The Unexpected Adventures of Martin Freeman (8 page)

Freeman prefers going into record shops to look for music rather than using online stores such as eBay. He was ecstatic
to find a rare Syreeta 7-inch called ‘To Know You Is To Love You’, which was co-written and produced by Stevie Wonder, for £2.50 at a record shop in Yorkshire, where he was doing some theatre work.

One of his favourite stores is
Retrobloke.com
in Hendon, North London, where he has bought all sorts of soul and jazz records, including releases by Tina Turner, Don Ellis and Gladys Knight & The Pips.

Freeman even released a compilation in 2006 of his favourite obscure soul music called
Martin Freeman Presents… Made to Measure
. His photo is on the CD cover. He thought that people would recognise him off the telly, be intrigued enough to buy the CD and have their minds opened up to a whole new world of music that they may not have been familiar with. His aim was noble.

‘… it was an amazing honour,’ he expressed to the
Metro
’s Andrew Williams. ‘Soul music is the cornerstone of what I listen to. I just had to put twenty of my favourite motown songs together. I wanted a mixture of things people knew and also didn’t know.’

The collection consists of ‘I Want You Back’ (Jackson 5, The Corporation TM), ‘No Matter What Sign You Are (Berry Gordy Jr., Diana Ross & The Supremes, Henry Cosby), ‘You’ve Made Me So Very Happy’ (Berry Gordy Jr., Brenda Holloway), ‘The Night’ (Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons), ‘Ooo Baby Baby’ (Smokey Robinson & The Miracles), ‘The Bells’ (Marvin Gaye, The Originals), ‘Please Don’t Stay (Once You Go Away)’ (Art Stewart, Cal Harris, Ed Townsend, Marvin Gaye), ‘Ball Of Confusion (That’s What The World Is Today)’ (Norman
Whitfield, The Temptations), ‘I Feel Sanctified’ (Commodores, James Anthony Carmichael, Jeffrey Bowen), ‘Sugar’ (Stevie Wonder), ‘The Hunter Gets Captured By The Game’ (Smokey Robinson, The Marvelettes), ‘From Head To Toe’ (Chris Clark, Smokey Robinson), ‘Never Can Say Goodbye’ (Hal Davis, Jackson 5, Gene Page), ‘Trouble Man’ (Marvin Gaye), ‘Still Water (Love)’ (Four Tops, Frank Wilson, Jimmy Roach, Jerry Long), ‘It’s A Shame’ (Stevie Wonder, The Spinners), ‘Bad Weather’ (Stevie Wonder, The Supremes), ‘Stop Her On Sight (S.O.S.)’ (Al Kent, Edwin Starr, Richard Morris), ‘The Tears Of A Clown’ (Smokey Robinson & The Miracles, Henry Cosby) and ‘To Know You Is To Love You’ (Stevie Wonder, Syreeta).

Aside from Freeman’s forays into the musical world, on the acting front, 2006 was a busy year.

From 25–30 April Martin was one of the guest stars in
The Exonerated
, the hit drama about life on death row, which ran at West London’s Riverside Studios until 11 June 2006. Guest stars during its sixteen-week run included Stockard Channing, Kristin Davis, Danny Glover, Catherine Tate, Aidan Quinn, Richard Dreyfuss, Kate Mulgrew, Peri Gilpin, Martin Freeman, Mike McShane, Henry Goodman, Mackenzie Crook and Vanessa Redgrave.

The play was written in 2001 by creative husband-and-wife duo Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen. The ninety-minute play was based on interviews with forty former death-row prisoners and focused on those convicts who were wrongfully imprisoned for between two and twenty-two years. The off-Broadway run finished in October 2002 after 608 performances, with guest stars that also included Gabriel Byrne, Richard Dreyfuss, Mia
Farrow, Jeff Goldblum, Alanis Morissette, Lynn Redgrave, Ally Sheedy, Brooke Shields, Kathleen Turner and Debra Winger. It was later adapted for TV and starred Hollywood actors Brian Dennehy, Danny Glover, Susan Sarandon and Aidan Quinn, who also appeared in the Edinburgh production.

2006 saw the release of two films starring Freeman: he played Matt in
Confetti
and Sandy in
Breaking and Entering
.

