‘People thought, “Danny Dyer and Martin Freeman in a film together? That sounds good,” but actually they hated it.’
FREEMAN SPEAKING TO CHRIS SULLIVAN, DAILY MAIL, 2008
Though he may have only had a minor role in Hot Fuzz, Martin Freeman was gaining enough credible roles and minor parts in successful movies that his name and face were becoming more prominent in Britain and elsewhere. He was still best known as Tim Canterbury in The Office and he was not yet the household name he would one day become but, as jobbing actors go, he was becoming rather successful.
Dedication, released in August 2007, is an American romantic comedy about Henry Roth (Billy Crudup), who is an obsessive compulsive and a children’s-book writer. His illustrator and sole friend, Rudy (Tom Wilkinson), dies after a successful collaboration on their children’s-books series Marty The Beaver. Henry has to produce another book in the series in time for Christmas and is under pressure from his publisher, Arthur Planck (Bob Balaban). An illustrator named Lucy Reilly (Mandy Moore) is assigned to work with Henry. However, her ex-boyfriend (Freeman) is back on the scene and attempts to wow her back after having dedicated his latest book to her. Dedication was not a box-office success nor did it win over the critics.
Jeannette Catsoulis of The New York Times wrote, ‘The directing debut of the actor Justin Theroux, Dedication is almost saved by David Bromberg’s tart dialogue and exceptional acting from its three leads.’
Jesse Hassenger of Contact Music.com wrote, ‘Though the script may be the culprit for the mismatched clichés and broad supporting characters (chief among them Dianne Weist as Moore’s shrieking mother), it’s disappointing that Theroux wasn’t able to finesse it into something more nuanced and clear.’
The Good Night is an American romantic comedy starring Gwyneth Paltrow, Penélope Cruz, Martin Freeman, Danny DeVito and Simon Pegg and is set between London and New York. Freeman plays Gary Shaller, a former pop star who now makes a living writing jingles for commercials and experiences a midlife crisis. Freeman may not have been able to relate to his character on a deeply personal level, even though there have been times when Martin has had similar crises of confidence, as experienced by many, but all it takes is imagination and empathy to understand Gary. He’s a failed musician who is frustrated with life. It’s a universal theme.
Gary tries to live out his dreams and Freeman is a person who’s had some indelible, recurring dreams, as he told IGN.com’s Leigh Singer: ‘I’ve had several really tangible dreams about UFOs and they’ve been amazing! You know that sort of everyday quality that you get in a couple of scenes in Close Encounters [of the Third Kind] where these lights fly over a road and it somehow seems tangible, somehow seems real. I’ve had a few of those dreams about UFOs where it’s been absolutely clear that this is the day that the world changes and it’s very exciting. I’ve not had one of those for a while, but I love them when I have them!’
It was director Jake Paltrow’s first feature and, as such, he didn’t want his famous sister overshadowing him too much, so she was not involved initially. As time progressed, however, he reasoned that he’d got an outstanding actor for a sister who knows the material and was volunteering her talents, most likely for a fee cut, given the nature of the film’s budget.
‘Jake Paltrow contacted me while I was making The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy three years ago and sent me the script,’ Freeman explained to NYC Movie Guru. ‘I responded to it very positively. It was original and I thought it had a true voice. I like working with people who just like to tell a story. [Jake Paltrow] adores film, so it was a joy to work with somebody with that passion.’
He added, ‘The ending is one of the reasons I wanted to do it. When I got to the last page [of the script], I thought it was a great way to finish it – sort of, unresolved. It could have been a lot happier. I like knowing that it’s enough for him to keep dreaming.’
From the get-go Freeman got along with the writer/director Jake, who had also directed episodes of the acclaimed cop series NYPD Blue. Their initial phone conversation lasted almost an hour and they shared similar ideas for what the tone of the film should be. If Paltrow did not write the role specifically for Freeman, he was certainly one of the director’s top choices of actors for the part. They were both working on faith; Martin hadn’t seen anything Paltrow had been involved with, while the director had only seen a couple of things Freeman had starred in. Life is too short, Freeman thought, so he committed to the script. The script was Paltrow’s vision and Martin could see that. It wasn’t a script churned out by a committee of writers to appease a certain audience demographic but rather the sole idea of a committed film-maker.
Freeman didn’t actually consider himself to be a bona-fide movie star, so he was pleased that he was approached for the part. Americans knew Freeman mostly for The Office and Love Actually at this stage in his career. Paltrow did not need convincing to cast Freeman but perhaps the rest of the cast needed to be persuaded because Martin wasn’t a household name and, as such, the film had less box-office appeal. Paltrow put their minds at rest and Freeman was more than happy that someone he hardly knew – almost a stranger – saw something in him to warrant a lead role in a US movie.
‘I read a lot of American scripts that are better than British scripts,’ he admitted to Movie Web.com’s Julian Roman. ‘They’re for grown-ups. They’re not trying to remake The Italian Job. We do a lot of capery stuff in Britain and a lot of American scripts are a bit more grown-up.’
Freeman didn’t actually know that his female cast would be Gwyneth Paltrow and Penélope Cruz. He also got a kick out of working with his old mate Simon Pegg, whom he lobbied to be in the film. Both actors have a very truthful, honest and un-egotistical nature about them. Martin sees that there’s a seriousness to Pegg, though he may be best known as a comedian because of Spaced and Shaun of the Dead. He’s not begging to be liked on screen all the time. Pegg has great timing too. Some comedians are awful as serious actors, some are excellent; Pegg has a natural acting talent.
