Читать книгу An A-Z of JRR Tolkien's The Hobbit - Sarah Oliver - Страница 19

 Name: Bilbo Baggins

 Alias: Elf-friend, Ringbearer

 Race: Hobbit

 Played by: Martin Freeman and Ian Holm

 Character description: Bilbo is a stereotypical hobbit. Hobbits are jolly, little people, roughly half the size of humans. Clean-shaven, they are smaller than dwarves. They have hairy feet with leathery soles and they dress in yellow and green.

Bilbo is the main character in The Hobbit and becomes a hero adventurer after a wizard called Gandalf calls by his hobbit-hole. Although not interested in adventure, Bilbo ends up being given the job of burglar and goes on a quest with 13 dwarves.

Several actors have played Bilbo in the past. In The Lord of the Rings trilogy he was played by Ian Holm and in the 1977 animated version of The Hobbit, Orson Bean took on the role. Orson also played Bilbo in the 1980 animated version of The Return of the King.

The actor chosen by Peter Jackson to play Bilbo in his Hobbit movies was Martin Freeman. In a statement released to the press, Peter said: ‘Despite the various rumours and speculation surrounding this role, there has only ever been one Bilbo Baggins for us.

‘There are few times in your career when you come across an actor who you know was born to play a role, but that was the case as soon as I met Martin. He is intelligent, funny, surprising and brave – exactly like Bilbo, and I feel incredibly proud to be able to announce that he is our Hobbit.’

Before being cast in The Hobbit Martin was best known in the UK for playing Dr John Watson in Sherlock and Tim in The Office. In the USA he was best known for his part in the movie Love Actually (2003), but as soon as he was cast as Bilbo that all changed. Back in January 2012, he admitted to talk show host Graham Norton: ‘I have had ten years to prepare since The Office, but we were on holiday recently and I realised that maybe this time next year there won’t be many places where I can go where The Hobbit won’t have been seen. It’s a funny thing [fame] and I have a troubled relationship with that sort of stuff.’

Martin had auditioned for one of Peter Jackson’s past movies, The Lovely Bones (2009). He had wanted to play the murderer George Harvey but Stanley Tucci got the part instead. At the time he was gutted, but it really was a blessing in disguise: had he been successful, he might not have been able to play Bilbo because people would have associated him with that role.

Initially, he actually had to turn down the part of Bilbo because he was already committed to playing Watson in the second series of the BBC drama Sherlock, but he did say that if something could be done with the timings, then he would like to be involved. Because of the various filming delays in the months that followed, it turned out that he was able to take on the role as he could film Sherlock in the gaps. He explained what happened in a New Zealand press conference in early 2011: ‘I put myself on tape for it early last year and I’d always had very generous feedback from the team that they would like me to do it ultimately, which was a very nice vote of confidence and certainly relaxed me a bit. I thought I was not going to be able to do it because of other commitments in Britain then it was made that I could do it. So yeah, it’s genuinely flattering and it means that I get to do two things [The Hobbit and Sherlock] that I really love this year.’