Just days after injuring himself in a serious car accident with a mystery woman, actor Morgan Freeman has announced he is divorcing his wife after 24 years of marriage.

A spokesman for Freeman - who is in hospital recovering from a broken arm, a broken elbow and minor shoulder damage - told Access Hollywood he is seeking a divorce from his wife, costumer Myrna Colley-Lee.

(They) are involved in a divorce action, the actors Mississippi-based attorney and business partner Bill Luckett said.

"And for legal and practical purposes, (Freeman and Colley-Lee) have been separated since December of 2007."

The mystery woman in Freeman's car at the time it rolled has been identified as Demaris Meyer, a friend of Freeman's.

The jaws of life were required to cut both passengers from the wreckage when the car swerved off the road and rolled end-over-end on Sunday night, on a highway near a home Freeman has in Charleston, Mississippi.

He was lucid, conscious, an onlooker told news agency Associated Press. He was talking, joking with some of the rescue workers at one point.

Freeman's publicist Donna Lee said the Oscar winner would make a full recovery.

Freeman, 71, stars in current blockbuster The Dark Knight. He won an Oscar in 2005 for his supporting role in Clint Eastwood's boxing drama Million Dollar Baby.