The Unexpected Adventures of Martin Freeman

by Neil Daniels

  He told AP Radio, ‘We would’ve failed, I think, if we only made a film that was dependent on having read the book or listened to the radio series. That would’ve been a failure on our part because our job is to make one and three-quarter hours of entertainment… for people who know nothing about it.’

  On release, The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy was a reasonable box-office success but garnered mixed reviews from critics. It had a strong start in the US with a $21.2 million opening debut but tailed off in latter weeks. It peaked at Number One at the US box office, ahead of the Ice Cube action thriller XXX: State of the Union.

  Asked by Cindy Pearlman of the Chicago Sun-Times if it is important for an actor to have a hit movie in the States, Freeman responded, ‘There are two schools of thought. Some think if you haven’t made it in America, then you’re a bum. Some think, “What do they know over there?” I just care that I’ve made a good film because in a few days, I’ll either be a prick or a hero to fans of the work. I’ll either be a star or it will be “Martin who?” But in the end ultimately you have to sleep with yourself and be proud on your deathbed.’

  Some commented that the film tries too hard to be too British, which alienated audiences around the world, notably in the US.

  ‘There’s a long standing tradition that America takes something, doesn’t quite understand it and changes it into something they do understand,’ Freeman explained to Movie Web’s Julian Roman. ‘I’m happy to report that from my experience here, that doesn’t apply. I would defy anyone to see it and think that not everyone has been cast right.’

  During the making of the film, M.J. Simpson, the author of the Douglas Adams biography Hitchhiker and former Deputy Editor of SFX magazine, gave the film a scathing online review, to which Freeman responded in an interview with the BBC’s Alana Lee, ‘You know, fair play to M.J Simpson. I couldn’t say he doesn’t have a right to the opinion, of course he does. And I’ve met him. He’s a nice guy. But, ultimately, he’s also a grown man who wears a Darth Vader tie. Norman Mailer he ain’t.’

  Freeman didn’t pay too much attention to the fan scrutiny but he was more than well aware that many fans are often disappointed by big-screen adaptations. He knew the creative team had come up with a script that was faithful to the book but he also acknowledged that the finished film wasn’t going to please every single fan.

  Some fans were dubious about the film version, thinking that Adams’s humour would not translate too well and that the story is best left to literature; other fans were excited about the big-screen adventure. The overall opinion after the film’s release was a split down the middle. In hindsight, perhaps the consensus was not so positive but the film has slowly become accepted by a larger audience of Adams fans.

  ‘For some people this is going to be like sacrilege if it’s perceived to have got it wrong,’ said Freeman to the Washington Post’s Alona Wartofsky. ‘But I couldn’t go to work with that feeling, and I couldn’t really go and do my job if I was paying too much mind to that. I just… tried to play him in the best way I could.’

  Freeman and the rest of the cast and crew received very positive feedback from Adams’s family – his widow and son. They hadn’t made a perfect film by any means, as the critical response can attest, but they were respectful to the script Adams had left. Freeman even caught up with Adams’s family at the film’s premiere and they were delighted with the outcome.

  So what did the critics think of the finished product?

  Writing in The Guardian, Peter Bradshaw said, ‘Martin Freeman (Tim from The Office) is inspired casting as Dent, and delivers exactly the right note of futile English sarcasm in the face of complete and utter planetary destruction. His best friend, the oddly named Ford Prefect, tips him off about what is about to happen; together they escape and hitch-hike across the Milky Way, armed with their invaluable book, the Hitchhiker’s Guide, voiced with lucid serenity by Stephen Fry.’

  Darren Waters wrote on BBC Movies, ‘Despite outstanding production design and some fantastic visual effects, overall the film is a bit of a mess. A charming mess, maybe, but a mess all the same. Did the script veer too far away from the source material or tie itself in knots trying to keep faith with it? Bizarrely, I think the answer is both.’

  Peter Travers was more enthusiastic in his three out of five-star Rolling Stone review: ‘The mission impossible, which first-time director Garth Jennings has bravely accepted, is to hold true to the droll, aggressive, very British verbal humour of the creator Douglas Adams (he died in 2001) in a movie that spills over with visual gags, puppet monsters and a digital John Malkovich … the script by Karey Kirkpatrick and Adams himself delivers the goods in inspired lunacy.’

