Martin Freeman Quotations

I'm not posh or common, I'm in between.

I don't get cast as the guy who steps off a yacht in a white linen suit with a martini.

I would wear a full-length cape if I could get away with it - I do love a good swirl in a fog.

I've always loved Christmas and that's not really gone away from me from being a child to now. It's always a magical time and I'm unashamed in my love for Christmas.

I can spot someone with similar fashion sense to me a mile off.

There was very little drama and performance at my school, so I've never forgotten the people who did encourage me and I've thought whether it would be a good idea to even get in touch with them and just say thanks, because they really opened a door for me mentally and emotionally - that's really important.

I think what 'The Hobbit' and Middle-earth deal in are quite universal and timeless themes of honour and love and friendship... so they're things that do resonate with people.

I did a play once where a reviewer said, 'Martin Freeman's too nice to play a bad guy.' And I thought: 'Well, bad guys aren't always bad guys, you know?' When I see someone play the obvious villain, I know it's false.

I'm a big believer that life changes as much as you want it to.

I think I'm less gloomy than I used to be - I've got a very supportive other half.

I don't want to sound like a grumpy old man, but nothing winds me up more than people saying, 'Chill out' to me when I'm irritated!

My idea of a good night out is staying in.

I have a very extreme state of mind. Things are very black or very white.

If I could get bands to come and play in my house, I'd like that.

The Marx Brothers isn't subtle, and that's hilarious.

There are lots of things that keep me awake at night, but work isn't one of them. I mean, no-one's going to die if someone doesn't like what I do. So I don't feel a great pressure.

I like things that are simple, such as an alarm clock.

Your slippers last a lot longer in your bedroom. On a film set, they do get very scuffed up.

Humour is - how do I say this without sounding pompous - it's a huge part of my life.

Any pigeonhole is something to be rebelled against.

I think people just like seeing friendship. I think people like seeing people who just drive each other up the wall, but at same time, can't live without each other.

I value being able to go into a record shop and people leaving me alone.

I don't think anyone looks into their family tree and expects it to come up smelling of roses.

If you are a plumber, you can work on a shed, or you can work on a mansion. It's just scale.

My ambition is to do what I like and to do good things that I might not have done before.

I grew up in the suburbs, so I remember arriving at Waterloo and seeing Big Ben and the coloured lights on top of the Southbank Centre and thinking, 'Wow!'

Like, honest to God, I don't expect people to be into what I'm into.

Like any friendship or marriage, familiarity breeds more contempt, and love, and everything.

My first engagement with any art was music.

My job as an actor is for you, so why should my private life be for you, too? That's not fair.

I didn't audition for 'Fargo.' It was a straight offer.

I don't have sentimental attachments to characters at all.

'Sherlock' is beautifully done, if I may say so myself. Even if I wasn't in it, I would like the show.

'Sherlock' is one of the biggest things I will do, ever - we could never have predicted that level of insanity around the series.

When I was at youth theatre and drama school, I never thought people would mistake me for a stand-up.

I have less than no interest in trying to replicate another brilliant actor's work, thank you very much.

I have never been in, nor have I had any strong particular desire to be in, what is termed a costume drama, but I keep forgetting to think of 'Charles II' as a costume drama.

Half of us are partly German! Half our language and culture, generally, in Anglo-Saxon terms, is German.

There are still things technically about films that I think are a mystery to me and I want to remain a mystery. I don't particularly want to know what everyone's job is because I've got lines to learn.

I can live without endless television programmes and films just centered around computers. I can sort of live without that.

I enjoy fighting scenes. I like fighting in film. I like pretending to fight in films.

I don't want to be alone; the thing I love about acting is the other people you're doing it with.

If it were purely up to me, my kids would probably be vegetarian Catholic Marxists.

I am a fan of the Coen brothers. I'm not a fanatic. I'm a big admirer. They create unique worlds, and there is a real atmosphere to their films. Not everyone can get that. That's a massive part of their appeal: you can recognise them. Like all the great directors or artists, you know it when you see it.

I always kind of think if The Beatles were still around now, people would've lost interest quite a long time ago. Seven years of recording - it's there forever. I think not outstaying your welcome is a vital ingredient.

I'm always interested with other actors in what their process is, and are they still interested in acting, as opposed to being a star.

My relationship with my belief has never been easy.

My main priority in any job is when is the soonest I can get back to the three people I love most in the world.

Please God, I'll never be in a war zone, but everything I sort of know about people who come back is that it's a hard transition to make. I mean, even if you've not been in a war, even if you've just been in the Forces, you come back and probably have more fights in civilian life.

Rehearsals are one of my favourite things in the world.

Organised religion, organised anything, requires commitment and requires an engagement with something. A lot of the time, we don't want to commit.

