"I thought California would be all surfing but there is a weird cross-purposes thing there. Everyone is Democratic but Reagan was the Governor and Schwarzenegger is now the Governor.
"I was smoking a cigar for the movie but now I’m smoking cigarettes. And speaking in an English accent. Because I’m a bad man. If you look at Star Wars all the British actors playing good guys had American accents. But then there’s Darth Vader who was very American. He should have been uber-English. It’s a post-revolutionary thing. Now if you were French it can go either way. Because they helped America during the revolution and they were the allies of the Polish and were meant to be more sexy. But Americans don’t really like them, so it’s very confusing. In answer to your question yes, no and maybe.”
By now, of course, I can’t remember what the question was. Welcome to the wonderful world of Eddie Izzard, boys and girls. I’m having a perfectly lovely time sitting beside the distinctly bleary-eyed comedian in London’s Soho Hotel but it is, nonetheless, a bit like wandering home to find a nude descending your staircase or waking up in a late Picasso painting.
Today, the 44-year-old is promoting his latest foray into Hollywood pictures. My Super Ex-Girlfriend, a new comedy from director Ivan Reitman (Ghostbusters) seeks to provide a knowing companion piece for Superman Returns in the same way Mars Attacks once fired paper airplanes at Independence Day.
Uma Thurman, the latest dishy bird to be made a Commander of Arts and Letters in France, plays the eponymous wronged heroine. When drippy ex-boyfriend Luke Wilson runs off with the lower maintenance Anna Faris, Uma soon puts her superpowers in the service of vengeance and starts throwing sharks through their bedroom window. Mr. Izzard, as you may or may not have deciphered from his comments above, essays Uma’s arch-nemesis, who, in time honoured comic book tradition was once her dearest friend. It’s Eddie’s second time working with the actress following their respective turns in the much-maligned The Avengers back in 1998.
“Uma is an unusual person,” he tells me. “Even apart from her name being Uma. She launches herself at her work. She’s a bit like Juliette Lewis that way. She commits. I’m not like that. I am happy to sit back and spend time shifting about. So Uma was very helpful. She was throwing out tips on technique to me. She has been doing this stuff since she was a kid and I’m like this ingénue. She would say look there and there. Here are the eye lines. It was very handy stuff. And somebody has to get off with Uma Thurman.”
It’s tempting to relate Eddie’s entertaining verbal torrents to his dyslexia, but his unusual upbringing almost certainly played an equal part. He was born in Yemen shortly before the British withdrew from there. (His dad worked for BP and his mum was a nurse.) In 1963, the family moved to Bangor in County Down, then on to Wales three years later.
“I quite like Wales”, he says. “The smells were very distinctive. There was a lot of Tom Jones on the radio. I am all for Wales. I hate imperialism. I am really pleased with their language being used like a fuck you, so outsiders can’t understand what you’re saying. But my happiest memories are of Northern Ireland. We used to run mad there. After we left Bangor, my mum died. That was the beginning of all my confusion. That’s when I decided I wanted to perform.”
I know it seems facile to talk about the serious or depressed individual behind the clown’s mask, but in the case of Eddie Izzard, he invites as much himself. Tellingly, this afternoon, he mentions his mother, unprompted, at least four times. In 2003, his performance in a Broadway production of A Day In The Death Of Joe Egg, a play depressing enough to make Endgame seems like a panto with Twink, would earn him a nomination for a Tony award. He plans a further less-than-cheery stint on the New York boards as Macbeth.
Stand-up, he claims, was merely a fantastical escape route from the pain of losing his mother so early to cancer. Fortunately, he picked a good moment to exercise his unique brand of arch auto-therapy.
During the early nineties when people who didn’t know any better insisted upon calling comedy the new rock ‘n’ roll, Mr. Izzard’s surreal schtick swiftly became a cult sensation, landing him an Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement within months of his stage debut. Chalking up early brownie points for artistic purity, he resisted doing television for ages until Clive Anderson persuaded him to appear on his chat show in 1994. He’s clocked up seventy appearances since.
“Oh, I’ve forgotten about all that ages ago”, he cries. “I love being a television prostitute.”
Well, a gentleman is entitled to change his mind. Besides, with Eddie, contradiction is part of the charm. He’s a bloke’s bloke. He supports Crystal Palace, reads a lot of military history, likes girls and wants to get hitched someday. Famously, he also enjoys women’s clothes and has a vast collection of nail polishes.
“At first, I thought there would be a big reaction to it,” he recalls. “But nobody cares what you wear onstage. It’s a far more radical thing to go out and buy a Mars Bar in a dress.”
He’s similarly open about his private life without ever being ungallant with the details.
“I’m generally very equitable in relationships,” he says. “Even when I try to end them, I try to do so in an equitable way, as I like to get on with people. But I have worked out that the only way to stop loving someone is to hate them. Hatred seems to be the only thing strong enough to kill love. You probably need to use the lever of hatred to reach indifference. And that’s where you want to get to in these situations.”
Having conquered the comedy circuit and carved out a burgeoning celluloid career in films such as Shadow Of The Vampire, Velvet Goldmine, The Cat’s Meow and The Aristocrats, Eddie’s latest project is demystifying the European Union. He recently accompanied Tony Blair on a fact-finding mission to Brussels for The Guardian and has also appeared on Question Time as a likeable EU poster-boy.
“Yeah, my European thing,” he nods. “In Ireland it’s not so bad, but in England they seem to think that Europeans are coming to eat their toes. A lot of people don’t want to know anything about Europe. It can be boring but when I went over, just to enlighten myself, you see there are just people in corridors not toe cannibals. And the European Parliament may not be as exciting as the wars we used to have, but we are better off that way.”
And I stroll out into the sunshine wondering what would count against him most if he were to opt for a political career in Britain – love for the EU or love of frocks. I think we all know the answer to that.