  Hilariously, the DVD release features scenes that were filmed but were never actually meant for the movie.

  ‘We did, yeah,’ admitted Freeman to Empire magazine when asked about the scenes that were not included. ‘It was a nod towards the people who thought it was going to be ruined because it was American. So we just shot some ridiculously Hollywood-y, horrible, over-the-top, clichéd, action-movie style portrayals … but Garth’s idea was “Let’s just have some fun and pretend that these were the ones we edited out.” That was good fun.’

  A sequel, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, was originally planned but Martin Freeman confirmed to MTV Movie Blog in 2007 that a sequel was unlikely to happen, saying, ‘I found that out from the horse’s mouth, [director] Garth Jennings. I had dinner with him and he said [the first one] just didn’t do well enough.’

  There was a little bit of room for improvisation but not a great deal and it was unnecessary, anyway, because it was Adams’s story, dialogue and humour that made the film what it was. The creative team were careful not to dilute the film with their own ideas. Freeman wasn’t interested in starring in films with special effects and action scenes, which is ironic considering the trilogy of films he would later be known for, so The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy did not change his career path but rather his bank balance. He got into acting to star in films like Twelve Angry Men – serious, realistic dramas.

  Perhaps playing Arthur Dent did not do much to dissuade people from naturally assuming Freeman to be an everyday bloke. After all, Tim Canterbury and Arthur Dent are, in their own ways, normal guys. He was pigeonholed as an actor and it would be quite some time before that would change.

  ‘Compared to a lot of people, I’m a big-mouth show-off, d’you know what I mean?’ Martin admitted to the Globe And Mail’s Simon Houpt. ‘But in show-biz terms I don’t think I am, because I don’t go to every event and I don’t particularly want people to know everything about my life, and I don’t live my life through that medium. I could be on the telly all the time and I could be everywhere all the time and I certainly don’t want to be, because I do think only a… moron wants that, or someone with a bigger hole in their lives than I ever would want to have.’

  With two major films under his belt in Love Actually and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, one might now think that Freeman was interested in achieving success on the other side of the Atlantic. Not so. He didn’t even have an American agent, preferring to stick with his London one.

  ‘I’m not interested in living that life,’ Freeman confessed to the London Evening Standard’s Bruce Dessau in 2005. ‘I’ve never wanted to go to lovely LA. I was a well-respected actor before The Office and there’s lots of other work I’ve been proud of that is less well known. I consider myself primarily a stage actor and if people were only giving me work now because of Tim I’d feel a bit of a fraud. It’s funny because until I became the nicest man in Britain I tended to be cast as villains, drug dealers, rent boys and bare-knuckle fighters.’

  Further TV work continued as he was cast in the comedy TV film Not Tonight with John Sergeant, which was broadcast on 22 May 2005.

  Freeman admitted to Bruce Dessau of the London Evening Standard in 2004 that he is tired of seeing comedians who think they are actors. �
��It’s hard enough for actors anyway,’ he said. ‘There’s a roller coaster of dreadful casting that no one has the guts to stop. There’s nothing more painful than seeing comics who can’t act – it makes me want to set fire to people’s fucking houses.’

  Martin’s choice of roles tended to be very safe; almost middle-of-the-road. He admitted that sometimes it is better not to know why actors get cast in certain roles, as he explained to Tom Cardy of New Zealand’s Stuff: ‘I think, sometimes you gotta be careful what you wish for. Of course we all want to be told we’re brilliant for various ways, however we hope we’re brilliant. And then, if someone thinks we’re brilliant for a reason we find unflattering, then we’d rather not hear it. ’Cause of course there’s a difference, like with any actor, between the parts that I play, and… For a start, no one’s seen everything I’ve done, apart from me. And I’ve played a lot of parts over seventeen years.

  ‘There’s a difference between the parts that I play, and who I am, and who people think I am,’ he added. ‘There’s quite a big discrepancy sometimes, between those things.’

