Martin Freeman

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.

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

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.

I have no opinion on 48 frames a second at all. I'd be completely unsuitable to talk about that.

I was on record before I did 'The Hobbit,' saying I don't care at all about 3D. And I suppose I should now say I care a lot about 3D. I've always loved 3D, I think everything should be 3D, and I think it's just a shame 'The Godfather' wasn't in 3D.

I love eating. I mean, I really, really love eating.

'Sherlock' is one of the biggest things I will do, ever - we could never have predicted that level of insanity around the series.

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

There are about 20 people in my life that I want to love me, and none of them are the 'Daily Mail.'

My main priority in any job is when is the soonest I can get back to the three people I love most in the world.

I wasn't like a Fifties dad.

I'm quite a disciplinarian: I can be a shouter. But I can be a very demonstrative kisser and hugger.

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

I like life to surprise me.

It's more fun to keep stuff secret.

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

I can live without endless television programmes and films just centered around computers. I can sort of live without that.

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

Without sounding overly pompous about it, I don't really trust certainty in anything, actually. Especially as I get older. Except love. I'm certain of love, I guess.

There's a difference between the parts that I play and who I am and who people think I am. There's quite a big discrepancy sometimes between those things.

I hadn't grown up with 'The Hobbit;' I hadn't grown up with 'Lord of The Rings,' anything like that.

I like being called 'Mr. Freeman' occasionally.

I grew up in the suburbs, so I remember arriving at Waterloo and seeing Big Ben and the coloured lights on top of the Southbank Centre and thinking, 'Wow!'

Michael Caine, Tom Courtenay and Al Pacino made me want to act. I've always been interested in men with a vulnerable side.

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.

The best of American television is thought-provoking, original, brilliant, exciting - from 'The Sopranos' on, whether it's 'The Wire' or 'Breaking Bad' or 'House of Cards,' they're fantastic pieces of art.

Television is where the great movies that used to exist have gone.

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

If you're alive for more than five minutes, you're going to be disappointed.

I don't want to sound like a grumpy old man, but nothing winds me up more than people saying, 'Chill out' to me when I'm irritated!

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 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.

We all know the films that have affected us from the age of nine onwards, that mean so much to us.

I think the only directing I'd be any good at is theatre directing. It's the only thing I can see myself doing.

Like any friendship or marriage, familiarity breeds more contempt, and love, and everything.

I think people just like seeing friendship. I think people like seeing people who just drive each other up the wall, but at same time, can't live without each other.

I think what 'The Hobbit' and Middle-earth deal in are quite universal and timeless themes of honour and love and friendship... so they're things that do resonate with people.