Martin enjoyed working with both Paltrows; he’d never met Gwyneth before but Simon Pegg knew her through her then husband, Coldplay singer Chris Martin. Freeman took to her straight away. She was very easy to work with and did not bring any Hollywood ego with her, which Freeman admired. She is an excellent actress and he has a great deal of respect for her because of that.
Everyone in the film was excellently suited to their role. There was a vibe, a relentless energy on set that came from the outstanding cast. Another key member of the company was Danny DeVito. During filming on the streets of New York, people were thrilled to see him; teachers, cops, everyday Joes, children and parents. Freeman found him to be immediately likeable and a delight to work with. He’s a celebrity but he’s approachable. DeVito is an interesting man and Martin enjoyed their scenes together.
The film is set in New York, where there is an artistic community, similar to that in London. There is great cultural life in both cities and it’s a rat race to get jobs, especially for creative people. Creative people are attracted to cosmopolitan cities but it’s a dog-eat-dog world. Freeman, unlike his character in the film, has never been out of work.
Martin spoke to Ain’t It Cool News writer Capone about the film’s melancholy ambience: ‘I like the sort of calm of melancholy and also the stability of that. So, you sort of know where you are, which I like. Yeah, the film does have that quality, I suppose. I think it might have less of it, as you say, depending on what expectation you bring to it. Because if someone said to you, “God, it’s a really, really depressing film,” then you’d go, “No, no, there are really quite a lot of laughs in it.” But, yeah, if you’re expecting a lot of laughs, there are some laughs in it, but yeah, it’s darker than that, I suppose, which is exactly… well, I suppose it partly reflects my taste in films, and in art generally, and in life.’
The Good Night was released on 5 October 2007 in the US and, finally, in the UK on 18 January 2008. It wasn’t exactly a successful film on the financial front.
Cinema Blend.com’s Katey Rich wrote, ‘Despite its structural flaws, The Good Night features some fine performances – Pegg and Freeman are a joy to watch together – and characters who, while under drawn, earn our sympathy without being cloying or too self-absorbed. Paltrow may have a career as a director ahead of him, but as a screenwriter, his ideas come out muddled and, well, tired. Like someone else’s “fascinating” dream, The Good Night never turns out as interesting as its teller thinks it is.’
Lisa Schwarzbaum of Entertainment Weekly wrote, ‘Martin Freeman, from the BBC’s The Office, has just the right semi-stunned mug to play a guy sliding into work-and-love loserdom who finds solace from his undermining girlfriend with a dream woman he encounters in his sleep.’
Meanwhile, his former Office colleague Ricky Gervais had also set his sights on Hollywood success and was doing rather well with 2006’s Night at the Museum, 2007’s Stardust and the soon-to-be-released Ghost Town in 2008. Gervais would go on to have considerable success in the US and become just as well known across the Atlantic as he is in his native Britain.
‘I’m not surprised he’s done well,’ Freeman expressed to Andrew Duncan of Reader’s Digest. ‘They like gall and what they perceive as British cheek, straight talking, irony and sarcasm. He’s always sailed pretty close to the wind, so good for him. I dreamed of a Hollywood career as an eighteen-year-old sitting in the bath, but dreams and reality are very different.’
Freeman and Abbington were a happy couple living the married life, although they are not actually married. Martin is somewhat dubious about the concept of marriage, believing that it’s more like a business arrangement than an act of love. He’s known people who are together for years but split up after getting married.
‘I’ve not been to many weddings but not that long ago I was asked to do a reading at a wedding and I couldn’t do it. It was really embarrassing,’ he admitted in 2012 to Douban.com journalist Siobhan Synnot. ‘It was impossible for me to get through without breaking down. It took me about twenty minutes to do and in the end one of my brothers had to get up and put his arm around my shoulder for moral support before I could do it. I’m sure everyone thought I was just another luvvie, auditioning for a role.’
Both Freeman’s and his Abbington’s respective careers were flourishing and they have always supported each other’s work, although the latter has admitted she does get the odd wave of insecurity and it was during the making of The Good Night, where Freeman was cast opposite two gorgeous Hollywood women, that she got a tad jealous.
‘I was eight-and-a-half months’ pregnant and bigger than a house,’ Abbington confessed to the Daily Mail’s Vicky Power. ‘And Penelope’s so beautiful and talented, who wouldn’t fancy her?’
Even though Freeman’s fame has far eclipsed Abbington’s, he has not developed an ego, nor allowed others to treat her poorly.
‘But he always says, “And this is my girlfriend,”’ Abbington said to the Mail’s Vicki Power. ‘Only recently some girl came up to him and shoved me out of the way. And he said “Excuse me, this is my girlfriend, don’t push her out of the way.”’
Martin Freeman had become an unlikely sex symbol along with such fellow actors as Brit Simon Pegg and American Seth Rogen.
He spoke to Nerve.com’s Alexis Tirado and described how he felt about this: ‘As soon as you’re branded anything, that’s not great. It’s just another lazy way of marketing people. If you look out your window, most people in the world don’t look like Brad Pitt, but they all have wives. The whole idea of, “Paul Giamatti is kind of sexy.” Well, yeah he’s sexy. Ask his fucking wife or anyone he’s ever laid.’