  Freeman was then cast in the role of Ed Robinson in the six-episode 2005 series of The Robinsons, which began airing in May. The series was written and directed by Mark Bussell and Justin Sbresni, with executive producers that included Jon Plowman and Michele Buck.

  ‘It didn’t feel like a return to telly to me because I’d always done lots of TV and I just follow whatever script is good at the time,’ he told Dark Horizon’s Paul Fischer. ‘An awful lot of film scripts are dreadful while a lot of telly scripts are really good. So I just want to be involved in things that I like. I’m as proud of The Robinsons as anything else I’ve done. I mean I love it. But again, whether anyone else loves it, I hope they do.’

  The Robinsons is a British comedy about lead character Ed Robinson’s (Freeman) relationship with his family, including his parents (played by Anna Massey and Richard Johnson), who are constantly nagging at each other, his successful older brother George (Hugh Bonneville) and his sister Vicky (Abigail Cruttenden), who has to have everything perfect. Ed is a divorced reinsurance actuary but gets fired and moves in with his aunt. He begins to rethink his life and looks to find a career that he has a passion for and a steady girlfriend.

  Kathryn Flett wrote in The Observer, ‘Freeman gets the star billing and the cute voice-overs but despite being enormously likeable – to the point where, if our paths ever cross, I will have to restrain myself from pinching his cheeks, ruffling his hair and pulling the sort of face I normally reserve for winsome toddlers – Freeman is almost outshone by an awesomely fine supporting cast.’

  But back to Hitchikers, the bigger the film, the more expansive the marketing campaign. As it was Freeman’s first Hollywood movie, he had a great deal of promotional work to fulfil in the wake of the film’s release.

  Martin has always found the whirlwind press junkets a laborious but obligatory task; a necessary evil of the job, ‘answering the same questions over and over again. With some exceptions, and with the best will in the world, you do get tired. Obviously you just have to pinch yourself,’ he told reporters, including Dark Horizon’s Paul Fischer, at a junket for The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, ‘you have to make it interesting for yourself, hopefully make it interesting for the press, but also to a certain extent, that’s only part of the job.’

  Freeman continued to dip his toes into the odd left-field venture. He played ‘The Man’ in Round About Five, a long-forgotten short film that was released on 22 August 2005. Freeman’s character is desperate to get across London to meet his girlfriend (Lena Headey) off the Eurostar and pursues an attractive bicycle courier (Jodhi May) to take him on the back of her bike, which ultimately creates a romantic predicament for him.

  The actor had been in many TV and film productions but he struggled to find the time to explore his thespian talents in the theatre, so it was a delight when he was offered a chance to star in a London theatre production. Freeman committed to a three-and-a-half-week run of Blue Eyes and Heels (written by Toby Whithouse) at Soho Theatre in October 2005.

  ‘Career-wise,’ Freeman admitted to the London Evening Standard’s Bruce Dessau at the time, ‘this is not what I should be doing, but I really like the play and there aren’t many things that I really like. I wanted to avoid anything that was too commercial. It’s not that I want to be poor, it’s just that I don’t want money to be the main thing.’

  The play follows Duncan (Freeman), an ambitious young TV producer looking for his next hit to secure a career at an independent TV-production company. He plans to bring wrestling back to TV screens and meets Victor (John McNeill), an actor best known for his role as the Count of Monte Cristo. Past his best and looking to reclaim his prime, Victor is perfect fodder for Duncan’s plan to climb the media-industry ladder and secure a promotion. Along the way, Duncan meets a career-obsessive PA played by Sandra Eldridge. However, they clash, as Duncan believes in the trash he is peddling, while the PA believes in quality. Such are the times, where trash sells and quality sinks. Blues Eyes and Heels attempts to be a satire on modern times of trashy tabloid TV.

  Theatre pundit Michael Billington was critical of the play in his two out of five-star review in The Guardian but he praised Freeman: ‘The real pleasure lies in watching Martin Freeman, late of The Office, who reminds us what a brilliant comic actor he is. His Duncan is a bundle of staccato gestures and panic-stricken smiles, confirming that TV companies thrive on a hierarchy of insecurity. And his vain attempt to leap athletically into the wrestling ring is worthy of Woody Allen.’

