TheHerald.co.uk – Miles Fielder
He’s conquered stand-up comedy; now Eddie Izzard wants to conquer Hollywood. From his Perrier win at the Edinburgh Fringe in 1991 to his double Emmy Award coup in America in 2000 for the concert film Dress to Kill, the flamboyant part-time transvestite (and full-time entertainer) has proved himself to be one of Britain’s most popular comedians.
He’s received rapturous applause while touring everywhere from London’s West End to New York’s Broadway ? via Paris, where he famously astounded his audience by performing his entire show in French. Currently based in Los Angeles, Izzard, now 44, is busier than ever, splitting his time between regular stand-up gigs (he’s just finished a run at LA’s Coronet theatre, where he revived his 1990s radio show One Word Improv) and making movies, the latest of which is the superhero spoof My Super Ex-Girlfriend.
“I’m not sure exactly when I’ll tour again,” he says, “but I’ll do that forever. At the moment, I’m concentrating on punching a hole in LA, as it were.”
Today, though, Izzard is taking a brief break from hole-punching. Dressed in a summer suit and sporting a neatly clipped moustache and goatee beard, he has flown into London to promote the new film. In it, he plays Professor Bedlam, a Lex Luthor-esque evil genius who’s less interested in ruling the world than in destroying his arch-enemy, the gorgeous and invincible G-Girl, played by Uma Thurman.
Bedlam is a pantomime villain role, which to Izzard’s credit he plays with a modicum of subtlety. It’s a measure of his determination to make good in Hollywood ? and more broadly in film acting ? that he takes even this kind of lightweight role in a popcorn movie seriously.