The Unexpected Adventures of Martin Freeman

by Neil Daniels

  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.

  It was Freeman’s partner and fellow actor, Amanda Abbington, who suggested that Martin should go for the role. When she got back home after her own audition, Freeman asked her how it went and she said it went well and that there’s a role in the film that would be perfect for him so he should go for it. He took a look at the script, liked it and met with the director and subsequently got the part. There was a point to the film and Freeman didn’t feel as though it was written to particularly win over American audiences. There was a heart to the movie and an honesty that Martin admired. It wasn’t written with the idea of making box-office millions. Generally, Freeman enjoys home-grown products. However, there is far more opportunity for success in America, with a much wider choice of roles available to an aspiring actor.

  It was a frantic eighteen-day shoot but Freeman enjoyed working with the cast and crew, especially the director. There was determination and courage in everyone. They strove to make as good a film as they possibly could. He was under no illusion that it would make him rich, but he also thought the script was truthfully written.

  Speaking about the very busy set, he told Rob Carnevale of Indie London.co.uk, ‘I was quite ill for some of my shoot because I had a real stinking cold. There’s no denying it was a hard shoot – not hard like being in Bosnia hard! – but it was hard by the standards of making a film. But that hardship engendered something else that was quite fun too – that Dunkirk spirit and a feeling of, “We’ve just got to do this”.’

  No one in the film was of any high status, there were no major egos and the upside of having little budget and a taut shooting deadline was that there was camaraderie, a similar spirit amongst a cast as when working in the theatre or even on radio. No one had their own space so they had to get long. There was no other option but to get to know each other.

  On working with his real life partner, Freeman said to BBC Movies’ Rob Carnevale, ‘We’ve done it before a few times and I do always really enjoy it. She’s a brilliant actress and I respect what she does. Obviously I love her too. So it’s easy. There’s no other politics like I’m doing the scene with someone I don’t really like. Anything we don’t like about each other we can say [laughs].’

  Released in May, The All Together, has been long forgotten about. There are, potentially, many roles that Freeman might care to forget but such is the life of a now successful and revered actor who once took as many parts as possibly in order to make a living, as is the case with any jobbing actor in an incre
asingly fickle industry.

  Martin believes a gangster thriller is better suited to his thespian skills than, say, an action film. ‘I can’t see that people would ever ask me to do it,’ he admitted to Nerve.com’s Alexis Tirado. ‘I’m not famous enough. I’m not box-office enough. I can run and I’m fit, but there are some people better suited to that. Also, I don’t want to play the guy in the yacht with no problems. That’s certainly not a reflection of my life. As a person, I’m not smooth, do you know what I mean? I can’t do smooth very easily.’

  The Guardian’s Phelim O’Neill wrote, ‘Nothing about the situation nor the characters rings even slightly true, and no laughs ever come from the increasingly desperate attempts to shoe-horn gags in. Freeman seems to have been given no direction other than “be like that guy from The Office”. Utterly pointless.’

  Jack Foley of IndieLondon.co.uk said, ‘Only Freeman emerges with any credit, somehow managing to remain endearing in spite of the contrived nature of his own storyline (the brief scenes he shares with real-life girlfriend Amanda Abbington offer brief respite from an otherwise rotten experience).’

  He continued, ‘Even a clever cine-literate monologue from Freeman that begins the movie is ruthlessly exposed as pretentious come the implausible finale. The All Together therefore carries with it the wretched stench of yet another disappointing farce for the British industry…’

  Time Out’s David Jenkins wrote, ‘As misanthropic TV producer Charlie, Martin Freeman reassumes all the tics that won him an army of fans in The Office while Danny Dyer pops up playing, well, Danny Dyer, confirming that he wouldn’t know a good script if it struck him over the head with a pool cue. The few laughs come care of Velibor Topic as wacky Bosnian housemate Bob, who harbours a penchant for combining taxidermy and pornography (you do the math).’

