The Unexpected Adventures of Martin Freeman (4 page)

An intensely private man, Freeman shied away from the red-carpet events and all the glitz and glamour hoopla that
came with his new celebrity lifestyle, choosing to stay at home with his family. He preferred to concentrate on the art of acting and the many technical details that come with it and avoid becoming trapped in the whirlwind lifestyle that fame and fortune brought him on the back of
The Office
. He admitted that he struggled to cope with the recognition that came with the series’ success. Some people apparently even thought he was an office worker before he appeared in the series and had no idea that he was an experienced actor who had several years of professional work behind him. ‘Have you done anything else?’ he would get asked by curious members of the public.

Freeman told the
Daily Express
’s Cheryl Stonehouse, ‘You soon realise you should never take that adulation seriously. People called me a legend but what they really meant was that they’d seen me on the telly. Some people moan about the cult of celebrity but if these people don’t want to be photographed then they should stay in.’

The role seemed to be a blessing and a curse for Freeman: in one way it opened his career up to new roles and made him a TV star but on the flip side, in the eyes of the public, it looked as though he was always going to be Tim Canterbury, and he struggled to get away from that stereotype. It is a predicament that many actors face when they are specifically associated with one role. Some actors never get away from their first or most popular character, no matter how hard they try; others attempt to completely turn their career around. Martin Freeman was desperate to get away from the tag ‘the bloke who played Tim in
The Office
’.

‘… obviously I don’t want to be seen as that character for
the rest of my life – I’d like it to be seen as one of a number of things I’m proud to have done,’ Freeman admitted to
The Guardian
’s Stephanie Merritt in 2004. ‘But then I’m proud of plays I did in front of 200 people that no one gives a shit about who wasn’t there, and that doesn’t negate it for me.’

There often comes a point when certain members of the public assume the actor is the character they play and, as a result, they sometimes think they know that person off-screen but, of course, it is not the case.

‘If I leave the house it happens every day,’ Freeman said to
Metro
’s Andrew Williams. ‘I wasn’t dragged up, so I know how to be polite and how to speak to people. People think they know you. There are similarities between me and Tim but I am not him. If it means something to someone, that’s good – we didn’t make the show for people to feel indifferent about it. I am glad it’s affected people but there are times if you’re at a gig or a club and someone slaps you on the back and it’s not good. I tell them off if I think they’ve gone over the line.’

There was one point where Freeman admits the fame may have got to him and he started to develop an ego, which is understandable. Both he and his partner Amanda were jobbing actors with steady pay cheques coming in and, all of a sudden, people were nudging Amanda out of the way so they could speak to Freeman.

‘That is going to make her feel even more insecure and make me look like I’m being an arrogant prick,’ Freeman said to the
Observer
’s Andrew Anthony. ‘I’m not saying I wasn’t an arrogant prick. If I was, she says it didn’t last long.’

Freeman has never had any inclination to see a return of
The
Office
. His blueprint for the series is the classic British comedy
Fawlty Towers
, which ran for just two series consisting of twelve episodes yet, decades later, is still thought of as one of the all-time great comedy shows.

‘I think
The Office
was the right length,’ Freeman said to
ShortList
in 2014. ‘A huge reason it’s so beloved is that we left it. And I think on the one hand people say, “I wish you’d done more,” and I think, “Well you might wish that now, but in five years you might not be thinking that when you’re saying, ‘Oh it’s not as good as it used to be,’” and I always admired Ricky and Steve for calling it a day.’

None of the cast and creative team expected to make so much money from the DVD sales of the series. ‘No one could have dreamed it would become a cultural phenomenon,’ Freeman said to BBC Movies’ Rob Carnevale. ‘We were doing it because it was really good and we really liked it. And if only seven people had liked it, I’d still be dead proud of it.’

One thing that Freeman remembers from the set of
The Office
is the light-hearted theological debates with Ricky Gervais. Freeman, a Catholic, and Gervais, known to be an atheist, would talk about the many concerns relating to religion, but those talks never got too serious.

Freeman has since admitted he would like to work with Gervais again but it has, to date, never been on the cards. He has also stated that such a reunion of the old gang would, perhaps, not be a wise move as he has tried so hard to move away from his character in
The Office
. Martin has always had the guts to move on from any role he has been associated with. He’s not an actor who likes to live off past glories but rather one
who looks ahead to other roles and new ventures.

It was not surprising that some of his
Office
colleagues went to America for work but Freeman remained a steadfastly London-based actor.

‘It really depends on what it is,’ he said to
IGN
’s Leigh Singer, when asked about his choice of roles. ‘It genuinely does because of course some big American films are absolutely brilliant and some of them aren’t, but that’s the way of everything. I don’t write anything off without reading a script and if it’s a good one, I’ll consider it, whether it’s for twenty dollars or a million dollars.’

