Martin Freeman's journey as Bilbo Baggins has afforded him plenty of exciting challenges, but he admitted to us that he has to reject some of his favorite types of acting impulses while playing the winsome Hobbit in “The Battle of the Five Armies.”
“I know that I easily err towards the serious [choices],” he said in an interview with HitFix. “The choices I like to make are either dark or aggressive. But you have to go back on that a little bit when you're playing a Hobbit. They're not aggressive.”
Similarly, the 43-year-old actor finds his role as Lester Nygaard on FX's “Fargo” a pleasure because of his idiosyncratic turns — particularly a scene in the final episode where Lester shocks the audience with a twist.
“That's the reason I took the job,” Freeman said. “He's a nice guy who does very nasty things.”
Just before Freeman hosts “SNL” this weekend, check out our interview to see how he feels compares Bilbo's character to Frodo's. “The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies” opens in the U.S. December 17.