  John Thaxter of the British Theatre Guide wrote, ‘Toby Whithouse’s superbly written three-hander reminded me strongly of Brian Friel’s Faith Healer, sustained dialogue replacing Friel’s extended solo pieces but with equal impact, both comic and sad. It could make a brilliant one-off play for television, except that in a multichannel world we no longer enjoy the luxury of one-off plays.’

  Stage Noise’s Gabby Bermingham enthused, ‘The play provides valid and insightful commentary on what I assume is modern media morality. One feature I particularly loved was the development of Duncan’s character. On the one hand he is supercilious, insincere and heartless. Hand in hand with these undesirable qualities is the fact that he is also a true believer. He is the voice of popular culture, he believes his own spin, and the value of what he ‘creates’. I also could not let this go without noting that Whithouse chooses the female character to give voice to the arguments for taste, intelligence and ethics.’

  Freeman also took part in a Marks & Spencer celebrity ad campaign, which was shot by renowned photographer David Bailey. At this point a Martin’s intolerance for things earned him the nickname ‘Uncle Joe’ among his friends. It is a reference to Stalin. Freeman was doing rather well for himself by this point and things would only get bigger and better.

  Martin admitted to Empire in 2005, ‘I’m not exactly a well-seasoned, great screen actor, you know. I’m still learning the ropes, but as far as I see it my job doesn’t change that much. You certainly don’t act bigger. If anything, you act smaller because the screen is going to be so much bigger. It’s very easy to look like you’re overdoing it on a big screen, you know, because the raising of an eyebrow says so much more than it would do on a television screen.’

  Freeman and his wife had their first child, Joe, in 2006. Despite Martin’s brief venture into Hollywood and his success in The Office, the actor was still searching for that all-elusive break. With a wife and a newborn baby, he needed a steady pay cheque and regular work to tend to his family on a financial level.

  As previously mentioned, Freeman is a connoisseur of classic R&B and soul music and has an extensive record collection in his home. He hosted a semi-regular 2006 BBC Radio 2 show called The Great Unknown, which aired in six episodes over October and November and saw each instalment focus on a different recording artist. He began with the Staple Singers and moved on to Boz Scaggs, Ramsey Lewis, Traffic,
Roberta Flack and The Band.

  He’d been making mix tapes all his life – mostly on cassette – but had recently moved on to CDs. Making a mix tape was one of the first things he always did for a woman prior to meeting his lifelong partner. He would use it as a sort of a test to see how a woman would respond to the music and to judge whether they’d get on well with each other. He said he found that women can be more direct than men – they’ll simply say whether they like it or not but men can be snobbish about music.

  ‘If I’m making a tape for Amanda, my other half, she won’t be impressed if I’ve got an original pressing of a song, or some B-side that’s been out of print for years,’ he said to Tiny Mix Tapes in 2007. ‘When I pick songs for her, all I think about is, “She’d really like this and it’ll make her happy.”’

  As soon as he’d met Abbington, he’d stopped making mix tapes for his friends because it is such a personal thing to do. He usually centred the songs around a theme, which made it even more personal. He always waited with apprehensive eagerness to see to how his partner/friend would respond to the songs.

  His main passion is vinyl as he prefers the feel and look of a record over a CD. He appreciates the cover artwork, which he feels looks more impressive on the cover of a vinyl record. As with many music aficionados, Freeman doesn’t feel as though he owns a piece of music until he has the vinyl copy. There are CDs and iPods in his house but the process of putting the needle down on the record and sitting in a room surrounded by thousands of records is a ritual that he enjoys greatly.

  ‘And that’s especially true for me, because 70 per cent of the music I enjoy came out originally on analog,’ he explained to Tiny Mix Tapes. ‘If you get a good copy, that’s how it should be heard. Obviously, if you’re listening to a really scratchy record, then of course a CD will sound better. But it’ll never compare with a pressing on vinyl. As I’ve gotten older and have a bit more money, I can afford to be more anal about that kinda stuff. I know I’m entering into mental territory, but I like it. I like thinking, “Well, I’ve got that record already, but I only have the reissue, and it’s not great and I’d like to find the original.”’