‘When people call me an everyman they think it’s a compliment. I want to rip their fucking eyeballs out. I don’t want to be the cosiest man in Britain; it’s not the way I feel about the world or the job I do.’
FREEMAN SPEAKING TO BRUCE DESSAU IN THE LONDON EVENING STANDARD, 2005
2012 would bring some incredible opportunities to Freeman as he returned to Baker Street and also made a trip to Middle Earth in the great fantasy world of author J.R.R. Tolkien.
The writers of Sherlock, Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat, came to the conclusion that they should rework three of Conan Doyle’s most well-known stories as the friendship between Holmes and Watson developed. Even Watson was brought in as the lead detective in episode two, ‘The Hounds Of Baskerville’, which was sandwiched between ‘A Scandal In Belgravia’ (aired 1 January 2012) and ‘The Reichenbach Fall’ (aired 15 January 2012) and was first shown on TV on 8 January 2012.
The series-two finale, ‘The Reichenbach Fall’, was Freeman’s favourite episode to film. He was very excited about it as soon as he’d read the script. The finished programme is superlative.
The Washington Post’s Hank Stuever said of Cumberbatch and Freeman, ‘He’s [Cumberbatch] quite something, all right, but I can’t be the only one who finds this particular version of Sherlock to be a little grating. He’d be almost unwatchable if it weren’t for the tender devotion and counterbalance Martin Freeman brings to the role of Watson.’
Den of Geek’s Louisa Mellor wrote, ‘Cumberbatch and Freeman remain a fantastic double act, with even more bickering and gags at their status as a couple this time around. There can’t be a greater pleasure on telly at the moment than seeing the look of arch disdain on Cumberbatch’s face dissolve into boyish giggles with Freeman on a sofa in Buckingham Palace, or in the back of a cab.’
As with any friendship, partnership or marriage, there is a familiarity between the pair and, as such, there is also contempt and love, compassion and everything else that is fuelled in a relationship. They’ve settled for each other. The relationship between Holmes and Watson is what the public have enjoyed about the series. It was a gratifying experience for both Freeman and Cumberbatch to see how much the characterisation between the two characters had progressed. The writing is excellent and, when the scripts are so good, that’s half the job done.
The duo may be best friends on screen but behind the camera, due to their busy schedules, they don’t have the closeness of Holmes and Watson.
‘We are very friendly [Benedict and I] and we’re good work colleagues but we’re also quite busy and I don’t really hang out with many of, or any of, my co-stars,’ Freeman admitted to Yahoo.
There’s a tendency for the public to think that actors hang out with each other and become lifelong friends after a film is made, which may be true in some cases but, for the most part, actors work together on set for a few weeks or months and, through the nature of the job, they automatically make friends but once filming is wrapped up they move on and perhaps never see each other again.
Freeman added, ‘It’s obviously because of the closeness of that relationship on screen, people expect it, or want it to be echoed in real life, which is understandable… You want all your favourite band members to live together in a flat and they don’t.’
Martin spoke to ShortList.com about the show’s increasingly rapid and ever-growing fan base: ‘… Sherlock is a much finer line between love and hate [laughs]. Because they love it so much that they have to hate it as well and they have to sort of hate you, or hate aspects of what you do, or hate Stephen [sic] Moffat if he’s said something that is half a degree off menu for what they want him to say.’
It’s fun to watch the relationship between Holmes and Watson develop throughout the first two series. It has become more of a partnership with Watson only one step behind Holmes rather than six. Watson still gets annoyed by some aspects of Holmes’s behaviour but he learns how to deal with the detective’s quirky and eccentric personality. Even with the nail-biting scenes between Holmes and Moriarty, Watson still has a presence there. The writers have not side-lined him at all. Moriarty is one of the most famous villains in all of literature and he comes across remarkably well in the series.
At the same time that Sherlock series two was broadcast director Guy Ritchie released the sequel, A Game of Shadows, to his surprise blockbuster Hollywood version of Sherlock Holmes with the American Robert Downey Jr as Holmes and Brit actor Jude Law as Watson.
‘Well, obviously Jude has the misfortune of not being very good-looking, so he has to watch jealously,’ Freeman joked with Empire’s Nick de Semlyen. ‘No, we all went to see the first film and came away going, “We wanted to hate that, but we didn’t.” It was very entertaining and I love Jude. He’s good.’
‘A Scandal In Belgravia’ was nominated for thirteen Primetime Emmy Awards, including ‘Outstanding Supporting Actor In A Miniseries Or Movie’ for Freeman’s portrayal of Watson, while Freeman bagged the TV Movie/Miniseries Supporting Actor award at the Gold Derby TV Awards in May 2012. The episode won three British Academy Television Craft Awards and later the Edgar Award for ‘Best Episode In A TV Series’ in May 2013.
‘It’s a very good idea not to read reviews, because for better or for worse, you can end up “playing the review”. But I have [read them] – that’s why I’m awful in the second series!’ he said to Digital Spy’s Morgan Jeffery in 2011. ‘I didn’t actively seek [reviews] out, but we’ve all got an ego and if you know people are saying really nice things about you, you tend to open your ears. But I wasn’t maniacal about hunting down everything, because most actors hunt down the bad stuff – you want to know who thinks you’re a prick!’
Sherlock was inundated with further awards and nominations in 2012. Freeman picked up a Tumblr TV Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor In A Drama Series, a Crime Thriller Award for Best Supporting Actor and a nomination at the PAAFTJ Awards for Best Supporting Actor In A Miniseries Or TV Movie. The series won a PAAFTJ Award for Best Cast In A Miniseries or TV Movie and Best Cast at the Tumblr TV Awards.
Freeman continued to be shocked by the success of the series.
‘Some of the viewing figures we got with the second series of Sherlock were fucking outrageous,’ he told Esquire’s Michael Holden in 2012. ‘One week we beat EastEnders, and I’m so proud – not because we beat EastEnders – but I’m just proud that millions, I mean literally millions and millions, of people wanted to watch it then. That night, do you know what I mean?’
Aside from Sherlock, Freeman voiced the character of ‘The Pirate with a Scarf’ in the 2012 film, The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists! which was renamed in New Zealand as The Pirates! Band of Misfits. Directed by Peter Lord, The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists! is a British-American 3D stop-motion film produced by Aardman Animations, the British company behind Chicken Run and Wallace and Gromit.
Freeman had wanted to work with Nick Park and his Bristol-based Aardman Animations for a while and had first approached Park about a possible collaboration at a British Comedy Awards several years earlier.
Hugh Grant made his first animated feature debut while Imelda Staunton, David Tennant, Jeremy Piven, Salma Hayek, Lenny Henry and Brian Blessed also lent their voices to the film. It is loosely based on the book of the same name in the Gideon Defoe The Pirates! series.
Freeman told a journalist at Douban.com about his experience with voice work, which is everything Martin doesn’t want acting to be – alone in a room reading from a script.