He continued, ‘Is it surprising? No, because attraction doesn’t come from abs and pecs. It comes from somewhere else altogether. If Penélope Cruz was a shit actress, no one would fancy her. It’s that simple. Because the actresses who are beautiful and act like shit are going to be forgotten in about five days. So it’s a double-edged sword, because people are like, “Hey, you’re sexy! But you’re kind of ugly!” I’m not supposed to be happy about that.’
Freeman later starred in the Gavin Claxton written and directed film The All Together, released on 11 May 2007. It is a British comedy film starring Martin in the lead role as a hacked-off TV producer and aspiring screenwriter named Chris, who has a distaste for British gangster films. He leaves his flatmate Bob (Velibor Topic) in charge of showing estate agents around the house that he is trying to sell. Chris is concerned that Bob will spend all day in the basement playing loud music and miss the estate agent’s call but Chris asks him to listen out for the doorbell anyway and show anyone around who visits. Bob promises Chris he will do that. While the screenwriter struggles with a day at work, Bob takes his instructions rather too literally and allows anyone who comes calling inside the house to look around. That includes a young British fella (played by Danny Dyer) and an American (played by Corey Johnston). When Chris returns home that evening, he finds his flatmate, four estate agents, two Jehovah’s Witnesses and a children’s entertainer held hostage by the Brit and American: two archetypal gangsters that could be straight out of a British gangster film. It’s hardly taxing stuff and many of the jokes fall flat but it was good to see Freeman in a lead role, even if it was with Danny Dyer, an actor whose pedigree of films is hardly thought of as high quality.
It was Freeman’s partner and fellow actor, Amanda Abbington, who suggested that Martin should go for the role. When she got back home after her own audition, Freeman asked her how it went and she said it went well and that there’s a role in the film that would be perfect for him so he should go for it. He took a look at the script, liked it and met with the director and subsequently got the part. There was a point to the film and Freeman didn’t feel as though it was written to particularly win over American audiences. There was a heart to the movie and an honesty that Martin admired. It wasn’t written with the idea of making box-office millions. Generally, Freeman enjoys home-grown products. However, there is far more opportunity for success in America, with a much wider choice of roles available to an aspiring actor.
It was a frantic eighteen-day shoot but Freeman enjoyed working with the cast and crew, especially the director. There was determination and courage in everyone. They strove to make as good a film as they possibly could. He was under no illusion that it would make him rich, but he also thought the script was truthfully written.
Speaking about the very busy set, he told Rob Carnevale of Indie London.co.uk, ‘I was quite ill for some of my shoot because I had a real stinking cold. There’s no denying it was a hard shoot – not hard like being in Bosnia hard! – but it was hard by the standards of making a film. But that hardship engendered something else that was quite fun too – that Dunkirk spirit and a feeling of, “We’ve just got to do this”.’
No one in the film was of any high status, there were no major egos and the upside of having little budget and a taut shooting deadline was that there was camaraderie, a similar spirit amongst a cast as when working in the theatre or even on radio. No one had their own space so they had to get long. There was no other option but to get to know each other.
On working with his real life partner, Freeman said to BBC Movies’ Rob Carnevale, ‘We’ve done it before a few times and I do always really enjoy it. She’s a brilliant actress and I respect what she does. Obviously I love her too. So it’s easy. There’s no other politics like I’m doing the scene with someone I don’t really like. Anything we don’t like about each other we can say [laughs].’
Released in May, The All Together, has been long forgotten about. There are, potentially, many roles that Freeman might care to forget but such is the life of a now successful and revered actor who once took as many parts as possibly in order to make a living, as is the case with any jobbing actor in an increasingly fickle industry.
Martin believes a gangster thriller is better suited to his thespian skills than, say, an action film. ‘I can’t see that people would ever ask me to do it,’ he admitted to Nerve.com’s Alexis Tirado. ‘I’m not famous enough. I’m not box-office enough. I can run and I’m fit, but there are some people better suited to that. Also, I don’t want to play the guy in the yacht with no problems. That’s certainly not a reflection of my life. As a person, I’m not smooth, do you know what I mean? I can’t do smooth very easily.’
The Guardian’s Phelim O’Neill wrote, ‘Nothing about the situation nor the characters rings even slightly true, and no laughs ever come from the increasingly desperate attempts to shoe-horn gags in. Freeman seems to have been given no direction other than “be like that guy from The Office”. Utterly pointless.’
Jack Foley of IndieLondon.co.uk said, ‘Only Freeman emerges with any credit, somehow managing to remain endearing in spite of the contrived nature of his own storyline (the brief scenes he shares with real-life girlfriend Amanda Abbington offer brief respite from an otherwise rotten experience).’
He continued, ‘Even a clever cine-literate monologue from Freeman that begins the movie is ruthlessly exposed as pretentious come the implausible finale. The All Together therefore carries with it the wretched stench of yet another disappointing farce for the British industry…’
Time Out’s David Jenkins wrote, ‘As misanthropic TV producer Charlie, Martin Freeman reassumes all the tics that won him an army of fans in The Office while Danny Dyer pops up playing, well, Danny Dyer, confirming that he wouldn’t know a good script if it struck him over the head with a pool cue. The few laughs come care of Velibor Topic as wacky Bosnian housemate Bob, who harbours a penchant for combining taxidermy and pornography (you do the math).’
