Marsan won the National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Supporting Actor, and the London Film Critics Circle Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in Happy-Go-Lucky. Marsan also won the latter for his performance in Vera Drake.
For his performance in Happy-Go-Lucky, Marsan also earned another nominations, such as the Detroit Film Critics Society Award for Best Supporting Actor, New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Supporting Actor, and the Women Film Journalists Awards for Best Supporting Actor.
In 2014, Marson earned the Best British Actor award at the 2014 Edinburgh International film festival and the Best Actor award at the VOICES film festival at Vologda, in Russia for his performance in Still Life.
He left school at 16 and initially served an apprenticeship as a printer, before beginning his career in theatre, and moving to television and film. He trained at the Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts, graduating in 1991, and went on to study under Sam Kogan and The Kogan Academy of Dramatic Arts, of which Marsan is a patron.
Marsan's first television appearance was in 1992, as a "yob", in the London Weekend Television series The Piglet Files. One of his more significant earliest television appearances was in the popular mid-1990s BBC sitcom Game On as a bungling bank robber. Marsan went on to have roles in Casualty, The Bill, Grass, Kavanagh QC, Grange Hill, Silent Witness, Ultimate Force, Southcliffe, and more. He also voiced the Manticore in the Merlin episode Love in the Time of Dragons.
He has appeared in Gangster No. 1 (2000), “Ultimate Force” (2002), Mission: Impossible III (2006), Sixty Six (2006), V for Vendetta (2006), Hancock (2008), Sherlock Holmes (2009), War Horse (2011), Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (2011), The Best of Men (2012), and The World's End (2013). He also appears in Showtime's TV series Ray Donovan (2013) as Terry, and as Mr Norrell in the BBC drama Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (2015).
Marsan has appeared in numerous and varied film roles, as the main villain in the 2008 superhero film Hancock alongside Will Smith and as Inspector Lestrade in Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes. His other films include Sixty Six, Gangs of New York, 21 Grams, The Illusionist, V for Vendetta, Gangster No. 1, Miami Vice, Mission: Impossible III, I Want Candy, Vera Drake, Happy-Go-Lucky, Tyrannosaur, and Heartless.
