When you're a famous stand-up comic renowned for spontaneous wit and generous make-up, the prospects for being taken seriously as a film actor are slim from the outset. Having registered in the American market, winning two Emmys last year for his Dress To Kill video, and even performed successfully in French, it's a surprise that Eddie Izzard bothered. But the 38-year-old former street performer is due to crop up on the big screen a great deal over the coming year, starting with his role as a forensic scientist in British conspiracy thriller The Criminal.
Your acting career in general seems to be going very well these days.
I've still got a lot to learn, especially technique, I'm taking lessons. Then again I couldn't do stand-up when started out, not to save my life, so that doesn't put me off. But I've wanted to be an actor since I was seven. So it was part of the plan I guess.
Have you found it hard to be taken seriously?
Well I totally expected that. That's why I chose never to do sitcom on TV. When stand-up was taking off I decided to stay off TV for the prime reason that I didn't want to get too well known, which has made it easier to do something else now. In Britain a lot of people still don't really know who I am. It's like, "Oh yeah, he's that guy on some chat show, I don't know what he does, he puts on lipstick doesn't he?" I think America's like that as well - so not that many people associate me with stand-up here either.
Your look in The Criminal seems a long way from your stage image.
Yeah, that's how my dad looked when he was 30. I'm nicking his look.
Did you enjoy playing against your established persona?
I don't really see it like that because offstage, comedians are really solemn bastards anyway. They develop comedy as a social tool at school, then you go professional and you do it all the time on stage, and you become less and less funny off stage, so you become a solemn bastard. My natural "me" is sort of fairly serious. So playing a solemn bastard on film is sort of a change, it's easier.
Were you attracted by the conspiracy-thriller elements?
Oh yeah. I love film thrillers and it was fun to get in there and play a lie - hopefully I've got away with it. I'm sort of fascinated by real-life conspiracies, but I don't get totally into them because it just takes too much time. There are people who seem to spend their whole life locked around what's going on with UFOs in Area 51, or whatever. It's just an area! There's more to life!
What are you doing next?
You've still got Shadow Of The Vampire to come out here, about the making of Nosferatu. I play the big-assed guy who's a bad actor. And I'm in Berlin at the moment shooting a film called The Cat's Meow directed by Peter Bogdanovich. I'm playing Charlie Chaplin. It's based on the story of William Randolph Hearst shooting someone on his boat trip. Supposedly it had something to do with Chaplin dallying with Marion Davies, who was Hearst's mistress. No one really knows what happened.
What does all this acting mean for your comedy career?
Nothing at all really. I'm stopping touring for two or three years and so I've got an open period if great roles come in. I want Kevin Spacey's cast-offs - after several other actors have turned them down. I could do stand-up till I drop though. I'm learning German so I can do gigs in Berlin.
So how is it going?
Er, mein is sehr gut, er. Just say, "he spoke very good German", will you?
