Martin Freeman Quotes

If you do an American TV series, before the audition you sign away the next five years of your life.

You sign for a sequel for everything these days, just in case, options. In the past, you avoided them like the plague because it meant somewhere down the road you couldn't take a job because you had to do a sequel. Now it's a feature of pretty much any feature you do.

When you accept a role in a pilot, you automatically sign up for five years. You think it's scary to walk down the aisle? Try signing a five-year contract for a show you may not want to be part of down the road.

I'm trying to fight typecasting as hard as I can, while I have time.

I think any actor in their right mind is afraid of getting pigeonholed.

I'm happy with my career and I'm not going to have the trouble of being typecast.

There are actors who aren't on the cover of magazines but still decide what work they want and when they want it. I want a family one day. So I dream of really being able to decide when to work and when not to.

I think, especially when you're on TV, once you become associated with one genre or the other, it's near impossible to break into the other one, even if you have experience with both.

I don't really worry about being typecast much. I mean, everyone in Hollywood is typecast to a degree.

If you're in a series, you can't quit, you can't work in the theatre and you can't do a movie when you like.

I worked in television; I'm the Failed Pilot Queen, I've done so many television shows, pilots, theater ... when you do it for so long, I'm telling you, you get to the point where it becomes varied because you take what's available for a number of reasons. It's just an occupational hazard.

The choice of roles as I grow older gets more and more limited, so if I pin myself to one kind of part I would get in trouble. So, these oddball ladies came along for me to do - I guess Terry Gilliam helped in this respect. I have found them more interesting, flashier and I get more mileage out of them.

When a party shall make bond or conveyance, what he has named by word-of-mouth that shall hold good

I don't subscribe to the thinking that being typecast is a bad thing.

Someone who signs a contract must respect it.

At the end of the day, everyone is repsonsible for their own contracts. Nobody forced us to sign them.

If I get too type-cast, that's the worst possible scenario.

I initially went into 'Coronation Street' for three months. If they had said back then, 'Do you want to do it for six years?' I probably would have said, 'I don't think so.'

A promise is a commitment to do something later, and a vow is a binding commitment to begin doing something now and to continue to do it for the duration of the vow. Some vows, or contracts, are for life; others are for limited periods of time.

I feel like being an actor it is a great way to do your job and be a parent, because you have a lot of freedom. You have a job and then the job ends and than maybe you don't have another job for a while or maybe you chose not have another job for a while. For an actor, it's like maybe you don't see your kid for two weeks while you are filming but then you might have three months off where you are at home every day and picking him up from school. I find it's a great thing.

I can’t see myself pursuing acting strictly outside of what I’m contractually obligated to do.

I got married three days after graduation, and the first thing I did what I was expected to do which was to work on a small newspaper. So we were in Chicago where my husband worked for the Chicago Sun-Times and we were having dinner with his editor and he said 'So what are you 'gonna do honey?' and I said 'I'm going to work on a newspaper', and he said 'I don't think so", because Newspaper Guild regulations said that I couldn't work on the same newspaper as my husband.

Depending on what stage I'm at in my career, I either work or don't work because I've been offered one thing.

I can do a limited amount of things and that's what I do and I feel comfortable doing it and I have no particular desire to do anything else as an actor.

I'm not George Clooney, so I can't just pick and choose. I take roles where they occur.