Freeman also appeared in two short British films in 2007. He was the voice of ‘The Pig’ in one of them, called Lonely Hearts. Written and directed by James Keaton, Lonely Hearts is set one year after Jeff’s (Ralph Haddon) wife leaves him and attempts to get over it by meeting women by way of ‘lonely-hearts’ dating. Jeff struggles to move on until he starts talking to a soft-toy pig that gives him advice on dating. Jeff meets an attractive woman in a sandwich shop and remembers that he promised to take the pig along with him on his next date.
In Rubbish, released in June 2007, he starred alongside Anna Friel and James Lance. The film’s estimated budget was £20,000, and it sees Freeman taking out the rubbish one morning, spotting a local woman and trying to impress her.
Martin was next seen in the Bill Kenwright theatre production of The Last Laugh. Before a highly publicised move to the West End, the production opened at the Theatre Royal Windsor from 30 January to 3 February 2007 and then continued to Cheltenham, Milton Keynes, Richmond and Newcastle. Freeman was last on stage in October 2005, in Toby Whithouse’s Blue Eyes and Heels at the Soho Theatre in London (aside from his guest role in The Exonerated at Riverside Studios in June 2006). By this point, his stage credits included such productions as Kosher Harry, Jump Mr Malinoff, Jump and La Dispute. Written by Richard Harris, The Last Laugh was adapted from an original play by Koki Mitani. Freeman plays a comedy writer who is forced by law to submit a script for government approval. The play follows the approval process.
Peter Lathan of the British Theatre Guide wrote of the play, ‘The Last Laugh is essentially a two-hander with Lloyd Pack (Only Fools and Horses) joined by Martin Freeman (The Office) as the Writer, and a nice cameo by Christopher Mellows as the Veteran. The performances are impeccable – even the timing of the badly timed gags is spot-on! It is played out in a large, cold, grey room which has clearly once been part of a library, designed by Michael Pavelka and subtly lit by Mark Henderson.’
Freeman was also seen in an episode of Comedy Showcase called ‘Other People’, which kicked off a run of six Comedy Showcase episodes. The programme ran from 2007 to 2012 and featured Britain’s growing comedy talent. It was inspired by the long-running comedy-sketch anthology series of the 1960s’ Comedy Playhouse.
In Martin’s episode, which aired on 5 October 2007, he plays Greg Wilson, a has-been child magician whose career crashed 1986 after he was humiliated on a children’s phone-in show. In his thirties, Greg now works as a sofa salesman and is recognised by a former fan (Siobhan Finneran) and is asked for an autograph.
Freeman told The Independent’s James Rampton in 2007, ‘When the woman in the furniture store asks for his autograph, he immediately obliges. It’s a knee-jerk reaction. He thinks, “Someone wants me, I’m in the limelight again – even if only for two seconds.” Once you’ve tasted the limelight, it’s hard to let it go. Everyone wants to be acknowledged.’
The autograph request triggers a series of events, which ends up with Greg in a courtroom facing a sentence.
Martin said he could relate to his character because he knew what it felt like to have the weight of the world on his shoulders after he found success with The Office. Greg’s desperate need to be famous is not something Freeman desires but rather a symptom of the modern world, as evidenced on such TV shows as The X Factor. Even when Greg’s career went downhill, he was still hungry for fame.
Interestingly, Freeman believes that happy people do not make great comedy, as he explained at the time to The Independent’s James Rampton in 2007: ‘Comedy can’t be about continuous success. The characters we get behind – whether it’s Hancock or Basil Fawlty or Captain Mainwaring – are eternally frustrated. Disappointment is an endless wellspring of comedy inspiration.’
British Comedy Guide wrote of the episode, ‘We thought this pilot was brilliant – one of the best things we saw in 2007. As has been mentioned by a number of people in our forum, the episode delivered some really good laugh-out-loud moments. Nicholas Burns was particularly great as the mad lawyer. We’d love to see a full series of Other People but have come to accept that will never happen as it would be hard to convert the premise into a full series without overstretching it.’
Freeman was next seen on TV in December 2007 as Mr Codlin in The Old Curiosity Shop. Based on the Charles Dickens novel, the TV film stars Sophie Vavasseur as Nell Trent, Derek Jacobi as her grandfather and George MacKay as Nell’s friend Kit Nubbles, as well as Zoë Wanamaker as Mrs Jarley, Toby Jones as Quilp, Adam Godley as Sampson Brass, Gina McKee as Sally Brass, Bryan Dick as Freddie Trent, Steve Pemberton as Mr Short, Josie Lawrence as Mrs Jiniwin, Bradley Walsh as Mr Liggers, Anna Madeley as Betsey Quilp, Geoff Breton as Dick Swiveller, Charlene McKenna as the Marchioness, Kelly Campbell as Mrs Nubbles, Katie Dunne as Baby Nubbles and Philip Noone as Rodney. It was broadcast on ITV on 26 December.