Confetti
, released on 5 May, is a British romantic comedy filmed in a fly-on-the-wall-style-documentary fashion, similar to that of
The Office
. It is about a bridal-magazine competition for the most original wedding. Three couples are chosen to compete for the ultimate prize of a house. The script was completely improvised and the film stars Jessica Stevenson, Jimmy Carr, Mark Heap, Julia Davis, Robert Webb, and Olivia Colman. Improvising the comedy with the characters and furthering the story was a handful and difficult to juggle all at once. It took a great deal of effort for all concerned.

On the subject of improvisation, Freeman explained to
Empire
, ‘I’m very happy when there’s a rough script or a rough thing saying where a scene should go and you’ve got to find your own way there. But when we’ve not even decided on where a scene’s going to go, that’s quite scary. I think we all thought, “I’ll be able to do this,” but you kind of forget there’s a difference between being a bit rock ’n’ roll with the dialogue and absolutely making it all up.’

Improvisation has to be real, dramatic and funny, so it was a challenging endeavour for everyone. They all knew how the scene would start but not how it would end.

‘At times I felt that I wasn’t very good at it,’ he elaborated
to Siobhan Synnot of
Douban
, ‘but it helped that the film was shot as a documentary, so it was okay for people to stumble over their words and talk over each other, because that’s what happens in real life.’ Not knowing what the other characters might say next kept him on his toes – but sometimes the gags brought shooting to a standstill as Martin and co-stars cracked up. ‘There’s one scene that didn’t make the film because I’m struggling to try on a pair of wedding shoes and Jason Watkins, who plays a very camp wedding planner, comes up behind me and says, “Here, let me give you the horn.” I had to turn away from the camera because I was laughing so much.’

Empire
’s Angie Errigo wrote, ‘Most believable are couple number one, Matt and Sam (Martin Freeman and Jessica Stevenson). These two are sweeties who love musicals and want to play Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers on their big day – if they can nudge mother-of-the-bride Steadman and Sam’s pushy cruise-entertainer sister out of the spotlight for once.’

Total Film
magazine said, ‘Largely improvised,
Confetti
relies heavily on the considerable talents of its Brit TV stars, whose inventiveness make for a beguiling mixture of moving moments, sniggers and excruciating silences.’

Directed by the late Anthony Minghella and starring lead actors Jude Law, Juliette Binoche and Robin Wright Penn,
Breaking and Entering
is a romantic crime drama set in an inner-city neighbourhood of London about a successful landscape architect who comes into contact with a young thief and his mother, which causes him to re-evaluate his life. Released on 10 November, the film received negative reviews from critics and was not a box-office success.

The Guardian
’s Peter Bradshaw wrote of the production, ‘But the film is full of interesting characters, intelligently conceived scenes and funny lines – particularly from Martin Freeman as Law’s long-suffering partner in the architectural practice. Juliet Stevenson plays Law’s therapist, a role that recalls her famous therapy scene in Minghella’s 1991 film
Truly, Madly, Deeply
.’

Exclaim.c
a
’s
Travis Mackenzie Hoover said, ‘True, Vera Farmiga and
The Office
’s Martin Freeman shine as a prostitute and Law’s second-in-command, respectively; they manage to evoke inner life and nuance beyond what their sketchy roles suggest. But in the end, the movie is cheesy liberal self-congratulation masquerading as social conscience, and it won’t satisfy anyone who’s looking for something substantial.’

As the months rolled by, Martin Freeman stacked up yet more credentials to his name but, in truth, these acting challenges were of little substance. He needed more meat-and-potatoes roles; parts that would define his career and shape his future thespian endeavours.

Long Hot Summer
was shown in late 2006, and was about three friends who decide to share a house together in London over the summer, but tensions mount as truths are revealed and their friendship is put to the test. The film was written and directed by Matt Hilliard-Forde and also stars Michael Alexander, Lucy Briers, Jessica Brohn and Simon Cox.

Preceded by
Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz
is the second in the
Three Flavors Cornetto Trilogy
. Inspired by such action films as
Lethal Weapon, Point Break
and
Executive Decision, Hot Fuzz
is a comedy police procedural. Simon Pegg and Nick Frost play two officers trying to solve a series of mysterious deaths in a
small English village. It was filmed over an eleven-week period in early 2006. Freeman joins an ensemble cast of actors who make minor appearances: Bill Bailey, Steve Coogan and Bill Nighy crop up, as do villagers played by Kenneth Cranham, Maria Charles, Peter Wight, Julia Deakin, Patricia Franklin, Lorraine Hilton and Tim Barlow, and there are cameos by Stephen Merchant as Peter Ian Staker, Cate Blanchett as Janine, director Peter Jackson as Father Christmas and, finally, Garth Jennings as a drug dealer.

