to Morgan Freeman’s left hand?” a viewer asked in a tweet.

Another said: “What is with Morgan Freeman’s glove??”

A third posted online saying: “Why he got one glove on.”

Despite the fact that it seems fantastic, there is a tragic backstory.

In 2008, Freeman swerved off a Mississippi road and rolled over in an automobile accident.

The actor suffered severe injuries to his left arm and had to be cut free by medical personnel.

“They had to use the jaws of life [hydraulic cutters] to extract him from the vehicle,” a local newspaper editor at the time stated.

“He was lucid, conscious. He was talking, joking with some of the rescue workers at one point.”

Freeman is still unable to use his hand correctly even after being assured that the discomfort would go away and that he would see some progress by 2011

To keep the blood flowing, he must now wear a compression glove.

Speaking previously about the injury, Freeman said: “I suffered nerve damage and it hasn’t gotten better. I can’t move it.”

“If you don’t move your hand, it will swell up. Do you know you move your hand about a million times a day?”

A few years ago, Freeman was having some left arm soreness when he spoke with Esquire.

When asked about it, he told the reporter: “It’s the fibromyalgia. Up and down the arm. That’s where it gets so bad. Excruciating.”

Gene Hackman, who was discovered dead with his wife Betsy Arakawa and their dog, was honored by Freeman.

Together, they starred in Hackman’s second Oscar-winning film, Unforgiven.

He said in his speech: “This week our community lost a giant, and I lost a dear friend, Gene Hackman.”

“He received two Oscars and more importantly he won the hearts of film lovers all over the world.”

The biggest Oscars snubs ever

Citizen Kane loses to How Green Was My Valley (1942)

Despite dominating BFI’s Sight & Sound survey of the greatest movies produced in the past four decades, Orson Welles’ epic story of the ascent and decline of a media tycoon was reportedly not enough to win an Academy Award.

Rather, the award went to How Green Was My Valley, which, it’s safe to say, hasn’t held up as well over time.

To make matters worse, the audience jeered Welles whenever his name was called, and he had a falling out with the Academy before the ceremony.

Despite receiving nine Academy Award nominations, Citizen Kane only won the Best Original Screenplay trophy.

E.T. loses to Gandhi (1983)

Even Richard Attenborough, whose Gandhi drama won Best Picture, believed that Steven Spielberg’s E.T. deserved to have taken home the prize.

He is quoted in Joseph McBride’s Steven Spielberg: A Biography as saying of the moment his win was announced: “I didn’t go to the podium, I went over to Spielberg. He got up, I put my arms round him, and I said, ‘This isn’t right, this should be yours’.”

After its 1982 premiere, Spielberg’s story of the relationship between a lonely child and a terrifying-looking extraterrestrial continues to be one of the most cherished movies ever made, completely controlling the box office.

The Shawshank Redemption loses to Forrest Gump (1995)

The Shawshank Redemption continues to top IMDb’s 250 highest rated list and is frequently considered as one of the best films of all time, despite the fact that both of these films are essentially universally loved.

The Shawshank Redemption was a box office failure and was greatly eclipsed by Forrest Gump and Pulp Fiction in the year of its release, yet it is very strange in retrospect that the movie did not win any of the seven Oscars for which it was nominated.

Still, one Reddit user acknowledged that they were “blown away to find out that the movie didn’t win a single Academy Award.”

Saving Private Ryan loses to Shakespeare in Love (1999)

Shakespeare in Love, a romantic comedy, defeated Steven Spielberg’s epic World War Two drama in yet another upset.

This has since been attributed to the evil schemes of Harvey Weinstein, who, according to Den of Geek, launched a “whisper campaign” asserting that the first twenty minutes of Saving Private Ryan were the only enjoyable portion of the film and that the next twenty minutes were “sentimental hokum.”

When he was urged to fight back against Weinstein’s bullish advertising techniques, DreamWorks marketer Terry Press remembers Spielberg telling him, “I do not want to get down in the mud with Harvey.”

Brokeback Mountain loses to Crash (2000)

Another shocking Best Picture upset occurred the following year when the universally despised film Crash defeated Brokeback Mountain.

It was dubbed “the greatest robbery of all time” by a Reddit user.

In a 2024 interview with Deadline, director Ang Lee asserted that the Academy at the time “had a ceiling” on support for his heartbreaking gay love story.

He also remembers a stage manager telling him to remain in the stage’s wings between his Best Director victory and the Best Picture announcement, saying, “Everyone assumes you will win.”

Many moviegoers are obviously still upset about this one; one even called Crash’s victory “absolutely criminal.”