The Unexpected Adventures of Martin Freeman (2 page)

He soon began appearing in TV shows and theatre productions, as well as some notable radio broadcasts, all of which gave him invaluable experience and, perhaps more importantly, contacts in the industry. Naturally, he was up against fierce competition, as there is in any creative field, yet Freeman, while neither arrogant nor rude, was rather determined and confident of what he could and could not do.

‘Michael Caine, Tom Courtenay and Al Pacino made me want to act,’ Freeman said to Hannah Nathanson of the
London Evening Standard
. ‘I’ve always been interested in men with a vulnerable side.’ Michael Caine and Tom Courtenay, both of whom have been knighted by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, are two of Britain’s most respected actors of the stage and screen, while Al Pacino is one of America’s great cinema thespians: an icon of contemporary American cinema.

Freeman is, perhaps, more in line with Caine: an actor who can handle comedy and drama and who can move between genres and stays, for the most part, steadfastly English or, rather, ‘London’. Freeman would soon learn, as Caine did, that acting is more than a full-time vocation and that, in order to pay the bills and earn a living, sacrifices have to be made. Caine once said that there are two films you do as an actor – films for the money (
The Muppet Christmas Carol
and
Jaws 4: The Revenge
) and films for critical respect as an actor
(Little Voice
and
Harry Brown
). This was certainly a path Freeman was going to follow. Doesn’t every actor? Every thespian has to make a buck somehow. An actor could be in work one year and out of work the next.

Michael Caine was born in Rotherhithe, east London on
14 March 1933 and made his breakthrough roles in the 1960s with such films as
Zulu
(1964),
The Ipcress File
(1965),
Alfie
– which gained him an Oscar nomination – (1966),
The Italian Job
(1969) and
Battle of Britain
(1969). His 1970s roles include
Get Carter
(1971),
The Last Valley
(1971),
Sleuth
(1972), for which he earned his second Oscar nomination,
The Man Who Would Be King
(1975) and
A Bridge Too Far
(1978). Many of these films would influence the young Martin Freeman. Since the 1970s, Caine has starred in comedies, dramas, thrillers and action films, as well as science-fiction movies such as
Children of Men
and
Inception
. He is known for his distinctive cockney accent, which he has rarely hidden. Indeed, much like fellow Londoner Bob Hoskins, Caine has used his cockney accent to his advantage. There’s no question that Caine’s eclectic choice of roles continues to have a profound effect on Freeman, and his influence on him goes back to the age of eleven, when Martin watched the film
Sleuth
.

Tom Courtenay, on the other hand, is best known for his work in TV and theatre, although his cinematic career had its heyday in the 1960s with such stellar films as
The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner
(1962),
Billy Liar
(1963) and
Doctor Zhivago
(1965).

There was a humorous side to Freeman which came to the fore amongst his friends, though in larger social circles he could be rather coy – it is not uncommon for an actor to be shy offstage or behind the camera. There is a perception that Freeman always wanted to be a comedian because of some of the roles he chose later in life, but that was never the case.

‘When I was at youth theatre and drama school, I never
thought people would mistake me for a stand-up,’ he admitted to
Digital Spy
’s Morgan Jeffery in 2011. ‘A lot of people still think I’m a stand-up or that I have [a comedy] background. That was never the plan at all. I like being funny – I like making people laugh and I like people making me laugh – but that was never the reason I wanted to get into acting. [Although] it’s part of it, because all of my favourite films and plays have both [comedy and drama] in.’

Another passion of Freeman’s besides acting has always been music. He’d been buying records since he was nine or ten years old and, when CDs arrived during his teens, he spent all his money buying the latest music on discs. He would one day acquire an expensive collection of thousands of CDs and vinyl records. Freeman’s love is of American rhythm and blues, and soul.

‘When I was much younger, I would’ve looked at a record and thought, “That guy on the cover has a great afro. This is probably fucking amazing,”’ he said to
Tiny Mix Tapes
in 2007 about his record-buying habits.

Freeman described having a ‘Catholic taste in music’, which he elaborated on during the same interview: ‘Catholic in the literal sense, meaning broad or universal. You don’t want to say you like everything, because that means you like a lot of shit. But as far as genres are concerned, I don’t want to limit myself. I don’t want to be one of those people who say, “I don’t like any fucking folk records.”’