I think when see you a character on the screen who is actually being touched by the world, and the stuff is actually landing on him, it makes you empathize.

My mum was Labour-voting, but wanted us to know we were important. Basically, everyone's equal, but you, my children, are a bit better.

I suppose the real cult things now are independent films made for a million pounds.

I think the world needs to see more of my face.

I think acting is all about the other people. Sounds like a worthy thing to say, but it's true.

On the surface, you think you wouldn't have to think at all about being asked to play Bilbo in 'The Hobbit.' It's not prison; it's a good gig. But you know it's going to take a long time, and it does. There are times when you thought: 'Gee, I've not seen my house for months.'

I think the only directing I'd be any good at is theatre directing. It's the only thing I can see myself doing.

I think the hardest part about anything you do for 18 months is just keeping yourself together for 18 months.

Trouble is, some accents lend themselves to comedy.

I was on record before I did 'The Hobbit,' saying I don't care at all about 3D. And I suppose I should now say I care a lot about 3D. I've always loved 3D, I think everything should be 3D, and I think it's just a shame 'The Godfather' wasn't in 3D.

We can all look on the Internet and go, 'He hates me! Oh, but she loves me. Oh, but he hates me,' you know. And that way, madness lies.

Michael Caine, Tom Courtenay and Al Pacino made me want to act. I've always been interested in men with a vulnerable side.

You absorb 2,000 years of history just by being near the Thames.

When people bully us, we are complicit in it in some way. We do allow it to happen to some extent.

Whenever someone says to my mum: 'How's your son doing?' she says: 'Which one?' If you're a parent, you're not going to go: 'Oh I'll concentrate on the famous one.'

Don't get me wrong - I'm a big fan of things American - but when American people do British stuff, it's so universally dreadful.

Coming back from doing 'The Hobbit,' you think 'Sherlock' is realistic, but of course, it's not that realistic.

I've been well-known in Britain for a long time.

As soon as you get two actors in a room and they're locking eyes, they're doing a scene.

There are about 20 people in my life that I want to love me, and none of them are the 'Daily Mail.'

I've tried not to treat Shakespeare as a marble giant.

I've not been called on to do a lot of accent work.

It would be a shame for me if I were to become 'Mr. Half-Hour Sitcom.'

The reason I've never gone for pilot season even as a younger actor, and wouldn't entertain that sort of thing now, is the idea of signing a piece of paper that binds me for six or seven years.

To my mind there are not enough things that show the Nazis as human, as smart people, charismatic people, who are not inhuman naturally. But who are able to be fantastically inhuman when they choose to be.

We all know that people who've never been on a film set think it's way more glamorous than the people who work on them.

We all know the films that have affected us from the age of nine onwards, that mean so much to us.

To be honest, if people thought my performance in 'The Office' was the same as my performance in 'The Hobbit,' it would tell me everything I needed to know about what they know about acting.

Being an actor is just like being any other sort of self-employed person - we're all just happy to have a job in the first place, but we also thrive off the uncertainty of it.

Even someone as truly dark as Lorne Malvo is still very attractive, and you want to spend time with him because he's a fun character.

Some people have that roar in their head, but I'm not sure I ever did. That live-fast-die-young thing. No one wants it really.

With superheroes and comics and fantasy and sci-fi being absolutely the popular currency in cinema, it's like people have said in endless magazines, it's the revenge of the geeks and all that. There's some truth in that.

Without sounding overly pompous about it, I don't really trust certainty in anything, actually. Especially as I get older. Except love. I'm certain of love, I guess.

Acting is reacting, and it's always easier to react when someone is doing a good job.

Actors are people who are doing a job they want to do, which isn't the case for many of the people who watch what we do.

Once you've switched that switch, then, though you notice that other people are great, you're just not interested.

I've always slightly envied other actors I know who have different reputations. I think, 'God, you don't get people coming up to you, going, 'Hey!' - because they're scared of you.'

I've never been to a festival. I'm a creature of habit, mashed-potato comfort, I like rugs. Our sofa's squishy. Maybe too squishy - it's hard to get up sometimes.

As a result, these families are being destroyed.

As an actor, you know there are things you get asked to do that you do quite well, with less effort.

Americans assume all British people have at least one servant.

Although there's an inherent light-heartedness to 'Sherlock,' I slightly err towards not doing the comedy.

Television is where the great movies that used to exist have gone.

Fans want to see a story with characters, and they want to see a story.

I've always liked clothes, since I was a kid.

This isn't meant to make me sound interesting and rock 'n' roll, but I wouldn't want to live with me a lot of the time.

You're not fully you until life has booted you in the behind.

In London we give ourselves a pat on the back, rightly, for not killing one another, for our prejudice being subtle rather than lethal.

I like anything with my face on it, just from an aesthetic point of view.