Hot Fuzz
was a commercial and critical success after it opened on 14 February in cinemas in the UK and on 20 April in the US. Olly Richards of
Empireonline.com
wrote, ‘
Fuzz
never quite achieves the boundless creativity of
Shaun
, but Wright and Pegg throw every joke they have at the concept until they tickle the audience into giddy submission.’

Despite his growing reputation and a curious CV that was the envy of his peers, did his connection to
The Office
weigh on him like the proverbial albatross? After all, he was seemingly trying so hard to move away from its everlasting shadow.

‘No, I’m not sick of talking about
The Office
,’ Freeman said to
TV Guide
’s Ethan Alter. ‘I really do understand people’s fascination with it. To do one of the most-talked-about shows in the last few years this early on in my career… that opportunity doesn’t come along very often. It’s definitely a thing to beat.’

Freeman, however, was finally coming round to the idea that America would offer more opportunities and that he could balance projects on both sides of the Atlantic.

T
hough he may have only had a minor role in
Hot Fuzz
, Martin Freeman was gaining enough credible roles and minor parts in successful movies that his name and face were becoming more prominent in Britain and elsewhere. He was still best known as Tim Canterbury in
The Office
and he was not yet the household name he would one day become but, as jobbing actors go, he was becoming rather successful.

Dedication
, released in August 2007, is an American romantic comedy about Henry Roth (Billy Crudup), who is an obsessive compulsive and a children’s-book writer. His illustrator and sole friend, Rudy (Tom Wilkinson), dies after a successful collaboration on their children’s-books series
Marty The Beaver
. Henry has to produce another book in the series in time for Christmas and is under pressure from his publisher, Arthur Planck (Bob Balaban). An illustrator
named Lucy Reilly (Mandy Moore) is assigned to work with Henry. However, her ex-boyfriend (Freeman) is back on the scene and attempts to wow her back after having dedicated his latest book to her.
Dedication
was not a box-office success nor did it win over the critics.

Jeannette Catsoulis of
The New York Times
wrote, ‘The directing debut of the actor Justin Theroux,
Dedication
is almost saved by David Bromberg’s tart dialogue and exceptional acting from its three leads.’

Jesse Hassenger of
Contact
Music.com
wrote, ‘Though the script may be the culprit for the mismatched clichés and broad supporting characters (chief among them Dianne Weist as Moore’s shrieking mother), it’s disappointing that Theroux wasn’t able to finesse it into something more nuanced and clear.’

The Good Night
is an American romantic comedy starring Gwyneth Paltrow, Penélope Cruz, Martin Freeman, Danny DeVito and Simon Pegg and is set between London and New York. Freeman plays Gary Shaller, a former pop star who now makes a living writing jingles for commercials and experiences a midlife crisis. Freeman may not have been able to relate to his character on a deeply personal level, even though there have been times when Martin has had similar crises of confidence, as experienced by many, but all it takes is imagination and empathy to understand Gary. He’s a failed musician who is frustrated with life. It’s a universal theme.

Gary tries to live out his dreams and Freeman is a person who’s had some indelible, recurring dreams, as he told
IGN.com
’s
Leigh Singer: ‘I’ve had several really tangible dreams about UFOs and they’ve been amazing! You know that sort
of everyday quality that you get in a couple of scenes in
Close Encounters
[
of the Third Kind
] where these lights fly over a road and it somehow seems tangible, somehow seems real. I’ve had a few of those dreams about UFOs where it’s been absolutely clear that this is the day that the world changes and it’s very exciting. I’ve not had one of those for a while, but I love them when I have them!’

It was director Jake Paltrow’s first feature and, as such, he didn’t want his famous sister overshadowing him too much, so she was not involved initially. As time progressed, however, he reasoned that he’d got an outstanding actor for a sister who knows the material and was volunteering her talents, most likely for a fee cut, given the nature of the film’s budget.

‘Jake Paltrow contacted me while I was making
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
three years ago and sent me the script,’ Freeman explained to
NYC Movie Guru
. ‘I responded to it very positively. It was original and I thought it had a true voice. I like working with people who just like to tell a story. [Jake Paltrow] adores film, so it was a joy to work with somebody with that passion.’

He added, ‘The ending is one of the reasons I wanted to do it. When I got to the last page [of the script], I thought it was a great way to finish it – sort of, unresolved. It could have been a lot happier. I like knowing that it’s enough for him to keep dreaming.’

