Morgan Freeman: Ashley Addict?

When Ashley Judd speaks, Morgan Freeman listens. Freeman agreed to play a disgraced military attorney in the new thriller High Crimes (opening today) simply because, well, his favorite leading lady asked him if he would.

Explains the 64-year-old three-time Oscar nominee: "She called me and said, 'Do you want to do this?' And I said, 'Are you in it?' And she said, 'Yeah.' So, I said, 'Yeah!'"

High Crimes marks Freeman's second collaboration with Judd; he first starred opposite the Southern belle in 1997's Kiss the Girls. And if the Shawshank Redemption thesp has his way, a third will be right around the corner. "I just feel it's going to happen... because the adoration is pretty [obvious]," he gushes. "You can see it. I just adore her."

In fact, at the press junket for High Crimes, Judd approached Freeman about taking a role in an upcoming film she might do. "It's a small part, but he gets to play a real creep," Judd reveals. "He sounded kind of excited."

The specifics of the project remain a mystery — "It's very preliminary," Judd's rep tells TV Guide Online — but Freeman's interest is clearly piqued. "Some people just want you because they think your name will do great things for what they're doing, but Ashley has quite an eye for characters and parts and stories," he says. "And sometimes, you feel the need — I do — to go against the pull of stardom. That thing where people say, 'You can't do that because that's beneath you.' But I go back to Ed Wynn's [famous quote]: 'There are no small parts, just small actors.'"