The Office
was not a full-time gig, so Freeman had other roles to branch out with. He cropped up as a pirate in the film
Fancy Dress
, written and directed by Jon Wright and released on 21 November 2001, and he had various other bit parts as well.

Once
The Office
became a success, Freeman reasoned that he was on a train that was not going to slow down and he was right: the scripts came flying through his door. But that did not mean he wasn’t insecure, as many actors are. He understood what a fickle business he was in and that one year you could be inundated with scripts, only to struggle to find work months later. Actors are never completely safe: the industry might tell you you’re the next Robert DeNiro but a year later slap you in the face, throw cold water at you and tell you your career is over and you’re relegated to TV movies.

He was cast as Richard ‘Ricky C’ Cunningham in the 2002 comedy
Ali G Indahouse
, based on the popular Channel 4 series by writer, actor and comedian Sacha Baron Cohen. Usually,
comedy series work less well on the big screen than they do on TV but
Ali G Indahouse
was relatively successful, receiving some modest reviews and reasonable box-office returns. The film, which was released on 22 March 2002, also stars Michael Gambon as the Prime Minister, Charles Dance as the Deputy Prime Minister and Kellie Bright as Ali G’s love interest, Julie.

Total Film
said of Ali G’s big-screen adventure, ‘It isn’t going to redefine British comedy, it lacks the satirical bite of Ali G’s best work and there’s no chance of selling it to the Americans, but Cohen has just about pulled it off. In the lowest-brow way possible, of course.’

W
ith the success of
The Office
, people saw Freeman as a comedy actor. This was a notion he chose to squash as he began to shift his career towards more dramatic roles on TV.

From 18 April to 11 May 2002 Freeman returned to the theatre to star in
Kosher Harry
at London’s Royal Court. Directed by comedienne and actress Kathy Burke, written by Nick Grosso and co-starring Mark Benton, Claudie Blakley and June Watson, the play focuses on the racism that occurs in London life and how it has continued with each passing generation. It is set in a kosher café in St John’s Wood, where Russian waitresses are called ‘Gladiola’ because their names are considered unpronounceable by the locals, all the Jews are in show business, black people eat only banana fritters and the Spanish have a weak moral backbone. The play centres on the characters that frequent the café.

Philip Fisher wrote in the
British Theatre Guide
, ‘As might be expected from a play written by Nick Grosso and directed by Kathy Burke, there is a real hard edge to the comedy. Not one of the four characters is what he or she seems to be and the central figure, a young man played nonchalantly by the excellent Martin Freeman, might even be a servant of Beelzebub. The play is made up of a number of short scenes containing perfect-sounding dialogue that often has limited meaning. These scenes are split by one-second explosions rather like instant power cuts.’

The Independent
’s Rhoda Koenig slammed the play, however: ‘
Kosher Harry
makes a point of locating its restaurant in St John’s Wood, a prosperous Jewish neighbourhood in London. There is only one such establishment there, and I wouldn’t like anyone to think there’s a connection, for its service and hygiene are far superior and its customers funnier than those shown here. Is
Kosher Harry
the worst play of 2002? I’d like to think so, but there’s only so much optimism I can summon up.’

Maddy Costa wrote in her three out of five-star review in
The Guardian
, ‘In Kathy Burke’s nifty production in the Royal Court’s Theatre Upstairs, the play is intermittently hilarious, unnerving and trapped in Pinter’s shadow. The performances are excellent: Claudie Blakley struts winningly as the waitress, June Watson finds a singularity in the caricatured old woman, and Mark Benton is a wonderfully crude cabbie. Martin Freeman is particularly good as the man, his face moulding itself constantly to mirror the thoughts of his companions. Like Burke, the cast revel in the grotesque cockney banter; they bring a farcical tone to the evening, but never the intensity that the play needs to really resonate.’

Dominic Cavendish penned a review in the
Daily Telegraph
, saying, ‘Kathy Burke – who has been turning from acting to directing of late – elicits buoyant, attention-seeking performances from her cast but can’t disguise the play’s sagging credibility. A tottering catastrophe of smudged lipstick and pigtails, Claudie Blakley’s waitress is almost a duplicate version of Burke at her trashiest hilarious best, even doing those signature curtseying movements. And Mark Benton is a thoroughly convincing fat-gut, no-brained cabbie. As the young stranger, Martin Freeman, the terminally bored hero of the BBC sitcom
The Office
– fidgets at [his] table, eyebrows working overtime to convey polite interest in the natter. You can tell, though, that he’d rather be anywhere else. And who can blame him?’