From the get-go Freeman got along with the writer/director Jake, who had also directed episodes of the acclaimed cop series
NYPD Blue
. Their initial phone conversation lasted almost an hour and they shared similar ideas for what the tone of the film should be. If Paltrow did not write the role specifically for
Freeman, he was certainly one of the director’s top choices of actors for the part. They were both working on faith; Martin hadn’t seen anything Paltrow had been involved with, while the director had only seen a couple of things Freeman had starred in. Life is too short, Freeman thought, so he committed to the script. The script was Paltrow’s vision and Martin could see that. It wasn’t a script churned out by a committee of writers to appease a certain audience demographic but rather the sole idea of a committed film-maker.

Freeman didn’t actually consider himself to be a bona-fide movie star, so he was pleased that he was approached for the part. Americans knew Freeman mostly for
The Office
and
Love Actually
at this stage in his career. Paltrow did not need convincing to cast Freeman but perhaps the rest of the cast needed to be persuaded because Martin wasn’t a household name and, as such, the film had less box-office appeal. Paltrow put their minds at rest and Freeman was more than happy that someone he hardly knew – almost a stranger – saw something in him to warrant a lead role in a US movie.

‘I read a lot of American scripts that are better than British scripts,’ he admitted to
Movie
Web.com
’
s
Julian Roman. ‘They’re for grown-ups. They’re not trying to remake
The Italian Job
. We do a lot of capery stuff in Britain and a lot of American scripts are a bit more grown-up.’

Freeman didn’t actually know that his female cast would be Gwyneth Paltrow and Penélope Cruz. He also got a kick out of working with his old mate Simon Pegg, whom he lobbied to be in the film. Both actors have a very truthful, honest and un-egotistical nature about them. Martin sees that
there’s a seriousness to Pegg, though he may be best known as a comedian because of
Spaced
and
Shaun of the Dead
. He’s not begging to be liked on screen all the time. Pegg has great timing too. Some comedians are awful as serious actors, some are excellent; Pegg has a natural acting talent.

Martin enjoyed working with both Paltrows; he’d never met Gwyneth before but Simon Pegg knew her through her then husband, Coldplay singer Chris Martin. Freeman took to her straight away. She was very easy to work with and did not bring any Hollywood ego with her, which Freeman admired. She is an excellent actress and he has a great deal of respect for her because of that.

Everyone in the film was excellently suited to their role. There was a vibe, a relentless energy on set that came from the outstanding cast. Another key member of the company was Danny DeVito. During filming on the streets of New York, people were thrilled to see him; teachers, cops, everyday Joes, children and parents. Freeman found him to be immediately likeable and a delight to work with. He’s a celebrity but he’s approachable. DeVito is an interesting man and Martin enjoyed their scenes together.

The film is set in New York, where there is an artistic community, similar to that in London. There is great cultural life in both cities and it’s a rat race to get jobs, especially for creative people. Creative people are attracted to cosmopolitan cities but it’s a dog-eat-dog world. Freeman, unlike his character in the film, has never been out of work.

Martin spoke to
Ain’t It Cool News
writer Capone about the film’s melancholy ambience: ‘I like the sort of calm of
melancholy and also the stability of that. So, you sort of know where you are, which I like. Yeah, the film does have that quality, I suppose. I think it might have less of it, as you say, depending on what expectation you bring to it. Because if someone said to you, “God, it’s a really, really depressing film,” then you’d go, “No, no, there are really quite a lot of laughs in it.” But, yeah, if you’re expecting a lot of laughs, there are some laughs in it, but yeah, it’s darker than that, I suppose, which is exactly… well, I suppose it partly reflects my taste in films, and in art generally, and in life.’

The Good Night
was released on 5 October 2007 in the US and, finally, in the UK on 18 January 2008. It wasn’t exactly a successful film on the financial front.

Cinema
Blend.com’s
Katey Rich wrote, ‘Despite its structural flaws,
The Good Night
features some fine performances – Pegg and Freeman are a joy to watch together – and characters who, while under drawn, earn our sympathy without being cloying or too self-absorbed. Paltrow may have a career as a director ahead of him, but as a screenwriter, his ideas come out muddled and, well, tired. Like someone else’s “fascinating” dream,
The Good Night
never turns out as interesting as its teller thinks it is.’

Lisa Schwarzbaum of
Entertainment
Weekly
wrote, ‘Martin Freeman, from the BBC’s
The Office
, has just the right semi-stunned mug to play a guy sliding into work-and-love loserdom who finds solace from his undermining girlfriend with a dream woman he encounters in his sleep.’