‘It was very unique, you don’t even know what their physicality is,’ he said. ‘I had seen minutes here and there of what my character was going to be, I knew what he was going to look like, but he’s not literally me. I was doing the physicality that you normally are in an acting job, but you leave his actual physicality to the team of animators, a team of people you hadn’t met in another city somewhere. There’s a lot of trust, I suppose, that goes on – definitely on both sides. I think from our point of view you feel quite privileged to be on the film anyway, every actor who was in it was, I’m sure, was quite chuffed to be a part of it, having seen all their work previously.’
Freeman much prefers to work with actors and, while it was a new experience for him, he was genuinely only interested because it was an opportunity to work with Aardman. He didn’t get into acting to do this sort of work though because, for the most part, voice work is working alone. Freeman loves people and being sociable and voice work does not provide that sort of interaction. Acting is more ‘community based’, as he has described it. He loves to hear stories on set from other actors and mingle with the cast and crew.
Martin’s inspiration for his character, Pirate With Scarf, was John Le Mesurier in Dad’s Army; basically someone who is cleverer than his superior and is level headed and knows how to deal with his superior officer. Freeman’s character is the Captain’s right-hand man. His Captain takes him for granted sometimes but knows he can rely on him. Pirate With Scarf would run through hoops for his Captain. In the film Pirate Captain gets a crisis of confidence and forgets how much high esteem his crew hold him in so, when he starts to feel negatively about himself, Pirate With Scarf boost up his boss’s confidence. None of the characters in the film have names as such – Pirate With Scarf, Curvaceous Pirate, Pirate With Gout and so on – and so they’re more like stock characters.
It was a reasonable box-office success after its 28 March release but it was a critical hit and was nominated for the 2013 Academy Award for Best Animated Feature.
Time’s Richard Corliss wrote, ‘The Pirates!, for all its vagrant appeal, isn’t in that exalted category; it lacks urgency and coherence. The movie is like a pirate without a parrot, Darwin without Natural Selection, Wallace without Gromit.’
LA Times’s Kenneth Turan enthused, ‘The twists and turns of the Pirates plot are many, but hanging on for the duration is a pleasure. The visual treats are many, including random signage (“Live Sports: Urchin Throwing, Cockney Baiting” reads one) and a clever riff on movie maps that illustrate nautical progress.’
The New York Times reported it was: ‘More eccentric than whimsical, Band of Misfits is set in a somewhat louder, rowdier key than some of Aardman’s earlier charmers. It’s the first of the studio’s stop-motion features to be shot in digital and the first shot in 3-D, developments that some Aardman purists may find the outrageous equivalent of Bob Dylan going electric or David Fincher going digital.’
A short film was also released on 13 August called So You Want To Be A Pirate! which features the voices of Freeman, Hugh Grant, Brian Blessed, David Tennant and Russell Tovey.
Freeman also had a part in an almost forgotten half-English, half-Spanish fantasy film called Animals, co-written and directed by Marçal Forés, best known for his work on a BBC pilot (‘The Things I Haven’t Told You’) that never became a series. The film is about a teenager named Pol who lives with his brother and is still at school. He has a fairly ordinary life but he has a secret – his cuddly teddy bear, Deerhoof, can think, talk and move. Pol shares his secrets with him. The school that he attends sees the arrival of a student called Ikari, who is an elusive somewhat enigmatic character with something to hide. Pol is intrigued by Ikari and his interest in his new classmate sparks off a series of dark and disturbing events that turn his life from the ordinary into the extraordinary. It was released in Spain on 22 October 2012.
The Hollywood Reporter’s Neil Young wrote of the film, ‘A self-satisfied slice of quirky Catalan cool, Animals boasts flashes of brilliance but squanders considerable potential on a waywardly sophomoric script. Sales prospects for the slick-looking feature debut of Barcelona’s Marçal Forés are boosted by a photogenic young cast, the large amount of English-language dialogue and the unexpected presence in a supporting role of popular British star Martin Freeman – Bilbo Baggins in the upcoming Hobbit trilogy. But while combining Ted and Donnie Darko – with touches of Afterschool and Ghost World – sounds like a promising concept on paper, the results are too strenuously weird for anything other than marginal youth interest.’
Variety’s Jonathan Holland wrote, ‘Troubled teens and a talking teddy bear populate the bizarre world of Animals, Catalan helmer Marçal Forés’ shimmering, ambitious debut. This stylishly wrought item shuttles between fantasy and realism a la Donnie Darko in its exploration of its protag’s problematic emotional life, although too much of the lead character’s delicate, self-regarding preciousness spills over into the film itself. But while the last half-hour has an anything-goes air, there’s still enough verve and quality in the early reels – including some wonderfully dreamy atmospherics – to suggest that Forés is one to watch. Limited fest pickups are likely.’
Freeman’s role in the film came as a surprise to many fans and to this day it remains something of an oddity in his arsenal of movies.
DVD Talk’s Tyler Foster wrote of the DVD release, ‘Animals is a frustrating film, packed to the brim with symbolism that director Marçal Forés has trouble stringing into a cohesive story. Watching the trailer, the film looks like a bizarre dark fantasy which has no boundaries, pitching Pol’s emotional growth as the start of a rift between himself and the bear that turns bloody, but the actual movie is far more contained, trying to string together important bits of subtext into a portrait of teen angst. At times, the film touches on feelings that young people, especially gay teens, may find incredibly familiar, but Forés complicates his movie with too many subplots and additional ideas to explore, resulting in a murk that prevents the film from having much of a point.’
Does Freeman have an agenda when it comes to choosing roles? What inspires him as an actor?
‘It has to be something of interest to me, and I have to be able to bring something that interests me,’ he said to the Sunday Times’s Benji Wilson. ‘There has to be a story and a three dimensional aspect to the character.’
There’s always a chance of win or lose with every project. As with any freelance endeavour, the chances of success can be fifty-fifty.
He spoke to Nerd Repository’s Kyle Wilson about the gamble that is acting full-time: ‘I think you just have to take a leap of faith as so many things are in life and so many jobs are a leap of faith because you’re not seeing the finished result. You can’t come in at the end and go, I knew The Godfather was going to X, Y and Z. On the way to making The Godfather, of course, it could have been many other things. It’s all a big leap of faith.’
Freeman ventured into another left-field project with a Radio 3 adaptation of B.S. Johnson’s 1960s ‘experimental’ novel, The Unfortunates. The author, now barely remembered, killed himself aged forty in 1973 as he struggled to gain commercial success. The Unfortunates was written in a stream of consciousness and published in 1969. Martin plays a sports writer who is sent to a city on an assignment but is soon faced with the ghosts of his past, notably that of a friend who tragically died of cancer. The character is something of an everyman, so it was perfect casting for Freeman, despite his reluctance to play such a part. The production edit saw the recording divided into eighteen sections and randomised before the broadcast and then placed on a ‘carousel’ on the Radio 3 website so listeners could choose at random.
‘I just thought it was an interesting idea,’ Freeman said to the Daily Telegraph’s Olly Grant. ‘I hadn’t heard of the book before. Or of B.S. Johnson. But I liked the idea of a book being published in no particular order, and of applying that to a radio version.’
The book’s shapelessness has been played up in an intriguing way.
‘They did it like an FA Cup draw,’ he explains. ‘They put the chapters on little wooden balls and then drew them out [one by one] to get a random result.’