Martin was seen as himself in four episodes of When Were We Funniest? during the 2008 series. The comedy channel Gold got the public to decide which they thought was the funniest decade from the 1960s to the 2000s. But before the public voted, Gold picked five celebrities to represent each decade and encouraged them to convince the public that their decade was the funniest. The series kicked off with the celebrities on a panel explaining to the public why they should vote for their own decade. Each celebrity was given two episodes to convince the public. The outline was simple: in the first episode they explained why their decade was the funniest and used clips to highlight their argument and the public got to vote for the five funniest clips. In the second episode the clips were ordered according to public popularity, based on votes from the funniest to the least funny. The public were asked to vote for the most amusing decade and the funniest clip. The top five clips and the funniest decade was revealed in the final episode and the celebrities passed comments on their place in the vote. The series was narrated by Alexander Armstrong.
Trying his hand at something entirely different, Freeman next took part in two films as Rembrandt in the 2007 narrative film Nightwatching and 2008’s documentary film Rembrandt’s J’Accuse. They are both joint Dutch, German and Finnish documentaries directed by Peter Greenaway and were released a year apart, and feature many of the same actors and sets. The films explore the two sides of Rembrandt’s romantic and professional life and the controversy surrounding the identification of a murderer in his painting ‘The Night Watch’. Rembrandt’s use of shadow, light and colour was a major source of inspiration to Greenaway. ‘The Night Watch’ itself hangs in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. The film covers the period of Rembrandt’s life in which his wife Saskia, and mother to his son Titus, dies. He then starts a self-destructive relationship with his housekeeper before moving on to another member of his housekeeping crew, who is twenty years old.
Freeman was very proud to be in the two films and the process was not something he’d experienced before. He usually gets roles about lovelorn middle-aged Surrey men, so to play a Dutch master of art was an opportunity he could not resist and working with Peter Greenaway was an opportunity not to be overlooked, especially at that stage in his career. He hoped that films such as The All Together and Nightwatching would knock away his nice-guy-next-door persona once and for all. Working with Greenaway was an opportunity that he simply could not refuse and Martin was most impressed by the films.
‘I just hope that when you see it you get as much of the story across as I got from reading it. Not all Peter’s stuff is sequential, narrative story,’ the actor admitted to Indie London.co.uk’s Rob Carnevale. ‘Some of it is like an art installation and I’m not particularly interested in being in an art installation to be honest. I’m interested in the story and it was a story. So I hope that it’s intact when I see the film properly – that there is a beginning, a middle and an end. Sometimes that can easily be overlooked for the sake of cleverness. But story, for me, is really, really important whether it’s Red Riding Hood or The Godfather. Everything else has to defer to that.’
Making Nightwatching was not an easy experience though. Freeman rang his fellow The Good Night actor Michael Gambon, who had also starred in The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover, which Greenaway directed, for any advice or tips. Gambon apparently said that Greenaway leaves you alone. He does not presume to tell you how to act. He directs from a distance, but he is specific about what he wants. He’s less hands-on with his actors than he is with the crew because everything in the shot, in front of the camera, governs the progress of the film.
Freeman spoke to Ain’t It Cool’s Capone about his experiences: ‘Well, it wasn’t intimidating, but it wasn’t easy either. I don’t think there’s anything about him that is easy, to be honest. Not that he’s a difficult man. I never found that he was weird or difficult with me, but his films aren’t easy, obviously, and his films are always pretty challenging.’
Martin continued to explain what it was like working with Greenaway: ‘The process that he puts you through is fairly challenging, because as an actor, obviously, you’re used to waiting for the lighting, but you’re not used to waiting that long for the lighting, you know. You’re not used to waiting, like, half the day for the scene to be lit, but that’s, of course, what gives his films their look. That’s why his films are unique, because they look the way they do. I’m playing Rembrandt at the heart of this film, and there has to be a sort of human, beating heart at the core of the movie the rest of the film can sort of exist around. And, he’s a very hands-off director, you know. He leaves you alone.’
Nightwatching received mostly passable reviews, though critics praised Freeman’s superb performance.
‘Often, Greenaway’s handling of actors is his weakest point: but he gets fiercely intelligent performances here from Martin Freeman and Eva Birthistle as the artist and his wife Saskia,’ wrote Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian. ‘Greenaway’s group compositions are bracingly cerebral – and sometimes very erotic. His tableaux vivants are like glittering 21st-century cine-masques, with a poetic structure which swerves conventional expectations of location and narrative.’
Empire’s Adam Smith penned a review that said, ‘Martin Freeman is outstanding as the lusty young genius who, when commissioned to paint members of the Amsterdam militia in their finery, instead produces a portrait packed with half-hidden insults and an accusation of murder.’
The Independent’s Anthony Quinn said, ‘Unfortunately, this art history lesson is enclosed within a two-hour movie of nearstupefying tedium. Martin Freeman, stocky and stubbly, is not bad at all as the outspoken artist, and his grief over his dying wife Saskia (Eva Birthistle) is made convincingly raw.’
Writing in Variety, Jay Weissberg said, ‘Freeman, best known for the UK series The Office, is just the man, inhabiting the foul-mouthed, lusty artist and making him believable rather than theatrical. Birthistle and May are also standouts, rising to the challenge of being flesh and blood amid the stagecraft. Non-English thespers are less successful, made to recite long, explanatory dialogue that’s difficult to decipher under the thick accents. Multitude of players gets lost as Greenaway seems uncertain which elements to focus on at what moment, leaving a disjointed sense that’s not helped by a choppy feel for time’s passing.’