Meanwhile, his former
Office
colleague Ricky Gervais had also set his sights on Hollywood success and was doing rather
well with 2006’s
Night at the Museum
, 2007’s
Stardust
and the soon-to-be-released
Ghost Town
in 2008. Gervais would go on to have considerable success in the US and become just as well known across the Atlantic as he is in his native Britain.

‘I’m not surprised he’s done well,’ Freeman expressed to Andrew Duncan of
Reader’s Digest.
‘They like gall and what they perceive as British cheek, straight talking, irony and sarcasm. He’s always sailed pretty close to the wind, so good for him. I dreamed of a Hollywood career as an eighteen-year-old sitting in the bath, but dreams and reality are very different.’

Freeman and Abbington were a happy couple living the married life, although they are not actually married. Martin is somewhat dubious about the concept of marriage, believing that it’s more like a business arrangement than an act of love. He’s known people who are together for years but split up after getting married.

‘I’ve not been to many weddings but not that long ago I was asked to do a reading at a wedding and I couldn’t do it. It was really embarrassing,’ he admitted in 2012 to
Douban.com
journalist Siobhan Synnot. ‘It was impossible for me to get through without breaking down. It took me about twenty minutes to do and in the end one of my brothers had to get up and put his arm around my shoulder for moral support before I could do it. I’m sure everyone thought I was just another luvvie, auditioning for a role.’

Both Freeman’s and his Abbington’s respective careers were flourishing and they have always supported each other’s work, although the latter has admitted she does get the odd wave of
insecurity and it was during the making of
The Good Night
, where Freeman was cast opposite two gorgeous Hollywood women, that she got a tad jealous.

‘I was eight-and-a-half months’ pregnant and bigger than a house,’ Abbington confessed to the
Daily Mail’
s Vicky Power. ‘And Penelope’s so beautiful and talented, who wouldn’t fancy her?’

Even though Freeman’s fame has far eclipsed Abbington’s, he has not developed an ego, nor allowed others to treat her poorly.

‘But he always says, “And this is my girlfriend,”’ Abbington said to the
Mail
’s Vicki Power. ‘Only recently some girl came up to him and shoved me out of the way. And he said “Excuse me, this is my girlfriend, don’t push her out of the way.”’

Martin Freeman had become an unlikely sex symbol along with such fellow actors as Brit Simon Pegg and American Seth Rogen.

He spoke to
Nerve.com
’s
Alexis Tirado and described how he felt about this: ‘As soon as you’re branded anything, that’s not great. It’s just another lazy way of marketing people. If you look out your window, most people in the world don’t look like Brad Pitt, but they all have wives. The whole idea of, “Paul Giamatti is kind of sexy.” Well, yeah he’s sexy. Ask his fucking wife or anyone he’s ever laid.’

He continued, ‘Is it surprising? No, because attraction doesn’t come from abs and pecs. It comes from somewhere else altogether. If Penélope Cruz was a shit actress, no one would fancy her. It’s that simple. Because the actresses who are beautiful and act like shit are going to be forgotten in about five days. So it’s a double-edged sword, because people are like,
“Hey, you’re sexy! But you’re kind of ugly!” I’m not supposed to be happy about that.’

Freeman later starred in the Gavin Claxton written and directed film
The All Together
, released on 11 May 2007. It is a British comedy film starring Martin in the lead role as a hacked-off TV producer and aspiring screenwriter named Chris, who has a distaste for British gangster films. He leaves his flatmate Bob (Velibor Topic) in charge of showing estate agents around the house that he is trying to sell. Chris is concerned that Bob will spend all day in the basement playing loud music and miss the estate agent’s call but Chris asks him to listen out for the doorbell anyway and show anyone around who visits. Bob promises Chris he will do that. While the screenwriter struggles with a day at work, Bob takes his instructions rather too literally and allows anyone who comes calling inside the house to look around. That includes a young British fella (played by Danny Dyer) and an American (played by Corey Johnston). When Chris returns home that evening, he finds his flatmate, four estate agents, two Jehovah’s Witnesses and a children’s entertainer held hostage by the Brit and American: two archetypal gangsters that could be straight out of a British gangster film. It’s hardly taxing stuff and many of the jokes fall flat but it was good to see Freeman in a lead role, even if it was with Danny Dyer, an actor whose pedigree of films is hardly thought of as high quality.