Rachel Cooke wrote in The Guardian, ‘Although I’m always slightly confused by the concept of drama on Radio 3 (I mean, why?), I enjoyed listening to it. Freeman was just right; his bewildered mildness captured perfectly the tone of the book, which is sometimes comic, sometimes elusive, and occasionally very affecting.’
The big news of 2012 was that Freeman had been cast as Bilbo Baggins, the lead character, in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, which is the first one in a three-part film adaptation of the 1937 novel The Hobbit by the late fantasy author J.R.R. Tolkien, who created The Lord of the Rings. The Hobbit is a prequel to director Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings film trilogy.
The New Zealand director had made his name on a series of ‘splatstick’ (a combination of slapstick comedy and blood-andgore) horror comedies such as Bad Taste and Braindead before moving onto such Hollywood blockbusters as King Kong and, obviously, The Lord of the Rings trilogy. His name is now in the same ranks as James Cameron and Steven Spielberg as one of the most successful film-makers of all time.
It truly hit home that Martin Freeman was cast as Bilbo Baggins when people congratulated him on the street in London. It was the first time he’d ever been recognised for a job he had not yet done. It then took months to get the make-up and attire fitted for the part. It was a gradual process of getting his feet sized up, the plaster cast made for his head and ears and so on.
The massively successful film trilogy had already grown into a billion-dollar empire; the third part, The Return of the King, won the Best Picture Oscar in 2003. Jackson was desperate to return to Middle Earth with much of the same cast and crew. The journey to the big screen would be a long and laborious one.
The screenplay was written by Jackson with his long-time collaborators Fran Walsh (Jackson’s partner), Philippa Boyens and director Guillermo del Toro, who was originally slated to direct the film (with Jackson as producer) before quitting the project – due to delays and financial problems – in 2010 after working on the planned two-film project for two years. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is set in Middle Earth years before the events of The Lord of the Rings took place. The film expands on the original book with portions adapted from the 125-page appendices and footnotes of The Return of the King, the third novel of The Lord of the Rings trilogy. The 1937 novel was originally conceived for children and offers none of the dark adventures of The Lord of the Rings but rather a more gentle fantasy adventure. Said footnotes and appendices were published over twenty years after the original publication of The Hobbit and were known only among the series’s most eager aficionados.
Peter Jackson explained his reasons for including the extra angles at the 2012 Comic-Con: ‘In these appendices, he did talk about what happened, and it was a lot darker and more serious than what’s written in The Hobbit. Also, to be quite honest, I want to make a series of movies that run together, so if any crazy lunatic wants to watch them all in a row, there will be a consistency of tone. I don’t want to make a purely children’s story, followed by The Lord of the Rings. We are providing a balance. A lot of the comedy and the charm and the fairy tale quality of The Hobbit comes from the characters.’
It was during this time that series two of Sherlock was being filmed. The schedules of both Freeman and Cumberbatch proved difficult for the writers and even Moffat (the head writer of Doctor Who) and Gatiss were very busy themselves.
‘Yes, it is true he nearly turned down The Hobbit because he was already committed to the second series of Sherlock,’ said actor Amanda Abbington, his long-term partner of twelve years, in an article by Cheryl Stonehouse of the Daily Express. ‘Martin is never fazed by anything. He’s never star-struck. He’s a very talented man but he never forgets where real life is. A commitment is a commitment.’
Freeman is very loyal to Sherlock. He didn’t want to turn down The Hobbit and he could have left Sherlock but he didn’t want to because he loves the series and is very proud of it.
‘… the BBC weren’t making it particularly easy for me to negotiate,’ he admitted to the Sunday Times’s Benji Wilson. ‘They weren’t going, “Yeah, fine.” They were going, “No. We wanna do this, we wanna do it now.” I remember the conversation with my agent, and I was saying, “Are we going to have to let The Hobbit go?” and he went, “Yeah, I think we are.”’
The delays in production and the financial issues that had delayed The Hobbit seemed to work in Freeman’s favour, though by the time the film was given the official green light, Freeman had signed on for the second series of Sherlock. It was on, off, on again and off because it seemed like it would clash with shooting Sherlock. Martin was enormously disappointed, as was Jackson.
‘I met Peter in England and spent the afternoon with him while the World Cup was on,’ Freeman explained to UK Ask Men’s Jamie Watt. ‘He was about as normal as you can be, and I appreciated the fact that he understood my misgivings about being away from home for so long. I really wanted to do the film, and when it looked like I had to walk away from the role because of Sherlock, that wasn’t a very amusing scenario. But, you know, these things happen and I put that behind me and I just hoped that I was going to hate it when it came out.’
Six weeks away from the shoot, Jackson still hadn’t signed anyone; he was thinking of other actors but Freeman was his main choice. He was stressed and having sleepless nights. An avid Sherlock fan, Peter Jackson was so keen to cast Freeman as Bilbo Baggins that he fitted the film’s production around the actor’s schedule.
‘Martin was the only person that we wanted for that role, and that was really before we met Martin,’ Jackson told reporters at a press event in New York. ‘We knew him from [the BBC’s] The Office and Hitchhiker’s Guide [to the Galaxy], and we just felt he had qualities that would be perfect for Bilbo. The stuffy, repressed English quality. He’s a dramatic actor, he’s not a comedian, but he has a talent for comedy.’
If Jackson didn’t have enough clout in Hollywood, the studio would never have accepted the change in schedule because Freeman was not a big enough name yet. But Jackson and his creative team were adamant that Martin was the man for the role.
‘Peter moved heaven and earth for me so when I got to New Zealand to begin filming I felt very welcome and loved,’ said Freeman to the Daily Telegraph’s John Hiscock. ‘It was a huge compliment to me, but I think there are plenty of other actors who could have given Bilbo a go – I’m not the only one.’
Ships like this don’t sail very often and Freeman, at this stage in his career, was willing to move away from his family for a short while for the chance of progressing his career. He was truly gutted when he thought he had to turn the part down.
Martin was aware of the extensive online campaign to get him the part in the first place. It was humbling if slightly odd.
‘I have enough faith in Peter to know,’ he told Dark Horizons’ Garth Franklin. ‘I know that he’s… ’Cause he’s said to me about other things he’s done, where he’s taken maybe too much notice of what was happening on the Internet, and actually been given a bum steer. I think he’s learned from that. We can all look at the Internet and go, “He hates me! Oh, but she loves me. Oh, but he hates me…” you know. That way, madness lies. So I think yeah, it’s very nice, it’s gratifying that people wanted me to be in it. But they didn’t get me the job.’
What was it about Freeman that made Jackson so passionate that he was a perfect fit for the part?
‘I think he saw a strange looking bloke with an odd face,’ Freeman joked to Hampshire Life’s Frank Grice. ‘Quite a small, round face and someone who would fit the ears. Honestly, I genuinely don’t know. I’m not being cute with that answer; I don’t know what he saw. Hopefully, he thinks I’m quite good, and so could do it, I hope.’
He added, ‘I think, sometimes, you got to be careful what you wish for. Of course we all want to be told we’re brilliant in various ways. And then, if someone thinks were brilliant for a reason we find unflattering, then we’d rather not hear it.’
