Steady Eddie

It's rare you chat about wearing dresses with a Hollywood actor. Such items of clothing are kept in the closet, along with any secrets about their sexuality. So Eddie Izzard, British comedian and actor, must come as a bit of a shock to the US movie industry. Here's a performer who happily lets the conversation wander over such diverse topics as being European (he's in favour), The Simpsons (he wants to be in the series), Benny Hill (a funny man whose work he grew up with), getting to know George Clooney (in Oceans 12) and, of course, frocks.

He doesn't feel the need to be funny all the time, possibly because he's firmly in charge of a career that he's steering towards straight acting. He's done plays and films in between stand-up tours, perhaps enjoying more success on stage than in the cinema where his roles have been interesting choices but too offbeat or, in the case of The Avengers, too bad to do him too much good.

Everyone likes Eddie for being bright, intelligent and amusing that a few duff movies can be forgiven. His latest US picture, My Super Ex-Girlfriend, is a flimsy piece of film fluff starring Uma Thurman as a scorned superhero who uses her special powers to gain revenge on the boyfriend who dumped her.

Izzard pops up from time to time as the villain, her high school sweetheart whom she deserted on obtaining her special powers. It's a role that requires little of him but an American accent. Otherwise it doesn't tax him greatly, although does give him vital exposure in a big Hollywood movie.

What you wonder is what the movie capital makes of him? "They seem to know I exist and do the stand-up. They seem to hold that in quite a high regard," he suggests.

They remember his Broadway success in A Day In The Death Of Joe Egg, and that he's doing several pilot shows for the FX channel. "They are curious, vaguely aware of me. I'm on the radar but not top of their A-list, probably up there on the C-list," he continues.

"I tell agents and managers there are certain things I'm not going to do. So there could be stuff coming in and they're saying 'this is just not going to happen'.

"I'm not getting huge amounts. It's not just piling up and I have 17 films to choose from, as I believe John Travolta once had. After Pulp Fiction, he said he had 17 roles. I haven't got that but it's progressing.

"I'm a relentless bastard, I'll keep going until all the tumblers line up. It might be a little bit of a slow approach, but there's no way I can speed it up. I just have to keep pushing, pushing, pushing.

"I need to be there. At the moment I'm playing on the outfield. I'm British European, I'll always be here, but I'm working out there at the moment."

He had little opportunity to add any improvisation or fresh lines to his character of Professor Bedlam in My Super Ex-Girlfriend as the script - by Don Payne, a long-time writer and executive producer on TV's The Simpsons - didn't allow for much deviation from the story. "You couldn't risk changing that much without moving the plot around. So it wasn't like I was running wild and free," he explains.

He enjoyed working with Uma Thurman, his co-star on the movie, Avengers, again. She really launches herself into a role, he says. "I'm not like that, I have to spend time shifting around before I commit. If I'm not happy, I won't commit."

"She was very helpful, throwing out technique to me because she's done this since she was a child. I'm an ingenue, a young kid, a baby in terms of film. I didn't ask her, she told me, but it was very handy stuff."

Making the villain distinctive by playing him in a dress wasn't an option. He issues a reminder that he's already done one film where he wore a dress (All The Queen's Men with Friends star Matt Le Blanc). "The film I need to do has to be something where it has a story and the dress has nothing to do with it," says Izzard.

"A bit like in the stand-up where I talk about being a transvestite in an oblique way. It needs to be a story where people think 'ah, this is all about transvestites' but then go 'oh, it's nothing to do with it'. I know what I have to do but don't know when I'm going to do it."

He wouldn't be playing himself but "someone who has a large slice of myself in that character, but it wouldn't be me," he says. In his stand-up, he's found some fun places to go with the subject of transgender.

"People can examine it and be aware of the sexuality thing, and also feel it's not attacking them or embarrassing them. I make it a wannabe place, say people want to be Captain Transvestite now. It makes it more fun and takes away the scary nature."

For him, the most dangerous thing for a transvestite to do is go out in the street wearing a dress and be everyday about it. "In rock and roll people were throwing on dresses back in the Seventies but that just comes under a theatrical banner," he says.

"Me doing it on stage, I thought there would be a big reaction. But when you actually go out in the street to go and buy a Mars bar in a dress, that's the most radical thing."

His other big US movie of the summer was The Wild, an animated feature in which he provided the voice of a koala. Unfortunately, another animated movie, Madagascar, covered much the same ground and left The Wild trailing in its wake.

"People seemed to like what I did but it didn't hit so high. Doing an animated movie like that is like The Simpsons, which I want to do. It's the perfect thing and a great way of doing comedy without getting my face all over it," he says.

"I try not to do comedy roles very visibly and put my stand-up on the thing. It puts a restriction on you in dramatic roles. But if you do an animated thing, you can do very weird comedy and have a character do weird things.

"I do think audiences are reluctant to see people who do very weird surreal comedy do a dramatic thing."

He doesn't plan to stop doing stand-up, playing 100-300 seaters in Los Angeles or wherever he happens to be, a big contrast to his last arena tour. "I don't want rock and roll to play where it wants to and comedy to be restricted," he says.

His next big screen role is in the next Oceans film, Oceans 13, once more starring with George Clooney, Brad Pitt and Matt Damon. "I enjoyed hanging out with the guys," he says.

"I only had a couple of scenes but I got to know the guys and they've written me back into the next film. I think I only have one scene but I'm very happy to come back in and do that."

* My Super Ex-Girlfriend (12A) opens in cinemas on Friday.