Martin Freeman as Bilbo Baggins
Martin Freeman is set to see his career rocket after this week as he takes on the role of Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.
Freeman will lead the cast in what is his biggest role to date as director Peter Jackson takes us back to Middle Earth for the first time in nearly a decade.
Freeman has already enjoyed an acting career that has spanned fifteen years and has seen him split his time between TV and film.
He kicked off his career in the likes of I Just Want To Kiss You and The Low Down until a show called The Office came along in 2001.
He took on the role of Tim Canterbury in the series and appeared in all fourteen episodes of the show and this really was the platform that launched his acting career.
He continued to balance TV work with movies and we saw him appear in the likes of Love Actually, Shaun of the Dead and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy as well as TV series Hardware.
IN more recent years we have seen him star in Nativity and Swinging With the Finkels before making a triumphant return to TV with Sherlock.
The series was a contemporary adaptation of the Sherlock Holmes story and saw Freeman play Watson alongside Benedict Cumberbatch in the title role.
The movie has been a critical and rating smash for the BBC and really raised the profile of both actors over the last couple of years.
For his role Freeman has won a Bafta and been nominated for an Emmy as the series also found success in the States.
But he leaves TV temporarily behind this week as he takes on the role of Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey - which is one of the most anticipated movies of the year.
He takes over the role of Bilbo from Ian Holm, who will be featuring in the movie, as the Tolkien novel is adapted for the big screen.
And while the like of Ian McKellan, Andy Serkis and Cate Blanchett are reprising their roles Freeman is not the only new face on the cast list.
Richard Armitage, James Nesbitt, Evangeline Lily, Luke Evans and Aidan Turner are all new additions to the cast list.
A curious Hobbit, Bilbo Baggins, journeys to the Lonely Mountain with a vigorous group of Dwarves to reclaim a treasure stolen from them by the dragon Smaug.
And we are going to be seeing plenty of Freeman in this role over the next couple of years as The Desolation of Smaug and There and Back Again will be released in 2013 and 2014.
Away from The Hobbit the actor has also completed work on Svengali and is currently working on The World's End with Simon Pegg and Nick Frost.
As for TV work Freeman will also be reprising the role of Watson when Sherlock returns to the small screen late next year.
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is released 13the December
Tagged in The Hobbit Martin Freeman