The problem of schedule conflicts was solved. Jackson flew Freeman to New Zealand for four months on The Hobbit before sending him back to England for two months on Sherlock. It meant that the director spent longer on editing and was able to make adjustments to the film, which he would not have been able to do otherwise. Jackson called Freeman, who at the time was rehearsing in London, to tell him the film was back on. Martin was enormously flattered that Jackson had gone to so much effort.
‘To be fair, Sherlock wasn’t really budging, the BBC weren’t really budging so Peter Jackson budged and rearranged the entire shooting schedule of The Hobbit so I could do both. Which is very flattering and very lucky for me,’ Freeman explained to the University Observer’s Steven Balbirnie. ‘So it meant that I could film some of The Hobbit and have downtime to go and do Sherlock series two and come back to The Hobbit. It’s amazing that I got to do both.’
If it wasn’t for Sherlock, Freeman would have had to have spent eighteen months working on The Hobbit, which would have made time with his family rather difficult, but he and his partner, Abbie Abbington, knew that either way he could not turn it down. Freeman has worked on other films that he loves more but none of them would end up making a billion dollars at the box office. That sort of opportunity is a once-in-a-lifetime offer. Only a crank would turn it down.
‘His heart ached a little bit,’ Abbington told the Daily Mail’s Vicky Power regarding Martin spending time away from his family. ‘But we know the film is going to be huge. He does get stressed, though. Sometimes he rings me up at 7am to say, “I’ve been covered in crap, hanging upside down and I’ve got bloody ears on.” But he knows it’s for the greater good and he does it with a smile.’
Freeman did not get into acting because he wanted his name on billboards, movie posters and to be on TV chat shows. He chose to be an actor because of films such as the classic Dog Day Afternoon with Al Pacino, one of Freeman’s acting heroes. It’s not about the size or scale of a film, it’s about the story and characters. If the size of the film is huge but the script is poor, he’s not interested but, if it is a good solid script, then he’s game. He’ll do his best to serve the story. He’s not concerned about how big he is in it but rather how good he is.
The Hobbit was a potentially huge film but with a strong script. The one thing he learned from accepting The Hobbit was not to be so reticent about taking on roles outside of his comfort zone.
‘Being an actor is just like being any other sort of self-employed person – we’re all just happy to have a job in the first place, but we also thrive off the uncertainty of it,’ Freeman admitted to UK’s Ask Men’s Jamie Watt. ‘I didn’t see any of my previous roles coming either. With film, there’s art and then there’s scale, and some people, like Peter, are able to marry the two of those together brilliantly. I honestly wouldn’t give a fuck about these movies if they were just about scale, but you actually care about the characters in these films.’
When it was officially announced that Freeman had landed the part, fans were ecstatic. He was just the right actor for the job. His friend Simon Pegg, a science-fiction and fantasy nut, laughed that Freeman would have to do the gruelling convention circuit.
‘Martin’s the anti-me: a soul aficionado and a vinyl junkie – absolutely not a resident of the geek universe. Not the type of person who will relish the attention he’ll get for being Bilbo Baggins. Ha!’ Pegg told The Observer’s Tom Lamont.
As with The Lord of the Rings films, The Hobbit movies were produced back–to-back over an eighteen-month period with principal photography commencing on 21 March 2011 in Jackson’s native New Zealand. Filming ended after 266 days on 6 July 2012. Pick-ups (minor filming to augment a scene) for The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey took place in July. Freeman enjoyed the experience of filming in New Zealand and he was certainly appreciative of it but he missed his family, London, his tailor, his record collection and Bar Italia. He told Flicks And Bits in 2013 that ‘It was lovely. I had never been to New Zealand before. It’s as far you can go from London before you fall off the world [laughs]. I knew a couple of the cast loosely from London, obviously my old mate Benedict, but I didn’t know anybody well at first.’
He’s never lived anywhere else but Britain but now he could say he’s lived in New Zealand. He didn’t stay in a hotel, he lived in a house. Kiwis for the most part have a less stressful life than Brits, so there was a different way of living to accommodate to. Freeman found that the locals made it a very easy place to work. The cast and crew, mostly from the US and the UK, have generally stated how at home they were made to feel by the locals.
Aside from Cumberbatch, there were no familiar faces on set so the first day reminded him of going to a new school. A great deal of time was spent rehearsing, which Freeman humorously dubbed ‘Dwarf boot camp’, where he learned how to be a hobbit and the rest of the cast learned to be dwarves or some other fantastical creatures out of the pages of the Tolkien novel. Freeman bonded with Elijah Wood over a mutual love of The Beatles. They ate, drank and got to know each other like chums. By the time the cameras started rolling on the first day of the shoot, they felt comfortable with each other and friendships had begun developing.
‘You find out so much in those first few days,’ he told Dark Horizon’s Garth Franklin. ‘You just come along, in a way, and be open and ready and receptive. Bring whatever you’ve got to bring, but don’t bring too much because it’s not a done deal yet. It grew as the weeks and months went on, really.’
In the story, the great wizard Gandalf the Grey (Ian McKellen) convinces Bilbo Baggins to accompany thirteen dwarves, led by Thorin Oakenshield (Richard Armitage), on a quest to reclaim the Lonely Mountain from the dragon Smaug (Benedict Cumberbatch). The cast also included Christopher Lee, Hugo Weaving, James Nesbitt, Sylvester McCoy, Cate Blanchett, Elijah Wood, Andy Serkis, Ken Stott and Barry Humphries.
Coming from the modern-day Baker Street of Sherlock to the Middle Earth of The Hobbit was an odd experience for Freeman but an interesting one. It was a challenge but that is the nature of his job as an actor. The film charts Bilbo’s journey, yet it was filmed out of order, which Freeman found difficult, so that brought more homework and training for Martin and his fellow actors.
‘There are lots of things that keep me awake at night, but work isn’t one of them,’ Freeman admitted to Empire magazine’s Nick de Semlyen. ‘I mean, no one’s going to die if someone doesn’t like what I do. So I don’t feel a great pressure. The first day of The Hobbit was nervy, but in a fun way, and with Sherlock obviously the success of the first series helps. At least a few people loved it, so hopefully we’ll have a fair bit of goodwill for the second series. Unless we fuck it up!’
Jackson and Freeman worked well together. The actor was well aware that it was Peter Jackson’s film and that he was in charge; that he knows the world of The Hobbit better than anyone else. But it would have been awful for Freeman to travel so far away from his family and to take on a role of that size without having any creative input and without being able to express his opinion. Jackson made enough room for Martin to get involved. There was a great deal of respect between the two men. But, of course, the director had to be pleased with everything. Freeman is the best and greatest critic of his own work though, so he was able to make his own choices as regards Bilbo. Early on in the filming process Freeman and Jackson discussed who they thought Bilbo Baggins was and how he should come across on screen.
As with The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Freeman was far from an expert on the original novel. Fantasy just isn’t his thing.
‘It wasn’t in my orbit at all’ he told Empire magazine. ‘I’m not sure it would have been very helpful if I’d always wanted to play Bilbo Baggins. I’d have come up against someone else’s vision. We’re taking the work seriously, but when we’re looking up at tennis balls that are meant to be trolls, it’s got to be fun.’