There were other directors Freeman had a desire to work with. Notably, Francis Ford Coppola, as Freeman is a huge fan of The Godfather films, and then there’s Spike Lee, Ken Loach and Shane Meadows. These directors are auteur film-makers whose body of work carries particular themes which are personal to them – for example Coppola’s Italian-American background or Meadows’s working-class roots – and there’s an individual style to each of the director’s works. Of course, he wouldn’t turn down the chance of working with Steven Spielberg either. Freeman even met director and master puppeteer Frank Oz once and wouldn’t say no to the opportunity of working with him either. Speaking to IndieLondon.co.uk in 2007, Freeman said, ‘There’s also never been a better film than the first two Godfathers, so I’d love to work with Coppola. I’d also like to work with his daughter because I think she’s fucking serious, really serious. But I think there are a lot of people. I met Frank Oz last year and really liked him. He’s a really lovely director as well. Spielberg’s not bad at all [laughs].’
To celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of Motown Records Freeman hosted a special edition of BBC2’s The Culture Show, which was first broadcast in March 2009. In the programme he visits both Detroit and LA and charts the story of soul and motown, his favourite type of music. As a self-confessed anorak, it was a joy for Freeman to visit some of his heroes. In Detroit he speaks to the last surviving member of the Four Tops, Duke Fakir, and Sylvia Moy, who wrote ‘Uptight’ for Stevie Wonder, motown producer Clay McMurray, who worked in Quality Control for Motown Records and vied for the release of Stevie Wonder’s ‘My Cherie Amour’. He also chatted to DJ Scottie Regan, who played motown on white radio stations and introduced the music to a new generation of fans. He spoke to the legendary Martha Reeves of Martha and The Vandellas, who later became a Detroit councillor. He also got to interview guitarist Eddie Willis, bass player Bob Babbitt and drummer Uriel Jones, three original members of the Funk Brothers who helped shape the sound of 1960s motown. He then journeys to LA to chart the story of the label, as Motown Records moved to the City of Angels in 1972. He interviews three members of The Jackson 5: Marlon, Tito and Jackie, along with Mary Wilson of The Supremes and Otis Williams of The Temptations, as well as songwriters Lamont Dozier and Brian and Eddie Holland, whose hits include ‘Where Did Our Love Go’ and ‘Reach Out’.
Although many of his favourite artists are black American soul singers, he has a firm grasp on contemporary British music, with his favourite bands of the day being Super Furry Animals, The Bees, The Coral and The Zutons.
Freeman next starred in the four-part drama Boy Meets Girl. It was slightly different from what he had done in the past, so he was open to a new challenge.
Martin stars as Danny Reed, who is struck by lightning only to wake up and find he is inside the body of a woman – fashion journalist Veronica Burton, played by Rachel Stirling. Veronica has a busy social life, is financially stable and has a devoted boyfriend called Jay, played by Paterson Joseph. Danny is tired of life and directionless and takes out his frustration on his customers at the DIY store where he works. He pines for his co-worker Fiona (played by Angela Griffin) and tells of his encyclopaedic knowledge of pointless information to his good friend Pete (Marshall Lancaster). So the freakish accident that causes him to swap bodies with Veronica turns his life upside down. They both struggle with their new identities and learn some new truths about themselves. However, by the end of the series they long to get back to their own bodies and their own lives.
Speaking about their preparation for the roles, Rachel Stirling told British Comedy Guide, ‘I watched everything that featured transgender roles, but I have also now played four male parts in my career. Martin and I worked incredibly hard at getting the right physicality and the right voices. We videotaped each other and copied each other’s mannerisms. Waking up in someone else’s body would be a nightmare and I hope we’ve told that story.’
The pair were not around each other much on set because their scenes were filmed separately. They recorded each other’s acting scenes so they could watch them and pick up on each other’s mannerisms and such. Acting is about observation as much as anything else; watching people talk, listening to them and paying attention to your surroundings is vital to an actor’s research.
‘Martin and I studied each other like apes,’ Stirling told The Independent’s James Rampton. ‘Like a lot of actors, he’s quite a feminine, sensitive man, and I’m quite a masculine woman, so we could steal bits off each other. I videoed Martin performing a scene as me and nicked some of his mannerisms.’
Freeman had a few meetings with an acting teacher to give him some tips about female physicality and how it is different from male physicality. The way a woman talks, carries herself and sits down was important to Freeman’s preparation for the part.
‘Voice projection is very different,’ he told British Comedy Guide, ‘and it’s very easy to get it wrong and end up being a bit too panto. It was very helpful to have someone say put your chin down, make your chest softer, use your head less and use your eyes more, because those are little clues that I wouldn’t necessarily have picked up on.’
He observed the way a woman picks up a wine glass with her fingertips rather than the palm of her hands, for example, and how women don’t stare at men, whereas men are not bothered at all who notices them. These little differences in gender, generally speaking, were helpful.
‘It’s not as though I didn’t have a camp bone in my body beforehand,’ he joked to The Independent’s James Rampton. ‘I’m an actor, for goodness’ sake! As an actor, you learn to deal with mockery, as most people think it’s not a very manly job. But fortunately, as Adam Ant so aptly put it, ridicule is nothing to be scared of.’
The series’ key point is how we are defined by the way we look. Freeman and Stirling excel on screen together. They have charisma, charm and chemistry.
