The Unexpected Adventures of Martin Freeman (15 page)

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.’