NEW YORK - Yes, there is something of Bilbo Baggins in British actor Martin Freeman. That would be his nose.
"The look was sort of gradual," says Freeman (A Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, Britain's The Office), who plays the furry-footed title character in Peter Jackson's The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.
"Bilbo went through various faces, a couple of noses. The idea for a while was that he could have a snub nose, and then an almost Cyrano de Bergerac kind of shaped nose. And then it was decided my own nose was weird enough."
But it wasn't just his nose that hooked Jackson. The director's obsession with landing Freeman as the lead in the three-movie prequel to Lord of the Rings went to almost absurdist lengths. After two years of negotiations, Jackson got his green light, only to find out that Freeman was tied up shooting the series Sherlock, in which he plays Watson.
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