Martin Freeman continues to capture audience attention and critical acclaim with his versatile acting in comedies, dramas, and epic fantasy adventures.
Moviegoers last saw him starring as J.R.R. Tolkien's brave Bilbo Baggins in Peter Jackson's The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, which grossed over $1 billion worldwide. His performance brought him the Empire Award for Best Actor. He continues Bilbo's tale in Mr. Jackson's The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, opening in December 2013, and The Hobbit: There and Back Again, to be released in December 2014.
Mr. Freeman won a BAFTA Award, and was an Emmy Award nominee, for his portrayal of John Watson in the U.K. television series Sherlock, on which he stars opposite Benedict Cumberbatch. Two seasons of the show have aired thus far, and a third is in production.
Among his other notable television work has been starring as Jim in the celebrated original U.K. series version of The Office, with Ricky Gervais, for which he received BAFTA and British Comedy Award nominations; staring in the series Hardware, for which he won the Golden Rose Award for Best Male Comedy Performance; and Joe Wright's BAFTA Award-winning miniseries The Last King, with his fellow The World's End actor Eddie Marsan.
Mr. Freeman trained at the University of London's Central School of Speech & Drama. His extensive stage work has included Royal National Theatre productions of Volpone, directed by Matthew Warchus, and Mother Courage and Her Children, directed by Jonathan Kent; The Comedians, directed by Sean Holmes with the Oxford Stage Company; The Exonerated, directed by Bob Balaban at Riverside Studios; the Pulitzer Prize Award-winning Clybourne Park, directed by Dominic Cook, at the Royal Court Theatre; and Jump to Cow Heaven, directed by William Kerley, which won the top prize at the Edinburgh Festival in 1997.
He was part of the ensemble cast in Richard Curtis' Love Actually, which has become a worldwide film favorite. Moviegoers have also seen him in the lead roles of Garth Jennings' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Jake Paltrow's The Good Night, the latter with his fellow The World's End actor Simon Pegg; Debbie Isitt's improvisational comedies Confetti and Nativity!; Justin Theroux's Dedication; Peter Greenaway's Nightwatching, as the painter Rembrandt, and Anthony Minghella's Breaking and Entering.
Mr. Freeman previously teamed with The World's End director Edgar Wright on Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz.
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