Oscar-winning actor Morgan Freeman was hospitalized after being injured in a car accident near his home in Mississippi.

He remains in serious condition after the car he was driving left a rural road and flipped several times. The actor has a broken arm, elbow, and shoulder damage.

The 71-year-old actor is undergoing surgery to repair some of the damage caused in his automobile accident.

A Mississippi Highway Patrol spokesman confirms Freeman and a passenger were in a wreck shortly before midnight last night in which their car flipped several times. He says "There's no indication that either alcohol or drugs were involved."

Clay McFerrin, editor of Sun Sentinel in Charleston, said that he arrived at the accident scene soon after it happened about 4 miles west of Charleston, not far from where Freeman owns a home with his wife. McFerrin also said Freeman's car was apparently airborne when it left a highway, landing in a ditch. The highway patrol said it flipped several times.

McFerrin said, "They had to use the jaws of life to extract him." He describes Freeman as "lucid and conscious" and says Freeman "was talking, joking with some of the rescue workers at one point."