Martin Freeman is one of my favorite actors to have come out of the last 25 years or so. He’s well known for roles in a wide variety of genres, but I first encountered him as the shy film standi-in John in Love Actually (2002). He then went on to play a number of great characters like Arthur Dent in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (2005) and, of course, playing Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbit trilogy. But what has he gotten up to in terms of historical roles? Let’s take a look!
The Last King (2003)
Nightwatching (2007) aka Rembrandt’s J’Accuse(2008)
The Old Curiosity Shop (2007)
The Hobbit (2013)
The Eichmann Show (2015)
Midnight of my Life (2015)
Sherlock: The Abominable Bride (2016)
Angelyne (2022)
The Queen of Bones (2024)
Agatha Christie’s Seven Dials (2026)
Do you have a favorite role played by Martin Freeman? Share it with us in the comments!
Don’t get me wrong, I adore Martin Freeman, but I can’t think if an actor less like Agatha Christie’s Battle.
As much as I enjoy the hobbit, there was no reason to stretch it out into a trilogy, except to give the studios more filthy lucre.
Agreed. The firs5 movie was good. The second less so. I didn’t bother to see the third
I third that. Freeman also has a great face for Dickensian working-class characters.
FWIW, Peter Greenaway’s NIGHTWATCHING (2007) and REMBRANDT’S J’ACCUSE (2008) are not the same film — though it’s easy to see why some sources claim this.
The first film is a 2hr14m historical drama based on the concept that Rembrandt’s masterwork “The Night Watch” exposes a murder plot through clues in the painting.
Greenaway followed this up with a 1hr26m “essayistic” documentary that is largely Greenaway lecturing about modern-day “visual illiteracy” and presenting even more about the 34 people in the painting and the whole concept of an exposed murder — with footage from the first film used at times to illustrate the lecture. (No idea if there’s any unique footage, such as alternate takes or scenes cut from the first film.)
The only black mark – nay, Black Mark – on his record to date is his participating in the malicious slander of Doctor Watson’s moustache in SHERLOCK.
I’d like to think that even Ms Lucy Liu and her fellow Lady Watsons wore moustaches to the emergency meeting of the Watson Club that duly followed, because some things are Just Not On!