‘It doesn’t have any of the clichés of gender swapping dramas,’ Freeman said to Last Broadcast. ‘It could have been quite facile but I think it works because I’ve got a bit of femininity about me and Rachael has a bit of boyishness about her.’
Co-star Paterson Joseph told Michael Deacon of the Daily Telegraph, ‘The script was hilarious but when we came to do it, I realised how horrible this was: it was like having somebody with Alzheimer’s in your life. There’s a scene where she pushes me around, and it was frightening. So it keeps a balance between a situation comedy and a painful, dysfunctional drama.’
Boy Meets Girl ran for four episodes and began on 1 May 2009. Little has been mentioned of it since.
John Preston panned the series in his review in the Daily Telegraph: ‘Many theories have been put forward as to why Michael Grade is stepping down as Executive Chairman of ITV. But I’m beginning to suspect I know the real answer. Someone hovering above him in the hierarchy must have seen Boy Meets Girl (Friday, ITV1) and decided that this couldn’t be allowed to go on.’
The Daily Mirror’s Jane Simon observed, ‘Although Martin Freeman is the better known of the two, it’s Stirling – best known for her role in Tipping The Velvet as well as for being Diana Rigg’s daughter – who gets the lion’s share of screen time in this first episode.’
A bit of a history buff, Freeman wanted to learn some of the truths of his family, as he told Wales Online: ‘A member of my family had a go once. It’s really difficult to do, and the problem is, you end up with a kind of theory or a half truth. People then end up falling in love with that theory, but the difficulty comes when it’s not necessarily the truth. It’s good to let an expert do it for you.’
In the space of just a few short weeks he went from knowing almost nothing about the history of his family to knowing a series of important events dating back more than a hundred years.
He continued, ‘I hoped we would cover my grandparents, and from watching the show previously I knew it was possible to find out about great-grandparents and even further in some cases.’
It took time for all the newly acquired knowledge to sink into his system. He discovered members of his family faced great adversities and he was impressed by their strength of spirit and character in how they dealt with such terrible issues.
That same year he was also seen as Chris Curry in the TV film Micro Men, which was originally broadcast on 8 October on BBC4. Micro Men is a one-off TV film set in the late 1970s and early to mid-1980s and concerns the rivalry between ZX Spectrum developer Sir Clive Sinclair (Alexander Armstrong) and Chris Curry (Freeman), who created the BBC Micro.
‘I didn’t think computers would take off,’ Freeman, a technophobe, told The Scotsman in 2009. ‘But this was more about these two men and their rivalry. It’s so easy and compulsory to laugh when you see Clive Sinclair being interviewed because he is a bizarre figure, but he kick-started a lot of stuff and I came away with an admiration.’
The film’s central story is about the rise of the British PC market as the two rivalries compete to become the provider of a home computer for the BBC’s programming for schools. The film mixes fact with fiction for dramatic effect.
Den Of Geek’s Aaron Birch wrote, ‘Armstrong’s portrayal of Clive Sinclair as a tyrannical, yet brilliant inventor is spot on, and Freeman’s far more down-to-earth outing as Curry helps to deliver the confrontational head-banging between the two clashing personalities. What we have here, though, is not simply an affectionate portrayal of the computing giants, but also an intriguing and accurate look into the growth of the now enormous industry, an industry that the UK helped to launch.’
Never one to shy away from trying out new endeavours, Freeman returned to short films to star in HIV: The Musical alongside Julian Barratt, Seb Cardinal and Dustin Demri-Burns. Made for around £4,000 it was released in October 2009.
He then played Paul Maddens in the film Nativity! directed by Confetti director Debbie Isitt and released on 29 November 2009. The film was partly improvised, whereas Confetti was fully improvised, and stars Freeman as Paul Maddens, a primary-school teacher who attempts to produce and direct a nativity play that will outdo a competing school. Jason Watkins, Ashley Jensen, Marc Wotton, Alan Carr, Ricky Tomlinson, Pam Ferris and Clarke Peters also star in the production.
Freeman thinks the nativity tale is a great story and a grand tradition, so it was something that he was not going to turn down. He’s fascinated by the myth and truth behind the nativity story. Whether you believe it is true or not, there is a reason why it is called ‘The Greatest Story Ever Told’ and Freeman was not swayed by any religious reasons; he just thought it was a beautiful story. He told The Scotsman in 2009: ‘Organised religion, organised anything, requires commitment and requires an engagement with something. A lot of the time, we don’t want to commit. Of course, if you talk about the Spanish Inquisition, that’s the bad end of organised religion. But organised means there’s more than ten people involved, because it was an idea people liked. I don’t see how you get round it.’
One comparison had been made between Freeman’s character and his pupils with Jesus and his disciples. ‘I hadn’t seen it like that,’ he responded to a journalist at Inspire Magazine, ‘but the reason for me that any of that stuff, the religiosity, has validity is that there are some quite good ideas and some quite good things to give to people – like the idea of redemption; the idea that we can turn something around. We don’t even see those things in religious terms. They are human things, they are part of our language and our culture.’
He continued, ‘If we are watching films who do we get behind? The underdog. What the flip was Jesus if he wasn’t an underdog, born in a bleedin’ manger, you know what I mean? I’ve always loved the story because of that. Because whether you believe or not, that is a more succinct lesson about how we should be looking at the world than anything else. The trouble is we stop looking at the world like that when we take it out of that context. We don’t then look at a homeless person and think “what can I do for you?” we think he must deserve it in some way. It’s hard to take out those parallels from something specific and put them into the wider world.’