Freeman later starred as DC Stone in three episodes of the British legal drama
Helen West
in 2002. Based on three books by acclaimed crime author Frances Fyfield,
Helen West
stars Amanda Burton as a crown prosecutor with a deep passion for the legal system and who is particularly interested in women’s issues.

ITV piloted
Helen West
as a one-off episode in 1999 starring Juliet Stevensen but the actress didn’t want to commit herself to an ongoing series and declined to return. ITV subsequently hired
Silent Witness
actress Amanda Burton for the drama, which cost a staggering £3 million to make. The channel was looking for a crime series to replace
Kavanagh QC
, which starred the late
Inspector Morse
actor John Thaw. Alan Wright, the chief executive of the series’s producers, Arrowhead, spoke to BBC News Online about
Helen West
: ‘It’s a character we hope will find favour with the audience. As with all these
things, its future will be determined by ratings… But it has been consciously designed as a returning series.’

Freeman first appeared in the episode ‘Deep Sleep’, which aired on 6 May 2002. He then appeared in ‘Shadow Play’, which was broadcast on 13 May, and ‘A Clear Conscience’, which aired on 20 May.

He also played the character of Matt in an episode in series two of
Linda Green
entitled ‘Easy Come, Easy Go’, which aired on 10 December 2002.
Linda Green
ran for two series between 2001 and 2002 and was originally broadcast on BBC1. The series focuses on its namesake (played by Lisa Tarbuck), a thirty-something woman whose day job is that of a car sales woman who works as a club singer at night. The series follows the issues of love, relationships and friends and features appearances from Christopher Eccleston, David Morrissey, Simon Pegg, Pam Ferris, Anne Reid, Jamie Theakston, Peter Kay and Meera Syal in addition to Martin Freeman. Ratings slipped, however, and a third series was not commissioned.

The series received very mixed reviews. Gareth McLean of
The Guardian
was unenthused: ‘I really wanted to like
Linda Green
… And yet, it was ill-conceived, dramatically unsatisfying and a huge disappointment… When your standards are high, your reputation formidable and your output 10 times better than anything your peers are producing, it is much easier to disappoint your audience.’

Robert Hanks of
The Independent
wrote, ‘The combination of Abbott’s needling, believable dialogue and Tarbuck’s sharply timed delivery is appealing… but, despite the hype,
Linda Green
isn’t breaking any new ground… Her sassy, witty person
isn’t a million miles from the character Lesley Sharp played in Abbott’s
Clocking Off
.’

The
Daily Mirror
’s Tony Purnell said, ‘
Linda Green
should be the perfect combination for a comedy drama but it turns out to be a very uneasy mix… It was much cruder and far less funny than
Cold Feet
or
Coupling
.’

Paul Connolly wrote in
The Times
, ‘Very quickly, the serrated script, perspicacious observations and well-drawn cast of characters draw you in.’

Following his appearance in
Linda Green
, Freeman was cast as Terry Ross in the TV film
The Debt
, about a former robber who agrees, albeit reluctantly, to do one more robbery to protect his family. Freeman’s character is the less-than-useful son-in-law of retired safe-breaker Geoff Dresner, played by seasoned TV actor Warren Clarke. Released on 21 August 2003,
The Debt
also stars Hugo Speer and Freeman’s partner Amanda Abbington. Much of the film’s story is told in flashbacks and offers a somewhat muddled chronology of events.

‘
The Debt
is a story about a criminal, a detective and a lawyer and how their lives collide with each other,’ explained writer Richard McBrien to BBC News. ‘The idea is that all three men owe debts to their children in some way which affects the way they do their job.

‘I can sympathise with all three characters,’ continues McBrien. ‘I wanted to show that in their own world, criminals, detectives and lawyers are all good people, not real villains. The there [
sic
] men are trying to lead a good life but become compromised by events.’

Freeman continued his ventures into more dramatic roles
when he played D.S. Stringer in the 2003 TV film
Margery And Gladys
, which was broadcast on 21 September of that year. It also stars Penelope Keith, June Brown and Roger Lloyd-Pack. The story concerns the recently widowed Margery Heywood (Keith) and her cleaning lady Gladys Gladwell (Brown), who interrupt a man breaking into Margery’s home in Kent. She attacks the man with a heavy glass vase, which knocks him unconscious. She suspects he is dead, panics and departs the house with Gladys but leaves behind her handbag. The two women decide to drive to Margery’s son, Graham, who lives in Milton Keynes, hoping for money and shelter. The trip turns into a comedy of errors as they are forced to break into a chemist to get some insulin for Gladys’s diabetes. The story follows them as they try to evade police attention and CCTV cameras while Margery discovers a twenty-year affair between her late husband and Gladys, which her son was aware of. The film ends on a night out in Blackpool, where the two women board a boat to the Caribbean. It was directed by Geoffrey Sax, who later made his cinematic debut with the 2005 horror flick
White Noise
. It is fun, harmless TV-film fodder aimed at older audiences.