Freeman had never met Ian Holm, who played Bilbo in Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, and he would have loved to but that was never the original set-up. Martin had Holm’s blessing though, so that created some positivity and Freeman just had to follow his own way into the role. Ian Holm had established Bilbo Baggins as a character on screen but Freeman was conscious not to copy him just for the sake of it. Martin was cast because not only is he an excellent actor but he’s also a good fit for the part. Of course, for research Freeman watched The Lord of the Rings films again and in more detail but he didn’t study Ian Holm’s performance as such. Martin knew why he had been cast and it was not because he could copy other actors, but rather because he is a self-styled thespian, perfectly capable of tackling the role. During his scenes he wasn’t thinking, ‘How would Ian have done this?’ He was starting from scratch with his own version of the character. He didn’t feel as though he had anything to live up to – he had faith in himself as an actor and the creative team evidently had faith in his abilities too.
Freeman spoke to Collider’s Steve ‘Frosty’ Weintraub about the role: ‘I think if I was, I don’t know, Jeff Goldblum or someone, then I might be thinking, “Right, hang on, if he’s the older me, I’d better attend more to something else maybe.” Well, grow, for a start. But no, ’cause I think I was always trusted with it. All I was told, which I think was flattery, and probably bollocks, was, “You are the only person to play it.” So I thought, “Well, if they think that, then I’ve got to trust that.” And there’s only so much you can run with someone else’s thing. It’s very helpful, in the way that it’s brilliant as he is always brilliant, and it’s a beautiful establisher of that character, and a very loved one, for obvious reasons.’
The first day on set for Freeman was in Gollum’s cave, so he got to work with performance-capture maestro Andy Serkis, which on its own was an experience-and-a-half.
He told Garth Franklin of Dark Horizons, ‘I was working with Andy as Gollum, which in itself is interesting. Fascinating as a baptism of fire, but friendly fire because he’s so good. That character is so beloved and he knows that character, obviously, as well as anybody knows anything.’
Speaking about the experience, Serkis told journalists at Comic-Con in 2012, ‘We were able to shoot a scene in its entirety, on a live set, with Martin’s performance being captured on a digital camera while Gollum’s performance used a performance-capture camera, and captured them both, at exactly the same moment in time. What that does is that there’s no disconnect. The fidelity to the moment, the choices and the beats that you create, between the director and the actors, is absolutely nailed in one. That makes a significant difference to the believability and the emotion. Therefore, the chances to augment and change the iteration on the fly makes a huge difference.’
This sort of high-scale film was not something Freeman had experienced before – even The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy was not this gargantuan in scope. Freeman felt safe because Serkis knew the character and is an expert at what he does. The first few days on set for Martin were about finding his feet. He learned so much as he was getting to grips with everything on set. It was important for him to be receptive and open to ideas. It was a long stint so Freeman had the chance to look back and ponder if he had done things right. Usually, acting gigs don’t last that long, so it was all a new experience.
Working with all the various technologies and cameras was difficult at first for Freeman, who was used to a more basic style of film-making, but The Hobbit was filmed for 3D and forty-eight frames per second rather than the standard twenty-four. A scene would be set up and filmed but then there’d be a technical issue with the new ‘Slave-Mo-Co’ camera system, which would halt filming. Freeman was not a fan of the new technological system, which was used for the Bag End scene with Gandalf and the dwarves. The breakdown of technology was especially prominent in the early days of shooting and the actors found it difficult but they persevered. The multiple takes were mostly down to technical issues. Some film-makers, such as Clint Eastwood, are known for just one or two takes before the next scene is set up; other film-makers, such as David Fincher, could do dozens of takes. Freeman’s experience was mostly in independent films where time is of the essence and filming is wrapped up in six weeks. Though he is an accomplished actor and had not been out of work since leaving drama school, in this case he was still learning the tricks of the trade. What was good about the technology issues was that they got more opportunity to rehearse so, by the time the cameras were set up for another take, the actors were finely tuned.
3D is a cause of controversy and criticism among film fans. Since the release of James Cameron’s 2009 science-fiction film Avatar, 3D has been all the rage with Hollywood film-makers. Of course, ticket prices are more expensive and studios therefore make more money but some film fans believe it to be a phase. ‘I’m not particularly committal or non-committal to 3D,’ Freeman admitted to Garth Franklin of Dark Horizons. ‘I never watched The Godfather and went, “Do you know what this needs? This needs Fredo’s hand coming out at you.” I think as long as it’s used tastefully, and as long as it’s used to enhance something, that’s fine. As soon as… the medium is the message, then no. I trust Peter. He’s a pretty well-versed film-maker, and he’s got pretty good taste.’
Martin did not realise how small his character and those of the dwarves were until they stood next to Gandalf. Freeman’s scale double wasn’t used excessively though. He got used to the ways of filming rather quickly, much to his surprise.
He told reporters at the 2012 Comic-Con, ‘The first time that we ever shot a scene with Gandalf, where Ian had to be in a completely different room, I thought, “This is ridiculous! This will never work! Who are these people? Why are they doing this to us?” And then, an hour later, you go, “That looks brilliant!” You rehearse it and rehearse it, and it becomes normal. Your whole frame of reference for how you normally work on a film shifts. What, one minute, is completely unworkable and ridiculous, the next week just works. It becomes very easy, actually.’
Another new experience for Freeman was wearing prosthetics. He got off lightly as he did not have to wear a great deal of prosthetic make-up but some of his co-stars found it very tough. It can get hot and claustrophobic. Filming lasted for upwards of ten months and the cast had to wear this make-up constantly while working, so all this added a lot of stress and discomfort to the work. Who said filming was easy!
British actor Richard Armitage, who plays Thorin Oakenshield, spoke to the Radio Times’s Susanna Lazarus about working with Martin Freeman: ‘He’s just brilliant. He’s so inventive and he keeps the atmosphere on set really buoyant because he’s got a natural sense of comedy, as Martin but also as Bilbo Baggins. He really experiments with the role and he makes me work in a different way. He’s always having a bit of a laugh but when it comes to doing the serious stuff he can always pull it out the bag.’
Freeman had never previously done such a lengthy job, so it was especially helpful that, despite the huge male cast, there were no egos or falling-outs.
The days were long and the weeks were longer so Freeman and his fellow cast members cherished their days off and used them for a bit of R&R.
Freeman said to Stuff’s Tom Cardy, ‘It’s good, it’s always nice to have a day off. But I can’t complain, because on this block [of filming], I’ve had quite a lot of days off. It’s been quite nice, actually. Unexpected, but still relatively rare. Yeah, days off are always good. However much you’re enjoying the job, and I am enjoying this job, it’s always nice to be out and go and have some Japanese food.’
What did Freeman think of his character, the famed Bilbo Baggins?
‘Bilbo went through a few faces. There were a couple of noses,’ Martin said to reporters at a press conference. ‘They had the idea of having a more snub nose, and then they decided that my nose was weird enough. So it went from a more middle-aged rocker to being what Bilbo looks like now, which is a middle-aged rocker. So it was gradual; it wasn’t one minute you are you and then the next minute you are the character. It was incremental.’