  Freeman also appeared in two short British films in 2007. He was the voice of ‘The Pig’ in one of them, called Lonely Hearts. Written and directed by James Keaton, Lonely Hearts is set one year after Jeff’s (Ralph Haddon) wife leaves him and attempts to get over it by meeting women by way of ‘lonely-hearts’ dating. Jeff struggles to move on until he starts talking to a soft-toy pig that gives him advice on dating. Jeff meets an attractive woman in a sandwich shop and remembers that he promised to take the pig along with him on his next date.

  In Rubbish, released in June 2007, he starred alongside Anna Friel and James Lance. The film’s estimated budget was £20,000, and it sees Freeman taking out the rubbish one morning, spotting a local woman and trying to impress her.

  Martin was next seen in the Bill Kenwright theatre production of The Last Laugh. Before a highly publicised move to the West End, the production opened at the Theatre Royal Windsor from 30 January to 3 February 2007 and then continued to Cheltenham, Milton Keynes, Richmond and Newcastle. Freeman was last on stage in October 2005, in Toby Whithouse’s Blue Eyes and Heels at the Soho Theatre in London (aside from his guest role in The Exonerated at Riverside Studios in June 2006). By this point, his stage credits included such productions as Kosher Harry, Jump Mr Malinoff, Jump and La Dispute. Written by Richard Harris, The Last Laugh was adapted from an original play by Koki Mitani. Freeman plays a comedy writer who is forced by law to submit a script for government approval. The play follows the approval process.

  Peter Lathan of the British Theatre Guide wrote of the play, ‘The Last Laugh is essentially a two-hander with Lloyd Pack (Only Fools and Horses) joined by Martin Freeman (The Office) as the Writer, and a nice cameo by Christopher Mellows as the Veteran. The performances are impeccable – even the timing of the badly timed gags is spot-on! It is played out in a large, cold, grey room which has clearly once been part of a library, designed by Michael Pavelka and subtly lit by Mark Henderson.’

  Freeman was also seen in an episode of Comedy Showcase called ‘Other People’, which kicked off a run of six Comedy Showcase episodes. The programme ran from 2007 to 2012 and featured Britain’s growing comedy talent. It was inspired by the long-running comedy-sketch anthology series of the 1960s’ Comedy Playhouse.

  In Martin’s episode, which aired on 5 October 2007, he plays Greg Wilson, a has-been child magician whose career crashed 1986 after he was humiliated on a children’s phone-in show. In his thirties, Greg now works as a sofa salesman and is recognised by a former fan (Siobhan Finneran) and is asked for an autograph.

  Freeman told The Independent’s James Rampton in 2007, ‘When the woman in the furniture store asks for his autograph, he immediately obliges. It’s a knee-jerk reaction. He thinks, “Someone wants me, I’m in the limelight again – even if only for two seconds.” Once you’ve tasted the limelight, it’s hard to let it go. Everyone wants to be acknowledged.’

  The autograph request triggers a series of events, which ends up with Greg in a courtroom facing a sentence.

  Martin said he could relate to his character because he knew what it felt like to have the weight of the world on his shoulders after he found success with The Office. Greg’s desperate need to be famous is not something Freeman desires but rather a symptom of the modern world, as evidenced on such TV shows as The X Factor. Even when Greg’s career went downhill, he was still hungry for fame.

  Interestingly, Freeman believes that happy people do not make great comedy, as he explained at the time to The Independent’s James Rampton in 2007: ‘Comedy can’t be about continuous success. The characters we get behind – whether it’s Hancock or Basil Fawlty or Captain Mainwaring – are eternally frustrated. Disappointment is an endless wellspring of comedy inspiration.’

  British Comedy Guide wrote of the episode, ‘We thought this pilot was brilliant – one of the best things we saw in 2007. As has been mentioned by a number of people in our forum, the episode delivered some really good laugh-out-loud moments. Nicholas Burns was particularly great as the mad lawyer. We’d love to see a full series of Other People but have come to accept that will never happen as it would be hard to convert the premise into a full series without overstretching it.’