Freeman was also a minor political activist in his youth, which perhaps stemmed from his Catholic upbringing. He was anti-Thatcher. The now deceased British prime minister
– the UK’s first and, thus far, only female PM – was notorious among the working classes and those with left-wing views. She was something of a tyrannical figure in the north of England, especially.

He explained his politics to
Reader’s Digest
’s Andrew Duncan: ‘I sold
Militant
[a Socialist Party newspaper] on the street. My politics have dissipated into anger – not about anything specific, but a lot of things, a lot of people. Anger is a useful tool. I don’t mean smashing people over the head, but our British cynicism keeps a check on bullshit. It’s not a bad thing to have a social conscience, although I’ve never wanted to go into politics. I’d be scared. You name it, I’d ban it.’

It’s lucky for us, then, that Freeman saw his future in acting and decided to pursue his ambition with discipline and zest.

W
orking on TV shows and on independent films is often the best way to gain experience. Freeman was inspired by the directors and producers of the late 1960s and 1970s in an era of ‘New Hollywood’ after the demise of the studio system, when studios had actors and directors under contract and could dictate which films they could and could not make. The studio system was almost Orwellian in its dictatorship.

With the studio system broken and the groundbreaking ‘French New Wave’ still in mind, which brought unconventional forms of storytelling to cinema by such film-making intellectuals and scholars as Jean Luc Godard and Francois Truffaut, a generation of American film students – baby boomers born in the 1940s and raised in the prosperous 1950s – out of either the suburbs of California and small-town America or, conversely, from the tough streets of New York,
broke new ground with often violent and unconventional films, such as
Bonnie and Clyde
and
Easy Rider
and, in the 1970s, the first two
Godfather
films and
Taxi Driver
. Directors like Francis Ford Coppola, Brian De Palma and Martin Scorsese worked on low-budget exploitation B-movies for Roger Corman, which gave them the experience and knowledge they needed to make their own films. They were not only film students who studied the history and theory of cinema but they were also film fanatics who were as familiar with European cinema as with what dominated the US market.

However, while such controversial auteurs as Scorsese and De Palma refused to be censored and conform to box-office needs, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg arrived in Hollywood motivated by a different school of thought, with influences that ranged from comic books to sci-fi movies and the suburban American culture of their youth, as shown in Lucas’s classic
American Graffiti
. Before Lucas hit gold with
Star Wars
in 1977, his first movie was an interesting low-budget, dystopian science-fiction tale called
THX-1138
but it didn’t attract the kind of audience that
Star Wars
did. These blockbuster Hollywood films, however, were not to Freeman’s taste. He aligns himself more with such masterful film-makers as Coppola and Scorsese and two of their most prominent actors, Robert DeNiro and Al Pacino.
The Godfather, Dog Day Afternoon, Taxi Driver
and
Scarface
: these are Freeman’s inspirations as far as American cinema goes. They are jaw-droppingly outstanding films with the highest quality of directing, acting and writing. They inspired Freeman to act and they continue to inspire him to this day, as he told Jamie
Watt of
Ask Men
in 2012: ‘I wanted to be an actor because I saw
Dog Day Afternoon
, you know what I mean?’

Al Pacino is one of Freeman’s acting heroes. A method actor taught by the famed thespian teacher Lee Strasberg, Pacino is a bona fide American icon. Known for playing Italian-American gangsters and mobsters, such as Michael Corleone in
The Godfather
and Tony Montana in
Scarface
, he has also appeared in a number of roles as tough-talking streetwise New York Cops, police officers and lawyers. Some of his iconic roles include
Dog Day Afternoon
(one of Freeman’s favourite movies),
Carlito’s Way, Glengarry Glen Ross, Serpico, …And Justice for All
and
The Panic in Needle Park
. Although Pacino isn’t known for his theatrical work, he is an avid fan of Shakespeare and made his directorial debut with the excellent documentary
Looking for Richard
, about Richard III, which Freeman has no doubt seen. Pacino finally won a much-deserved Oscar for his performance as Frank Slade in
Scent of a Woman
in 1992.