Being a bit of a mod, Freeman even made a joke about ‘Moddit’, with a ‘little paisley scarf, a little bit of brocade. I’m doing what I can. A wine coloured corduroy jacket…’ he told Esquire’s Michael Holden.
The Hobbit takes a different turn from The Lord of the Rings. It’s a much lighter, family oriented film but with dashings of darkness. The film sees Bilbo Baggins become a hero, which is ultimately the film’s greatest evolution, but his heroism comes out of necessity. He comes into situations where, unless he does things, he and his friends will die. The history of fantasy cinema is littered with unlikely heroes and, of course, Bilbo Baggins is now one of the most indelible.
There was much riding on Freeman’s casting and he felt a great deal of responsibility, though he realised that the ultimate job would be down to the final edit.
He explained his thoughts on his casting in the film to Collider’s Steve ‘Frosty’ Weintraub: ‘In the doing of it, it’s ultimately my responsibility, but then obviously the greater responsibility, of course, is Peter’s, because he has his eye on the ball – well, on various different balls all the time. And also, he’s got a picture in his head of how it’s going to be edited, and what it’s going to look like. And I could be doing a scene where I think it’s scene ninety-four, it might end up being scene two-hundred and thirteen. So with the best will in the world, you have to commit, but also be open. That’s the hard thing. Because if you think, “I’m going to do this scene, this scene means this, it’s all these characters, and it’s this moment…” it might not even be there, clearly, ’cause that’s the nature of film-making, or it might be somewhere else. And he’s pretty open about that.’
Freeman liked how Jackson tells stories; his style of film-making. The New Zealand director was easy to work with – he doesn’t have the workhorse reputation that precedes someone such as James Cameron. Freeman does not believe in making life any more difficult than it needs to be. Everyone involved in the film had a job to do and they were all there to help tell the story, Jackson most of all. A film is in many ways a negotiation between the director and the cast – if the director does not get what he wants, until he sees on screen what is the right thing, it’s down to the cast to help realise that vision. Actors don’t want to walk off-set questioning if they’ve done the right thing or not. They may have done what’s on the script but is it exactly what the director envisaged? Actors have to please everyone – the crew, the studio heads, the audiences, the critics. Actors are contractually obligated to please the director but they have an artistic plan to please themselves.
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey was finally completed on 26 November 2012, just two days before its Wellington premiere. The anticipation was high.
This film was Freeman’s second major literary film adaptation, with the first, of course, being The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. So how did the experience of filming these two projects compare with each other? There was a great deal more green screen time (‘green screen acting’ means acting alone in front of a green screen, with camera devices that make certain characters look different sizes – some consider it disorientating) working with Peter Jackson on The Hobbit but the stories are set in completely different universes and both experiences were unlikely to ever be repeated.
Martin spoke to journalists at the 2012 Comic-Con about his experiences on set: ‘…just for breadth of scale and time, and being in a different part of the hemisphere than I’m used to. It’s a whole different experience. It’s like a huge chunk of your life. That, alone, makes it different from anything else. The budget makes it different. You’re constantly walking onto sets and sound stages where what you’re acting on would take up the entire budget of any other film I’ve done. So, just the scale of it is quite phenomenal. For me, they’re incomparable.’
Freeman probably wanted nothing to do with green screen acting before The Hobbit but he understands that many big-budget Hollywood films use green screens and that whatever is in the background near the acting will be inserted using computer-generated imagery.
‘The reality is though that the most traditional part of acting is using your imagination,’ he explained to UK’s Ask Men’s Jamie Watt. ‘It’s what I was doing when I was five and it’s what I’m doing now that I’m, er, twenty-eight… Using your imagination is the key to any kind of performance, so when it came to the green screen, I was surprised. I thought it would drive me mad, but the sets were usually a mix of the virtual and the physical – stuff we could touch, taste and smell, so it didn’t seem like the whole time we were speaking to tennis balls. There was some of that, but there was also some actual material. If you look around Bag End, in Bilbo’s house, it’s all real, it’s all tangible, so it’s nice to have that mixture.’
On the experience of working with green screen, Freeman said to 3 News’s Kate Rodger, ‘Acting is pretending so you just have to pretend. It’s not as much fun as when someone else is there. When someone else is there, that’s really fun, and that’s when I think truly great things can happen. When you’re doing it on your own it is less fun, because it’s less organic and you’re having to manufacture more. But it’s just a matter of digging deep into your imagination. It’s your idea of how the dragon is going to be massive, terrifying and it’s going to have this booming voice coming out that will scare the bejeezus out of him.’
Arthur Dent and Bilbo Baggins are both reluctant heroes who are thrown into a dangerous adventure. There’s a nervous energy about them as well as a bland ordinariness yet an underlying strength, which made perfect casting for Freeman.
‘With Arthur Dent, he serves, I suppose, a similar function to Bilbo, in that he’s the nearest thing to an audience member, in the film,’ Freeman explained to reporters at Comic-Con in 2012. ‘He’s the audience’s way in. And to a certain extent, you could argue that they’re archetypes, in the hands of a much lesser actor. Cue laughter. They’re ciphers, in a way, I suppose you could say.’
The role would change some significant parts of his life: his bank balance and fame being two primary factors. He’d been famous in London for a decade, where people would chat to him in the street, question him about The Office, ask for photographs and autographs but he’d never had that in Spain or France. So being internationally famous was an entirely different ball game. Freeman had been cast in many independent films with little distribution but The Hobbit was going to be shown all around the world and, as such, his privacy would be compromised. He knew that when he took on the role.
There was an enormous marketing campaign. The very first trailer was released before The Adventures of Tin Tin, produced by Jackson, in the US on 21 December 2011. Jackson, along with Freeman, McKellen and others, appeared at the San Diego Comic-Con International in 2012 to promote the film and a screening of twelve minutes’ footage. Such was the level of euphoria in New Zealand that on 8 October 2012 Wellington Mayor Celia Wade-Brown announced that the New Zealand capital would be renamed ‘Middle of Middle Earth’ for the week of the film’s premiere.
‘It’s kind of weird when everywhere you go there are pictures of you,’ said Freeman to the Daily Telegraph’s John Hiscock. ‘It’s certainly unusual for any film I’ve ever done. But it’s a good picture of me and at least I’m happy with it, because if it was a picture I hated I wouldn’t go out.’
The 2012 Comic-Con was his first experience of such an event. In terms of comic books and movies, the San Diego Comic-Con is the biggest social event on the calendar. Fans meet and greet some of their heroes, buy and sell merchandise, attend Q&As and watch previews of upcoming films. It’s a major event with global publicity.
Freeman told reporters at the 2012 press conference, ‘So in a way it’s fulfilling my expectations of what I heard about Comic Con, and exceeding them as well. I was struck by just how emotional people were talking about the film, talking about anticipating the film. With each question came a preamble about what the previous films have meant in people’s lives. So all clichés aside, it’s a really nice thing to be part of something that actually touches people, genuinely touches people. It’s quite a lovely thing.’
Martin joked that people had been annoying him in restaurants in the UK for years but with the imminent release of The Hobbit this attention will be with him all over the world. But that is the price actors pay for fame – for taking on such an iconic role in the first place.
