Since his breakthrough role in The Office, Martin Freeman has appeared in huge movies (The Hobbit trilogy, Black Panther), top-notch TV (Sherlock, Fargo), and quirkier films like Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright's The World's End. With his parenting sitcom Breeders returning to FX for a second season Monday (March 21), let's take a second to get to know the actor a little better.

1. As a kid, he was the number one squash player in the U.K. in his age group.

“I thought I was going to be a squash player until I was about fourteen,” Freeman revealed on BBC radio show Desert Island Discs. “I loved it. Until I started to not love it, because it’s a big commitment — a lot of training, a lot of travel. I wasn’t competitive enough. I’d be two games to love up and be on a match point and I’d immediately be thinking, ‘What’s this other guy feeling?’ So that tells me, in hindsight, that’s much more attuned to being an actor than it is to being a champion sportsman."

2. He says playing Tim in the original U.K. version of The Office "cast a long shadow" on his career.

"I mean, I’m very proud of The Office — it was one of the best things I’ll ever do," he told Time Out. "But you do become a slight victim of your own success in the sense that people think that’s you, that’s what you are and that’s what you’ll play forever. Before The Office I was playing quite diverse roles — not famously, but quite diverse — and because of the success of that show, there’s a feeling that 'you’re the everyman bloke.'"

3. In real life, he says he's not really "affable" like Tim at all.

"I think I’m a pretty decent person. I’m not horrible or unfriendly," he told The Guardian in 2018. "But I’m my own person and I think sometimes people think ‘affable’ is going to mean ‘doormat’ or ‘just grateful all the time for any attention’ — and I’m not. I’m not grateful for the attention — quite the opposite, 80% of the time, dependent on the context."

Explaining that he's not against giving interviews, Freeman continued: "This is work and I want people to see my work, so it would be silly for me to be arsey in this situation. But when you’re out and about, people have an idea of whoever you are and I think they have a different idea of, say, Ray Winstone than they would of me. Maybe not now — word’s got around by now."

4. He once had a very awkward encounter with a couple fans at a urinal.

Freeman shares the embarrassing anecdote right at the end of this super-funny clip from The Graham Norton Show, which also features Will Smith, Dame Helen Mirren, and Naomie Harris.

5. He grew up in a creative household in Teddington, southwest London.

"We weren’t the Von Trapps. My dad was a painter, we all painted," Freeman told the Financial Times. "Mum had been — she’d wanted to be an actor, when she was younger; life took over, the 1950s took over. But you know, we all knew we were allowed. That was a big thing."

“There were books in the house," he continued. "You always knew you were allowed to think, to express yourself. In fact, in the Freeman family you’d better f***ing express yourself because — ‘Don’t be boring. Don’t be a spectator. Bring something.’ Whether it was music or art, people did some stuff in my family. And thank God I found acting because I wasn’t a good enough painter or songwriter.”

6. His brother, Tim Freeman, was a singer-songwriter in the British indie-pop band Frazier Chorus.

According to Cherry Red Records, which reissued the band's 1989 debut album Sue, Martin actually based his The Office character on his musician brother.

Frazier Chorus released three albums between 1989 and 1995, and cracked the U.S. club and alternative charts with their 1990 single "Cloud 8."

7. He's close to his The World's End co-star Simon Pegg.

"I was always being mistaken for Simon Pegg earlier in my career, and him for me. We’re good mates. Simon is godfather to my son," Pegg said in a 2013 interview.

For the record, Freeman has a daughter and a son, both with his Sherlock co-star Amanda Abbington, whom he was in a relationship with from 2000 to 2016.

8. Before he was famous, he appeared in a 1998 music video by California rock band Faith No More.

Look out for Freeman enjoying a drink at a table to the side of the stage.

9. He has an irrational — or should that be rational? — fear of choking.

Freeman explained all, hilariously, during an appearance on The Graham Norton Show, revealing that he once choked while shooting U.K. panel show Never Mind the Buzzcocks, and he also choked during a social visit to Andy Serkis's house.

10. He quit drama school in his final year to take a behind-the-scenes role at London's National Theatre — and has no regrets.

“If someone says to you, ‘Do you want to come and work at the National Theatre?’ you don’t say, ‘Let me get back to you!’" Freeman said on Desert Island Discs. "I was doing very little at the National, I was basically set dressing, what they call a ‘spear carrier’ really. But you were spear carrying at the National Theatre, working with Michael Gambon and Simon Russell Beale and Diana Rigg. I realized that as soon as I’d got there that I’d made a good career choice.”

It's difficult to disagree with him, isn't it?

Do you have a favorite Martin Freeman moment or role?