  Freeman was next seen on TV in December 2007 as Mr Codlin in The Old Curiosity Shop. Based on the Charles Dickens novel, the TV film stars Sophie Vavasseur as Nell Trent, Derek Jacobi as her grandfather and George MacKay as Nell’s friend Kit Nubbles, as well as Zoë Wanamaker as Mrs Jarley, Toby Jones as Quilp, Adam Godley as Sampson Brass, Gina McKee as Sally Brass, Bryan Dick as Freddie Trent, Steve Pemberton as Mr Short, Josie Lawrence as Mrs Jiniwin, Bradley Walsh as Mr Liggers, Anna Madeley as Betsey Quilp, Geoff Breton as Dick Swiveller, Charlene McKenna as the Marchioness, Kelly Campbell as Mrs Nubbles, Katie Dunne as Baby Nubbles and Philip Noone as Rodney. It was broadcast on ITV on 26 December.

  Martin was seen as himself in four episodes of When Were We Funniest? during the 2008 series. The comedy channel Gold got the public to decide which they thought was the funniest decade from the 1960s to the 2000s. But before the public voted, Gold picked five celebrities to represent each decade and encouraged them to convince the public that their decade was the funniest. The series kicked off with the celebrities on a panel explaining to the public why they should vote for their own decade. Each celebrity was given two episodes to convince the public. The outline was simple: in the first episode they explained why their decade was the funniest and used clips to highlight their argument and the public got to vote for the five funniest clips. In the second episode the clips were ordered according to public popularity, based on votes from the funniest to the least funny. The public were asked to vote for the most amusing decade and the funniest clip. The top five clips and the funniest decade was revealed in the final episode and the celebrities passed comments on their place in the vote. The series was narrated by Alexander Armstrong.

  Trying his hand at something entirely different, Freeman next took part in two films as Rembrandt in the 2007 narrative film Nightwatching and 2008’s documentary film Rembrandt’s J’Accuse. They are both joint Dutch, German and Finnish documentaries directed by Peter Greenaway and were released a ye
ar apart, and feature many of the same actors and sets. The films explore the two sides of Rembrandt’s romantic and professional life and the controversy surrounding the identification of a murderer in his painting ‘The Night Watch’. Rembrandt’s use of shadow, light and colour was a major source of inspiration to Greenaway. ‘The Night Watch’ itself hangs in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. The film covers the period of Rembrandt’s life in which his wife Saskia, and mother to his son Titus, dies. He then starts a self-destructive relationship with his housekeeper before moving on to another member of his housekeeping crew, who is twenty years old.

  Freeman was very proud to be in the two films and the process was not something he’d experienced before. He usually gets roles about lovelorn middle-aged Surrey men, so to play a Dutch master of art was an opportunity he could not resist and working with Peter Greenaway was an opportunity not to be overlooked, especially at that stage in his career. He hoped that films such as The All Together and Nightwatching would knock away his nice-guy-next-door persona once and for all. Working with Greenaway was an opportunity that he simply could not refuse and Martin was most impressed by the films.

  ‘I just hope that when you see it you get as much of the story across as I got from reading it. Not all Peter’s stuff is sequential, narrative story,’ the actor admitted to Indie London.co.uk’s Rob Carnevale. ‘Some of it is like an art installation and I’m not particularly interested in being in an art installation to be honest. I’m interested in the story and it was a story. So I hope that it’s intact when I see the film properly – that there is a beginning, a middle and an end. Sometimes that can easily be overlooked for the sake of cleverness. But story, for me, is really, really important whether it’s Red Riding Hood or The Godfather. Everything else has to defer to that.’

  Making Nightwatching was not an easy experience though. Freeman rang his fellow The Good Night actor Michael Gambon, who had also starred in The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover, which Greenaway directed, for any advice or tips. Gambon apparently said that Greenaway leaves you alone. He does not presume to tell you how to act. He directs from a distance, but he is specific about what he wants. He’s less hands-on with his actors than he is with the crew because everything in the shot, in front of the camera, governs the progress of the film.