‘I’m getting a glimpse of that external reaction to it now, the nearer the film gets to release,’ said the forty-one-year-old Freeman to the New Zealand Herald. ‘I mean that level of fame obviously is something very different to what most people will get to experience, but my life doesn’t feel any different yet.’
Released on 28 November 2012 in New Zealand and internationally on 13 December, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey grossed over $1 billion at the international box office, which surpassed both The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring and The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. It was the fourth-highest grossing film of the year and the seventeenth-highest grossing film of all time. Martin Freeman was now box-office gold.
The movie was such a success that Freeman was worried it would change his life more than he anticipated.
‘I remember having those conversations before The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy came out [in 2005] and thinking, fuck, is everything going to change?’ he said to Time Out London’s Nick Aveling. ‘And it didn’t, really. I’m a big believer that life changes as much as you want it to. If you invite in all the madness, it will. If you don’t, if you kind of let the world quietly know, “No thanks, I still want to get on the train and live my own life,” then somehow it doesn’t have to.’
Empire magazine’s Dan Jolin enthused, ‘His Bilbo does take his predicament seriously, and while this is the jauntiest – at times silliest, at times funniest, certainly the most child-friendly – Middle-earth movie yet, Freeman remains its emotional lodestone.’
He continued, ‘Jackson holds on Freeman’s face. This isn’t just Tim-from-The Office or Watson in pointy ears, but an actor at the height of his prowess finding every layer to a character it now seems he was born to play.’
Total Film magazine’s Matthew Leyland wrote: ‘Elijah Wood’s Frodo may have carried an incalculable burden but he was, frankly, a bit of a whinger. Freeman’s Bilbo likes a moan too, but the part gives the Brit licence to show off his sitcom-honed comic touch.’
He continued, ‘He also straddles the tone’s comic/dramatic divide. Just when you worry his self-effacing performance is getting lost in the monster mash, along comes the centrepiece confrontation with Gollum (Andy Serkis, showstopping as ever), a game of riddles where Bilbo’s wit and mettle are shaded with genuine anxiety.’
Philip French of The Observer wrote, ‘Bilbo (Ian Holm, reprising his role from The Lord of the Rings) is seemingly writing his memoirs, puffing on his churchwarden pipe and blowing out smoke rings as big as haloes and eating regular meals. As he contemplates the past he’s replaced by his equally pacifist younger self, to which part Martin Freeman brings the same decent, commonsensical, very English qualities that informed his excellent Dr Watson on TV.’
The role of Bilbo Baggins won Freeman acclaim as well as some awards and nominations. He picked up Best Hero at the 2013 MTV Movie Awards and Best Actor at the eighteenth Empire Awards as well as Visionary Actor at the Short Awards. Freeman was also nominated for Hottest Actor at the 2012 Total Film Hotlist Awards and Best Actor at the following year’s Saturn Awards as well as Best Scared-as-Shit Performance at the MTV Movie Awards, Best Actor at the SFX Awards, Hero Of The Year at the New Zealand Movie Awards, Best Male Performance In A 2012 Science Fiction Film, TV Movie, Or Mini-Series at the Constellation Awards, Best Leading Actor at the Tumblr Movie Awards and Best Ship at the Tumblr Movie Awards.
‘I’m geek royalty now,’ he joked with Hollywood Reporter’s Jordan Zakarin. ‘That’s the main responsibility. It’s not playing Bilbo, it’s my responsibility as a geek prince.’
Jon Plowman, the former head of comedy at the BBC and executive producer of The Office knows how well Freeman can act when he’s cast in the right roles. ‘He’s great at playing the everyman, which is why he is so good as Watson and in The Hobbit. He’s got a wonderful ordinariness which you’d think most actors would have but curiously they don’t. That’s not an insult – it’s the absolute opposite – and if you’ve got it as an actor you bloody well hang on to it.’
Such was the hype surrounding the film that its success was surely going to upset Freeman’s relatively peaceful life. How could he possibly stay relaxed with the inevitability of worldwide fame?
‘Until it actually happens it’s all an intellectual exercise,’ he said to John Hiscock of the Daily Telegraph. ‘What if everyone hates it? I try not to count my chickens but yes, it’s clearly a bigger film than I’ve ever made. People are so enthusiastic about this story that if I thought about them hating it or hating my rendition of it I wouldn’t be able to go to work.’
The Hobbit is one of the productions Freeman is proudest of and it’s probably going to be the one film he will speak fondly of in decades to come.
Freeman had Arthur Dent, John Watson and Bilbo Baggins to his name: three iconic characters of literature. How did he feel?
‘I’m very proud of all of that,’ he expressed to Digital Spy’s Morgan Jeffery. ‘It is a weird thing at the moment to be Bilbo Baggins and John Watson. I can’t deny that it’s quite strange. I never think about it, but when it’s put like that, I think “Christ, that is odd.” They are iconic roles, but it’s all accidental and it’s all happenstance. I certainly don’t think there’s a casting director somewhere going, “How do we get Martin the iconic roles?”’
There was never any plan to immerse himself in any of these projects. He didn’t wake up one morning and wonder what adaptation he would tackle next. It all happened by accident and, as the writing was so good, he could not turn any of them down.
Freeman was not daunted by taking on these iconic roles – not through arrogance or some self-absorbed higher belief in his own talent but rather because being scared would be counter-productive. Also, he was not steeped in the work of Conan Doyle, or Tolkien or Douglas Adams.
‘I think it’s this simple thing about, I came to this job, this profession, out of joy and out of play, and I know no one’s going to die, however shit I am, do you know what I mean? It’s okay,’ he admitted to Collider’s Steve ‘Frosty’ Weintraub. ‘I’d rather not be shit, obviously, I’d rather be good. Genuinely, it’s crushing if people don’t like me, but as with everything, I’m the ultimate judge of my work. I can only say, “Well, I liked it,” or, “I didn’t like it,” and there are some times when I didn’t like it. But no, I’m honestly not, I’m really not. I’m daunted by so many other things in life, work is not one of them. I’m daunted about almost everything else, it’s a constant cause of fucking concern to me. But work is just not one of them at all, yeah. I don’t worry about work. And that’s partly ’cause I’ve been lucky and I’ve always worked.’
‘So many British people with no prospects say, “I’m going to go to Hollywood and just see what happens,”’ he said to Movie Web’s Julian Roman. ‘And I’m like, “What the fuck do you think is going to happen?” That’s the place where everyone wants to be. And if you’re making The Godfather that’s great. But you can make rubbish at home! Good scripts wherever they come from is what I’m interested in.’
Hilariously, a spoof video of The Office creator and lead actor Ricky Gervais as Gandalf The Grey went viral. The Office: An Unexpected Journey takes footage from The Hobbit film and superimposes the voices and faces of characters from The Office. Obviously it is a nod to Freeman’s casting in both creations. The video starts with Gervais as The Office manager David Brent dressed as Gandalf delivering one of his more famous lines from the show: ‘People say I’m the best boss, they go, “Oh, you get the best out of us,” and I go, “C’est la vie.” Freeman is obviously Bilbo Baggins and offers some lines from The Office, and there’s a small role from Ewen MacIntosh (Big Keith in The Office) and, even funnier, Mackenzie Crook (Gareth Keenan in The Office) is Gollum. The video was mashed up by UK producers Jonny Lang and Jason Burke. They wrote on YouTube, ‘Like The Office? Then you may well like this unique blend of those two worlds where David Brent (aka Gandalf The Grey) tells us all about his philosophy around running a regional parchment merchants in Middle-earth.’
