Morgan Freeman was a presenter at the 2023 Oscars on Sunday night, and viewers were perplexed as to why he was wearing a black glove on his left hand. While some were concerned, wearing a glove isn’t unusual for Freeman, and there’s a reason for it. Freeman, 85, was in a serious car accident in 2008 when his car flipped multiple times on a Mississippi highway.

His hand was paralyzed as a result of the near-fatal accident. “They had to use the jaws of life [hydraulic cutters] to extract him from the vehicle,” a newspaper editor at the time told The Guardian. “He was lucid, conscious. He was talking, joking with some of the rescue workers at one point.”

Freeman suffered severe nerve damage and wears a compression glove to keep the blood flowing.