Robert DeNiro, Freeman’s other American acting icon, was turned down for the role of Michael Corleone in
The Godfather
but was cast as the young Vito Carleone in the stunning sequel,
The Godfather Part II
. Freeman is a huge admirer of these films. DeNiro made a name for himself after his collaborations with New York director Martin Scorsese in such films as
Mean Streets, Taxi Driver
and
Raging Bull
and, later,
Goodfellas
and
Casino
. Some of his other best-known performances include roles in
The Deer Hunter, Awakenings, Midnight Run
and
A Bronx Tale
, the latter of which he also directed. DeNiro has also ventured into comedy of late, with films like
Analyze This
and
Meet The Parents
. DeNiro
and Pacino teamed up for the highly revered police procedural flick
Heat
and later reunited in
Righteous Kill
, an average cop movie at best which received mixed reviews, as most critics cited disappointment that the two screen legends would appear in a fairly average cop flick after the incredible reception
Heat
received.

Freeman has spent much of his adult life studying his favourite actors and films and learning from them as he refines his thespian skills, frequently quoting the likes of Al Pacino in interviews to the press. ‘How I became famous was from
The Office
, so that’s sort of what people associate me with,’ he said to journalists at a press junket for Warner’s in 2013. ‘I am not putting myself in the same category as Al Pacino, but Al Pacino’s first scene was Michael Corleone and that casts a long shadow, if that makes sense?’

By 1997 Freeman was confident enough to begin taking on roles and attending auditions. He wasn’t successful at every audition but that’s nothing out of the ordinary in such a competitive industry, even for well-known actors.

He made his first appearance on TV at the age of twenty-six in an episode of the long-running British-TV police series
The Bill
, which aired on 9 January 1997 and was the third episode of series thirteen. As one of the most remembered British TV shows of all time,
The Bill
ran from 1984 to 2010 and chronicled the work of London Met Officers at the fictional Sun Hill police station. Though Freeman had only a minor appearance as the character Craig Parnell in an episode titled ‘Mantrap’, it was his first professional role in front of the camera and a good stepping stone to more work.

Freeman then had a cameo role as the character Stuart in an episode of the acclaimed BBC drama
This Life
, which aired on 17 March 1997. In the episode, entitled ‘Last Tango in Southwark’, Freeman is seen stealing money from the bedroom of Milly and Egg (these are two of the main characters) after a house party. Martin then unknowingly drinks Egg’s urine from a can, thinking it is beer. As with
The Bill, This Life
was one of the most popular TV series of the 1990s. Though it only ran for two series, it was highly revered and considered part of the ‘Britpop’ and ‘Cool Britannia’ era of the 1990s.

The roles were slowly coming in for Freeman as he was making contacts and attending auditions, like any other jobbing actor hoping to find that one big break to launch his career.

He was next cast in the music video for the Faith No More song ‘I Started A Joke’, a cover of the Bee Gees’ 1968 song. Faith No More’s version, though recorded in 1995, was released in 1998, after the group disbanded. It features on their greatest-hits album
Who Cares A Lot?.
Directed by Vito Rocco, the video also features Shaun Dingwall, performance artist David Hoyle as the karaoke singer, and Michelle Butterly of the ITV series
Benidorm
. It was filmed on 8 September 1998.

Following his appearances in
The Bill
and
This Life
, Freeman was cast as Ricky Beck in a 1998 episode of British TV hospital drama
Casualty
called ‘She Loved The Rain’, which was broadcast on 17 October.
Casualty
is one of Britain’s longest running TV dramas and was first broadcast on 6 September 1986. The series focuses on Holby City Hospital in Wyvern, a fictional county in south-west England.

Titanic
star Kate Winslet spoke about her 1993 appearance in
Casualty
to the
Radio Times
: ‘In England, it almost seems to be part of a jobbing actor’s training [to appear in
Casualty
]. As far as I was concerned it was a great episode, a great part. Appearing in
Casualty
taught me a big lesson in how to be natural in front of the camera.’

Interestingly, a survey was carried out by the
Radio Times
in March 2004, which concluded that
Casualty
has cast more future stars than any other British television series. The list is rather impressive, as it reads like a ‘who’s who’ of contemporary British actors of stage and screen. Besides Kate Winslet, other notable actors to have appeared on the series include Orlando Bloom, Minnie Driver, Christopher Eccleston, Tom Hiddleston, Parminder Nagra, Sadie Frost, Ray Winstone, David Walliams, Jonny Lee Miller, Helen Baxendale, Robson Green, Brenda Fricker and, of course, Martin Freeman.
Casualty
has also featured such established actors as Norman Wisdom, Amanda Redman, Anita Dobson, Jenny Seagrove, Rula Lenska, Prunella Scales, Celia Imrie, Toyah Willcox, Maureen Lipman, Frances Barber, Andrew Sachs, Russ Abbot, Stephanie Beacham and Michelle Collins in small roles or cameos.

