Top 80 Martin Freeman Quotes

I’m very proud of ‘The Office’ – it was one of the best things I’ll ever do. But you do become a slight victim of your own success in the sense that people think that’s you, that’s what you are, and that’s what you’ll play forever.

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.

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.

‘The Hobbit’s a big gig. It’s a huge circus that you become a part of.

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

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

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

I look like the man in the moon.

I like uncertainty in roles, and I like uncertainty in art, really.

Rehearsals are one of my favourite things in the world.

My relationship with my belief has never been easy.

Not all art is great; most of it’s rubbish.

I’ve been doing interviews for years, and in all that time, I’ve virtually never read one and gone, ‘Yep, factually and tonally that’s exactly what happened.’ Pretty much never.

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

It’s always the case, whenever you’re doing someone real, how much you want to do an impression or a characterisation. If I was doing Churchill, or Gandhi – people know exactly how they talked, walked.

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

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

My idea of a good night out is staying in.

There is nothing far-fetched about disappointment as a subject for comedy. It’s something we are all too familiar with.

I’m not a writer, director or producer.

I’m one of the few people I know who believes in God.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

I’m geek royalty now.

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

I could say, ‘I want to play a French-African humpback,’ but I probably won’t get that role.

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

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.

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

I have played nasty people, but not everyone has seen that stuff. Before ‘The Office,’ I mainly got cast as little toe-rags.

I like the idea of not everything happening between two human beings to be everyone’s property.

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

What makes Shakespeare eternal is his grasp of psychology. He knew how to nail stuff about us as human beings.

I’ve got a pretty good musical ear, and I can pick things up.

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

Are there many Tims in America? I don’t know if I can think of many American Tims.

I have quite catholic taste in music.

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.

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

I like life to surprise me.

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.’

Why does everyone have to pretend to be stupid and not know long words?

You could say I’m a mod, but with a small ‘m’; I don’t wear a parka, but I do question what I wear and what I listen to, which is what it’s all about.

Trouble is, some accents lend themselves to comedy.

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.

Most people aren’t these grandstanding heroes.

I love the smaller scenes. I love the smaller, slightly more theatrical scenes.

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

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.

I read ‘Animal Farm’ when I was 11, and it remained my favorite book, really.

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

I’ve always got my eye on my deathbed.

If you want your film to be instantly green-lit, your first approach is not to go to a relatively unknown English actor. They’re not going to throw millions of dollars at you for that.

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.

I hate the fact that so much of our life is computerised rather than mechanised.

I’ve always been attracted to darkness.

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

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.

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

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.

I don’t want to be poor, of course. But I try not to make that the guiding force behind whether I choose to do something or not.

I love watching Billy Bob, just as a punter anyway. I like his work. But working with him is really easy and really straight-forward. He’s immediately good. He doesn’t have to work up to it. He doesn’t make your life difficult. He listens. He’s a very good listener, in terms of his acting.

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.

‘The Hobbit’ would have been very difficult to pass on, do you know what I mean? It’s not the kind of ship that comes into dock very often.

Being a mod is more of a sensibility than a style.

I like the quiet life sometimes. I also love a bustling press conference sometimes as well. I love a 600 metre red carpet.

The design of ‘Love Actually,’ the typeface, the basic line of that poster and that DVD cover has been ripped off so many times.

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.

It’s more fun playing someone who isn’t just a bad guy.

I’ve got a stag weekend coming up and I’ve said I’m not doing anything more than a few drinks. I won’t have it. I’ll go home and watch Antiques Roadshow.

Disappointment is an endless wellspring of comedy inspiration.

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

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

If everyone’s just saying what they feel and doing whatever they want, there’s no drama in the world. And there’s also no truth to it, ’cause that’s just not the truth.

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

I wanted to be an actor because I saw ‘Dog Day Afternoon,’ you know what I mean?