The British nativity play at the end of the year nearing Christmas is sort of like the American high-school musical but much less glamorous and more accessible. The children are not little Hollywood stars; in the film the viewer gets to see the kids messing up and falling around. The idea for the film was to make it children-friendly, which Isitt was adamant about. Freeman was not at all concerned about being upstaged by children.
The actor says he doesn’t just turn up on set and act; there is a process. If it looks effortless on-screen, he’s evidently done his job.
‘I’m not interested in, “What can I do to impress?”’ he admitted to The Guardian’s Alice Wignall in 2009. ‘Well, play the role. I hate it when people show you what they’re doing. No one wants to see the cogs. But very often that’s what’s lauded as great acting: “Look at me working! Look at my false nose!”’
Because the script was improvised and Freeman swears so much, the director had to keep reminding him that it was a children’s film. Martin concluded that he would not have the patience or tolerance to be a teacher in real life. Those high-pitched shouts at the start of the film came from his own experiences as a father. Peep Show’s Robert Webb does not have fond memories of the filming: ‘just an unhappy experience,’ he said to The Guardian’s Alexis Petridis. ‘Improvising, in May, while naked, standing around in a garden. So cold.’
Freeman, however, enjoyed working with Debbie Isitt, otherwise he would not have gone back for Nativity!.
Watching school plays can often be a cringe-worthy experience but as a parent there is something very forgivable and enjoyable about it. There’s an innocence about seeing children doing their best and having fun with acting. That’s partly why Freeman was attracted to the film’s premise. It’s real, the kids are not pretending to be kids. They’re doing their best and there’s something very moving and emotional about that.
The process of making Confetti was less explained. The actors could go in any direction they liked, within reason and as long as it led the story in the right direction.
‘… it was more “you have to get from A to Z, saying this, we need to plot that, and at some point someone needs to say that,”’ Freeman explained to Future Movies.co.uk’s Paul Gallagher about Nativity!, ‘Debbie likes the uncertainty, and I think she has enough respect for actors, as good a screenwriter as she is, and she likes to let unexpected things happen that may be, hopefully, better than what she would have had in mind.’
They had to rehearse a great deal more than what is shown in the final film. They spent hours going through the choreography and rehearsing the songs. During some stints in filming Freeman tried to appeal to the older children to set a good example and, at times, it worked but there were some points during this time when the children were just being children and messing about.
The film was released only in the UK and was a surprise success, both critically and commercially, and has since become something of a cult classic of its kind.
There is much cynicism in America – especially Middle America – about non-domestic films, which is frustrating for an actor such as Freeman. But it is a huge country where there is plenty of money to be made.
Tim Robey wrote in his lukewarm review in the Daily Telegraph ‘… it improves, big-time, partly because Freeman and Jensen play the pathos so well, and partly because the actual show is a genuine delight, catchily penned by Isitt herself, and asking the kids to be kids, in all their cloying, charming, Britain’s Got Not Enough Talent glory.’
The Guardian’s Jason Solomons wrote, ‘Another British comedy limps into cinemas having inexplicably wrestled its way out of a television script meeting. Martin Freeman deserves an endurance medal for helping this over the finish line as primary school teacher and failed actor Mr Maddens, who puts on a musical nativity play after promising his ex-girlfriend will be coming from Hollywood to Coventry to see it.’
A sequel called Nativity 2: Danger in the Manger was released in 2012 and a third film began filming in 2013. Neither of these star Freeman.
Martin was working obsessively by this point and, given the comfortable state of his finances, had the option of taking a break if he’d so wished. There weren’t that many scripts that he liked and he has always been picky about which ones he wants to commit to. He had built up a steady stream of acting credentials in both film and TV. He was becoming more recognised as each year passed but the roles he took did not dispel the notion in many people’s minds that he was still ‘Tim from The Office’.
‘The Office is mostly what people recognise me from,’ he said to The Scotsman at the time, ‘and I’m only glad that it wasn’t as a murderer in a soap that I became famous. But it’s a bit disconcerting when you read about yourself in the newspaper and it says, “This is what Tim did next,” and people think I am going to be avuncular and jovial when they meet me because that’s the way Tim was in The Office.’
Freeman had finally given in and hired an American agent to look after his affairs in LA. For years he had resisted and been a little suspicious about Hollywood, given its reputation as a fickle town of faded hopes and dreams, but he accepted that there was certainly a great deal more work available in the US than in his native UK. Success in America could make a major difference to any actor’s career.
‘Obviously, there are also people in America that I absolutely love,’ he admitted to BBC Movies’ Rob Carnevale on the subject.
He’d certainly made the right decisions switching to more dramatic roles in recent years in the UK and, with a hired hand over in the States, his sights were set high. Freeman does not equate money with success. ‘If an actor has a huge bank balance and fifty-three cars, good for them,’ he told Andrew Duncan of Reader’s Digest. ‘They’re a great business person, but their work may mean nothing. I have much more in common with Tom Courtenay – one of the people who made me want to act as a kid – than someone who can buy planet earth four times over.’
With such varied roles to his name, Freeman was soon to be cast in one of the most famous roles in the whole of English literature, which would turn around his career and make him one of the most well-known actors in Britain, but not before another home-grown success hit the UK’s screens.