Freeman next cropped up as the character Brendan in an episode of the first series of
Picking Up The Pieces
, about a team of paramedics involved in life-or-death events, which aired on 10 December 1998. He also appeared as Frank in a 1998 short film called
I Just Want to Kiss You
, written and directed by Jamie Thraves, best known for his work on music videos for Radiohead, Coldplay and Blur.

Christopher Campbell of
Film School Rejects
wrote, ‘… this French New Wave-style throwback has Freeman looking very young and very skinny and actually quite goofy as a guy just hanging out with his mate and meeting girls and getting into trouble with his dad. The goofiness is a bit surprising if you primarily think of Freeman as the straight man of
The Office
and
Hitchhiker’s Guide
and other such gigs. I certainly don’t know of him doing a lot of voices and vocal sound effects and the sort of spry physicality he exhibits in the short these days.’

The following year he cropped up as ‘The Car Owner’ in a TV special called
Exhaust
.

By the turn of the century Freeman began appearing in more high-profile TV series. Actors, as with any self-employed freelance person, do not turn down jobs, because they never know when they will be next employed. Indeed, any and all freelance jobs are a gamble.

‘I wasn’t raking it in but I was raking work in,’ he admitted to
Dark Horizon
’s Paul Fischer. ‘I always did work that I was happy with, not work that made me famous or work that made me rich, but work that made me very happy and it was always valid work, so the first five years didn’t feel hard at all.’

In 2000 Freeman starred in a few notable TV series and he very slowly began to get noticed. He starred as various characters in the six episodes of
Bruiser
, a BBC2 comedy-sketch show that ran from 18 February to 12 March. Written by David Mitchell and Robert Webb of
Mitchell And Webb
fame, with additional writers Ricky Gervais and Richard Ayoade,
Bruiser
starred Olivia Colman, David Mitchell, Robert Webb, Martin Freeman, Matthew Holness and Charlotte Hudson.
The series showed early on just how terrific Freeman is as a character actor.

In one sketch he is a paranoid, fairly pathetic man who mulls over every situation in his life, constantly overanalysing things. He soon starts to think that that some situations he finds himself in make him look like a pervert, stalker or paedophile and he randomly shouts out to the astonishment of those around him that he isn’t such a person at all. In another sketch he is disrupted by a puppet called Sparky (voiced by Webb) as he tries to entice the bank manager on a romantic date. Freeman featured in several more hilarious sketches, including one where he constantly calls out a builder for being overly touchy so the builder attacks him. Martin also crops up in a sketch as a man in a pub who tries to impress a woman by being silly but injures himself in the process. In another sketch he plays an archaeologist on a dig, but it becomes evident that his enthusiasm far outweighs his knowledge. He also plays a pimp who behaves frivolously whenever anything sexual is mentioned, and a man who pays for photos in a photo booth, only to realise after collecting them that a man had been standing behind him, pulling silly faces.

Freeman was next cast as Jaap, a Dutch drug taker and general idiot, in two episodes of
Lock, Stock
, which ran for just seven episodes in 2000 and was an offshoot TV series of the acclaimed 1998 British gangster film,
Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels.
It was commissioned by Ginger Productions: the production company owned by TV presenter Chris Evans. The series was first shown on Channel 4 and starred Ralph Brown, Daniel Caltagirone, Del Synnott, Scott Maslen and
Shaun Parkes. The rhyming slang of the London East End did not make the series exactly viewer friendly and it sunk without a trace. These sort of gritty roles were a reflection of where Freeman endeavoured to go as an actor, which stemmed from his interest in Pacino and DeNiro films. ‘I’m not particularly interested in playing the smoothie, unless something ’orrible happens or unless something really interesting happens to the smoothie,’ he admitted to Simon Houpt of
The Globe And Mail
. ‘You might as well just make infomercials, if you just want to be smooth, or suave. If you’re in it just because you want to, you know, ride a Harley and play James Bond, you’re basically a model. And that’s valid, as well, that’s fine – but life isn’t about that.’