A London native, Freeman started out in advertising but his heart was already on the stage as he spent his spare hours in amateur theater groups. He discovered that the government offered grants for teacher training and that such training included drama. Though equipped to teach drama, Freeman found himself teaching everything but as a substitute during acting lulls. He worked in repertory in England and Scotland with increasing frequency before going on to understudy and play small roles at London's Royal Court Theatre. Freeman was a founding member of Joint Stock, a leading "radical" theater company that put on such productions as David Hare's "Fanshen" and Howard Brenton's "Epsom Downs". He next joined the National Theatre for Hare's "Plenty" and other productions before segueing to British TV and films.
Freeman made his film debut with a supporting role in the gangster drama "The Long Good Friday" (1980) and quickly followed up with "The Dogs of War" (also 1980) before searching for that mythical ark. Unfortunately the success of "Raiders" failed to place him on the Hollywood A-list. (He had expected to appear in the "prequel" but Lucas and Spielberg went with another story.) Still, he kept busy as a character player, appearing in both European and Hollywood features as well as in a number of TV projects in the US and the UK.