The box-office success of The Hobbit has made Freeman a very wealthy man and that meant that he could dress sharply and afford bespoke suits from the revered tailor Mark Powell, who also designs suits for famed cyclist Bradley Wiggins. He’s always had an eye for fashion but didn’t always have the money to be able to afford nice clothes. Freeman is inspired by modernism both stylistically and musically. He likes modernism because it takes elements from everywhere and resists being a uniform. Another follower of this philosophy is Paul Weller, who dresses the same way he did decades ago.
Freeman loves the pre-mod jazz look of the 1950s to 1970s suedeheads (an offshoot of skinhead subculture). He is an avid fan of 1970s culture, whether it be the clothes, the music of The Jam, the comedy of The Goodies or the American films of Al Pacino. His other style influences would be Jerry Dammers of The Specials, Pete Tosh of The Wailers and, of course, Mr Paul Weller. Another hero of his is Steve McQueen. Martin has likened being a Mod with being a member of a cult in that people who are true Mods are vehemently dedicated to the cause. Being a Mod is about portraying yourself as an individual and not dressing in a uniform or whatever attire is currently in fashion. The cut of people’s jeans, the tautness of the shirts, the hair, the shows – they all mean something to a Mod.
Paul Weller has had a profound impact on the Mod scene. As one of Britain’s most respected and successful singer-songwriters, he started his career in The Jam, which he left in 1982 to branch out into the more soulful, less rock The Style Council from 1983 to 1989 before venturing into a solo career in 1991. He is often referred to as The Modfather and was a key figure in the revival of the Mod scene in the 1970s and 1980s. He is very much a British icon with his music rooted in British culture. Some of Freeman’s musical influences overlap with Weller’s, such as The Beatles, the Small Faces and various 1960s and 1970s soul artists like Stevie Wonder. Some of Weller’s best known solo albums include Stanley Road, Heavy Soul and Illumination.
Weller and Freeman’s mutual hero is the late Steve Marriott. He made a name for himself in two key British bands: Small Faces (1965–1969) and Humble Pie (1969–1975, 1980–1981). Marriott became a Mod icon during his tenure in the Small Faces. His influences were R&B, blues and soul singers from across the Atlantic, such as Ray Charles, Otis Redding, Muddy Waters, Buddy Holly and Booker T. & the M.G.’s. Marriott died in 1991 in an accidental fire at his sixteenth-century home in Essex, thought to have been caused by a cigarette.
With Fred Perry shirts, Levi jeans and a Small Faces mod-style haircut, Freeman is always seen impeccably dressed, though the same cannot be said of some of his on-screen characters, such as Tim Canterbury and Arthur Dent. Martin is especially a fan of loafers, which have been a fixture in his wardrobe since he saw Terry Hall of The Specials wearing them. He also likes coats, macintoshes, Crombies and Smedleys.
‘You could say I’m a mod, but with a small “m”; I don’t wear a parka, but I do question what I wear and what I listen to, which is what it’s all about,’ he admitted to the Daily Mail’s Chris Sullivan.
He added, ‘Most actors are either a shower of bloody scruffs or think they should dress like Hamlet offstage. There’s a lot of billowy shirtsleeves going on. But there aren’t many Mods. Being a Mod is more of a sensibility than a style. It’s hard explaining something that on the surface is rather silly and inexplicable.’
Mod-style has become fashionable again as far as the mainstream is concerned because of fans such as Freeman and cyclist Bradley Wiggins.
‘I’ve been into what I’ve been into since I was about nine years old,’ Freeman told ShortList.com. ‘I started buying 2 Tone records, and from there went that rude boy sort of skin/mod/soul boy route all my life. And I’ve always loved clothes. Even before I had money, I went charity shopping. So I’ve always had an eye for clothes.’
Sadly, Martin doesn’t think the Mod subculture travels especially well across the Atlantic, as he told the Metro’s Andrew Williams: ‘In Britain, even if people don’t dress like that, everyone knows what they mean by a Mod and all these other subcultures, but they just don’t know that in America. Given it’s an acquired taste here, at least people know what people mean by it. When I am in America I feel, clothes-wise, like a fish out of water. It’s a human need to fit in and you don’t want people looking at you like you’re a mental case. You feel like popping into Abercrombie & Fitch to buy a T-shirt to fit in. If you’re wearing a flowery shirt over there people think you must either be mental or wanting to be beaten up for being gay. Fortunately, in London that’s not the case. Too many people here wear fucking sports gear but everyone in America wears that, it’s fucking everywhere. You don’t see many pairs of trousers or shoes in America. It doesn’t have much to offer me.’
Freeman loves the attention to detail that goes into making a tailored suit.
‘The long march that we’ve all done towards tracksuit bottoms and hoodies and trainers the entire time?’ Freeman told GQ’s Oliver Franklin. ‘I’m not having it. I like people making an effort for themselves and those around them.’
As well as tailor Mark Powell, Martin likes the label Albam, which opened its first shop in Soho in 2006. Freeman’s best piece of advice when it comes to clothing is that anything will suit you so long as it fits. If the sleeve is an inch too long or the waist is an inch too short, the whole piece will fail and it won’t look good. Freeman is rather militant when it comes to precision. He doesn’t have a stylist because he knows about clothes and loves them. He thinks that, if a celebrity wins a Best Dressed award but doesn’t know about clothes, it’s because they have a stylist who does know about clothes and so it should be them that wins the award.
Asked about his shopping habits, he confessed to the London Evening Standard’s Hannah Nathanson, ‘Albam on Beak Street, a men’s outfitters I use for contemporary clothes with a traditional twist. For suits I go to the tailor Mark Powell who’s been in Soho for about twenty-five years. I’ll wear John Smedley till I die so I love the flagship store on Brook Street. I sometimes pop into Richard James on Savile Row. I devote far too much time and energy to clothes.’
As with his taste in music, Freeman tries to keep an open mind about fashion but there are some crimes against fashion that he simply cannot forgive.
‘I’ve gone on dates with people when I was younger and you see them come over the escalator and you think, “No, this is not going to happen.” You know: cowboy boots. No way, no fucking way,’ he told Esquire’s Michael Holden in 2012.
Despite Freeman’s growing fame, he remains grounded, incredibly polite (despite a professed love of swearing) and totally comfortable and at ease with himself. He is not an average Joe though – far from it. He is exceedingly witty and considerate with his responses and is aware of his talent. He is not an actor with a gigantic ego. He remains steadfastly British and approachable. His commitment to his profession has led him to some of the most memorable roles in popular culture over the past decade and it is certainly a testament to his talent that he has never been out of work. The scripts keep coming in, the phone is always ringing and there’s no question that he is one of Britain’s greatest actors of the early twenty-first century. Just what will he do next?