The Brand brand
9:06am Saturday 26th April 2008
Russell Brand gets to show his nipples in his latest film, although the world's sexiest vegetarian says he would be happy to do a full frontal. He talks to Steve Pratt about stand-up comedy and meeting the Beckhams
RUSSELL Brand is discussing the art of acting. There is no point, he asserts, casting a 7ft Chinaman to play the part of a little Dutch girl. When a role calls for a cocky bloke with long, shaggy, backcombed hair and an eye for a pretty lady, there's not really much doubt who you're gonna call. Brand, of course.
This is a performer who's a former heroin addict and alcoholic, whose bedroom antics provoke such excited headlines as BRAND BEDS A VIRGIN and get him voted S**gger of the Year two years running, as well as the world's sexiest vegetarian.
He is a man of contradictions - and not just being named by GQ magazine as most stylish man of the year 2006, followed by least stylish man in 2007 and 2008. Half an hour in his company is entertaining and informative. He gives a good interview, managing to promote his film and dish out enough personal titbits to satisfy gossipmongers.
He is, though, very late. "Hello, sorry to keep you waiting," says Brand entering the room. I doubt he knows exactly how late he is - three hours, for your information - as he's spending several days being moved here, there and everywhere by the press people working on his new film, Forgetting Sarah Marshall.
I'd understand if he didn't even know what day it was.
What can be forgotten, although he'll remind you, is that he trained as an actor and, although he found fame through stand-up and TV presenting, he's been no slouch at being someone else since making his theatre debut at 15 as Fat Sam in the musical, Bugsy Malone.
That goes against his acting theories. No one would call him fat these days, with his skinny jeans and bird's nest hair that looks like the hedge through which people have been pulled backwards.
After smaller parts in St Trinians and Penelope, Brand has a starring role in the US comedy, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, which is about a newly-dumped chap who's ends up on holiday at the same Hawaiian resort as his ex and her new boyfriend, rock singer Aldous Snow.
Brand plays, not the rejected lover, but the outrageous rock star.
As this is sunny Hawaii, Aldous spends much time in a state of undress. Brand says he had to "get a bit fit, but I'm not naturally given to lying about sans gear. But the script did justify it, visible nipples".
Would he have gone as far as US actor Jason Segel in the opening scene. "With the willy out?" he says in a reference to Segel's full frontal exposure.
"Yeah, if people want to see it. There is a waiting list and a series of trials, like Herculean labours, for them at the end of it."
He feels that Aldous is similar to him in a way which is where the 7ft Chinaman remarks comes in. "Generally speaking, you are doing a variation of you. Because there's a variety of choice when it comes to actors and actresses, you get people who are similar to the roles you want them to play."
There's a feeling he's acting all the time, giving the public the person they know from the gossip columns and outrageous performances. That's the Brand brand and one that he appears to love playing up to.
Stand-up stands him in good stead for acting, he feels. The makers of Forgetting Sarah Marshall encouraged spontaneity and improvisation. "I had a fantastic time. The editor of the film told me that many of the lines I was most proud of when I saw the edit were only ever said once," he says.
"Stand-up makes you more confident.
When I do stand-up shows I tend to improvise for the first hour, so I'm very comfortable with that. To me, it's the core of what I do and I'll always return to it.
"I'm grateful for something that's not contingent on other people, particularly when I was unemployable.
With stand-up, you can just go and do it. It certainly provides a good schooling."
His first day on the Forgetting Sarah Marshall set was nerveracking for other reasons - he had to sing in front of 150 extras and a massive technical crew. "I can sing but that's not what I'd naturally choose to do. I was well scared that day. But I've done harder things than that, I've performed before the Queen of England," he says.
I don't know what our monarch made of him but Hollywood is impressed enough to offer him two more movie roles, including one that teams him with Adam Sandler.
He knows his worth to the Americans. "Me dressed up like Mick Jagger as a bondage scarecrow talking in the manner that I do has a certain value,"
he says.
He has no intention of leaving these shores for good as he loves doing his BBC Radio Two show and his column in The Guardian. "I'm really a very English sort of a person. You realise that when you go away. I love this country and doing telly and standup.
And my cat loves it here, I don't think he'd like to move," he says.
He liked the US approach to the comedy in Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Not just the fact that they "didn't want gooning clowning". More that they weren't as familiar with Russell Brand as we are in this country. "So when I came into the audition dressed preposterously, they thought a mentally-ill person had kicked the door down," he says.
IT was always my intention to act and I did it all those years ago when I was still a junkie.
I've always wanted to do what I'm doing now and what I'll hopefully continue to do. I'll be in films and do stand-up like Richard Pryor. That's the next stage in my career, touch wood, all being well and good."
A film of his bestselling memoir, My Booky Wook, is planned. He and Michael Winterbottom have already written the first script. "My Filmy Film doesn't work so well, does it? Michael is a genius and won't, I think, allow me to give the film a stupid title. The difficult thing about working with someone so talented in his medium is that we can't really boss him about because he obviously knows better in that situation."
Despite his hectic social life, he's a single gentlemen at the time of writing. "It's more in keeping with my lifestyle," he says. He mixes in exalted circles.
He met the Beckhams in LA. "Hanging out is a generous description. I bumped into him is perhaps more fair. He was kind enough to invite me to join him and gave me his phone number. I reacted like a 12-year-old, shrieking.
"Victoria came on to the Radio Two show with the rest of the Spice Girls. She's a delight. She's proper funny, a really cool person, I liked her a lot."
Brand knows exactly what he's doing, well able to play the media at its own game. "You have to have a strata of your own identity and I think one of the tricks, at the risk of revealing myself, is that some of the stuff that seems intimate and personal is actually quite disposable. Because I spent a lot of time in rehab, I've done a lot of therapy. People say stuff in the book is profoundly personal and I go you should see what I left out'."
■ Forgetting Sarah Marshall (15) is now showing in cinemas.