Entertainment Weekly

Martin Freeman Does Not Want to be Your Friend.

You may know him from ''Sherlock.'' You may love him from ''The Hobbit.'' But if you meet the star of FX's ''Fargo'' on the street, you may not want to ask for his autograph.




In the taxonomy of Hollywood, Martin Freeman is the kind of actor typically categorized under the genus Everyman. He isn't the dashing action-hero type, nor is he the first guy a Hollywood studio exec would think to put in a big, splashy rom-com (notwithstanding some naked meet-cute moments in 2003's Love Actually). He's the guy who gets picked to play characters such as the wry, sweet cubicle drone Tim Canterbury on the original version of The Office, the steadfast best pal John Watson on the smash BBC series Sherlock, and the good-hearted Bilbo Baggins in Peter Jackson's blockbuster Hobbit trilogy. In some ways, Freeman's latest role, Lester Nygaard on FX's new crime drama Fargo, is a departure for the 44-year-old British actor — there's the thick Midwestern accent, for one thing, which he's honed partly by watching YouTube videos of real Minnesotans. Still, the whole point of the character, a meek insurance salesman who breaks bad and gets entangled in an escalating series of grisly crimes, is that he's the type of self-effacing regular Joe you'd normally look right past. As Freeman puts it drily, ''I don't get cast as the guy who steps off a yacht in a white linen suit with a martini. It would not really be my function to be the smooth guy — unless something s---ty happens to the smooth guy.''

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