The Guardian
’s Nancy Banks-Smith observed, ‘They [Margery and Gladys] are pursued by police and press: the deafening Martin Freeman (‘OK! Listen up! Big breakthrough!’), a characterisation, I feel, based on the glorious DCI Grim in
The Thin Blue Line
; the laconic Lloyd-Pack; and the salivating “Scoop” Morley.’

The Sydney Morning Herald
’s Robin Oliver wrote of the film, ‘Some nice cameos here – Peter Vaughan as Gladys’s
husband, Troy, and Roger Lloyd-Pack (
The Vicar Of Dibley
) as Detective Inspector Woolley.
Margery & Gladys
doesn’t hold a candle to
The Norman Conquests
, but it provides pleasing Saturday night fare.’

Despite his switch to more serious roles in that year, Freeman still found time for comedy. On 14 March 2003
Comic Relief 2003: The Big Hair Do
was screened. It featured the finest of British comedy talent, including Lenny Henry, Jonathan Ross, Harry Enfield and Rowan Atkinson. Martin Freeman starred as Johnny Rotten in a
Blankety Blank
sketch.

Freeman was continuing to balance his acting talents with both comedy and dramatic parts. However, many of his film roles were little more than cameos. He starred as John in Richard Curtis’s successful 2003 romantic comedy
Love Actually
: a film set in London at Christmas time that follows ten separate stories, each showing the many different aspects of love. As the film progresses, the stories become interlinked. The film is played out in a weekly countdown five weeks before Christmas and concludes with an epilogue one month later. Released on 21 November 2003,
Love Actually
was an enormous financial success worldwide and received positive reviews from critics. The ensemble cast includes such revered British actors as Alan Rickman, Emma Thompson, Hugh Grant, Keira Knightley, Colin Firth, Liam Neeson, Bill Nighy and Rowan Atkinson.

Freeman plays John, a professional body double. He meets his partner Judy (Joanna Page), also a body double, on the set of a hardcore porn film. They appear to be very natural in front of the camera performing penetrative sex but off-screen they
are very coy around each other. They endeavour to pursue a relationship together and attend the Christmas pageant at the local school with John’s brother. The ten stories interweave and draw a final conclusion.

On appearing nude, Freeman told the
Washington Post
’s Alona Wartofsky, ‘It’s hard to be naked in front of 150 people. It’s not in any way pleasant. As a man it gives you a kind of window of what quite a lot of jobs are like for quite a lot of women.’

Love Actually
was nominated for Best Cast at the Phoenix Film Critics Society awards as well as Best Acting Ensemble at the Critics’ Choice Movie Awards. The team bagged the award for Best Ensemble Cast at the Washington DC Area Film Critics Association Awards.

Peter Bradshaw was unenthusiastic about the film, giving it two out of five stars in his review in
The Guardian
but he praised the cast: ‘Hugh Grant is always good value, and Martin Freeman and Joanna Page do very well as a couple who fall in love while working as stand-ins for what is apparently an expensively produced hardcore porn film.’

Writing in the
Daily Telegraph
, Sukhdev Sandhu said, ‘It’s the newer faces, many imported from television, that offer the greatest pleasures. Gregor Fisher as the doting manager of Bill Nighy, a foul-mouthed has-been rocker who is trying to revive his career. Martin Freeman, from
The Office
, as a mild-mannered porn actor who falls for his equally sweet co-star; Andrew Lincoln, from
This Life
and
Teachers
, gives a performance that at times recalls John Cusack.’

Freeman also portrayed Lord Shaftesbury in the acclaimed BBC2 TV mini-series
Charles II: The Power and The Passion
,
which was filmed in Prague in the Czech Republic and broadcast in November 2003.

‘It wasn’t just about the wigs and the tights, as if that legitimises you as an actor,’ Freeman said to
The Guardian
’s Stephanie Merritt. ‘I try very hard not to be flattered or bamboozled by money into doing anything, I turned stuff down when I was signing on if I didn’t think it was something I’d be proud of. But if it’s a good script and a good story, then by Christ, bring on the wigs!’

The film stars Rufus Sewell, Martin Turner and Ian McDiarmid and was written by award-winner Adrian Hodges. The creative team aimed to make the story, which tells of Charles II’s tenure on the throne, his decade long exile from England during the reign of Oliver Cromwell and his triumphant return to England, as historically accurate as possible.

Writer Adrian Hodges told BBC News, ‘I found a character in Charles himself who struck me as immensely modern, someone who could speak to us now about the ageless issues of personal and public morality, love, sex, hate, fear, anger and death.’