Martin Freeman played Bilbo Baggins in Peter Jackson’s film trilogy based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit.
Freeman portrayed Bilbo in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, The Desolation of Smaug, and The Battle of the Five Armies. The three films were released between 2012 and 2014 and expanded Tolkien’s relatively short novel into a large-scale cinematic production.
Ian Holm played an older Bilbo in the same film series and had previously portrayed Bilbo in Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy. That casting creates a frequent source of confusion: Freeman is the principal young Bilbo in The Hobbit films, while Holm appears as the older version.
The film adaptation also includes material drawn from Tolkien’s appendices to The Lord of the Rings, especially the wider conflict involving the Necromancer and the White Council. The central quest, however, remains the dwarves’ attempt to reclaim Erebor.