Martin Freeman has slammed Jim Carrey for his “narcissistic” method acting in the 1999 movie Man in the Moon.

“Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond,” a Netflix documentary released in 2017, documented Carrey’s efforts to depict late comic Andy Kaufman in the 1999 film. Freeman (“The Hobbit”) stated on the “Off Menu” podcast that Carrey’s performance was more crazy than method.

According to the documentary, the 59-year-old star should have been fired from set because he refused to break character during the four months of filming and insisted on being called “Andy” even when the cameras weren’t rolling.

“He should have got fired. Can you imagine if he had been anybody else, he would have been sectioned let alone fired, he would have been got rid of. It’s the ridiculous leeway given to some people.”

Freeman railed against “pretentious” Hollywood method acting, saying that British performers prefer to “get on with it and get it done.” Method acting is “a highly impractical way of working,” according to the “Sherlock” and “The Hobbit” star, “which is why I think it belongs more to the student and academic side than the practical ability side.”

“To be honest, it’s quite a pain in the [ass] when someone ‘loses themselves,’” Freeman added. “It is a massive pain in the [ass] because it’s no longer a craft and a job.”

Jim Carrey has been labelled as the most self-aggrandising, selfish and narcissistic person by Martin Freeman. Photo / Supplied

He fumed: “For me, and I’m genuinely sure Jim Carrey is a lovely and smart person, but it was the most self-aggrandising, selfish, f****** narcissistic b******* I have ever seen.

He called Carrey’s actions “highly amateurish” and added “the idea that anything in our culture would celebrate or support it is deranged, literally deranged.”

“I am a very lapsed catholic but if you believe in transubstantiation, then you’re going somewhere along the line of ‘I became the character,’ No, you didn’t, you’re not supposed to become the f***ing character because you’re supposed to be open to stuff that happens in real life because someone at some stage is going to say ‘Cut’ and there’s no point going, ‘What does ‘cut’ mean because I’m Napoleon?’ Shut up.”

“You need to keep grounded in reality,” he said, “and that’s not to say you don’t lose yourself in between action and cut, but the rest of it is absolute pretentious nonsense.”

“It’s highly amateurish; it’s essentially an amateurish notion because for me it’s not a professional attitude. Get the job done man, f***ing do your work.”

Jared Leto, who, like Carrey, has used certain divisive Method acting techniques, chimed in on the claims that he is an extreme Method actor earlier this year. “I appreciate the term, I think it’s a little cloudy, the definition,” he said. “And it, it could also be really pretentious as well. I was thinking of it as my job to show up and do the best work that I can. It’s my job to show up, do whatever I can, to be over-prepared. And to deliver. It’s also my job to show up and, you know, be a pleasure to work with. And, and, and, and to be collaborative, and to have a good experience on set.”

Carrey stated in the opening credits of Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond that Kaufman talked to him “telepathically” when he found out he’d be playing him.

“It was absurd, but it worked,” Carrey remarked. “That’s when Andy Kaufman appeared, touched me on the shoulder, and said, ‘Sit down, I’ll be working on my film.’ “I had no control over what happened after that.”

He also said that no one on set understood “what was real and not real half the time.”

He added: “I didn’t know what was real or not real. We just went with Andy and Tony and wherever their whim took you and the emotions were often very real.”

With top-bill roles under his belt, Freeman knows what it’s like to have the freedom that comes with stardom.

“Of course, I’m one of them, we all get cushty gigs, we are very fortunate to get a pass in certain situations where other people wouldn’t,” he said. “I understand that, but Christ, there is such a thing as pushing it.

“I think that’s what that Jim Carrey thing looks like to me, at the very, very end, he says something that sort of is pertaining to his Christ-like self-grandeur and makes me think at the very last second, Is all this a windup?”