Controversial comedian and film star Russell Brand talks to Stephen Jewell about his latest autobiography, Shakespeare and how he was born for fame.
On the opening page of his new autobiography, Booky Wook 2, Russell Brand brazenly declares that he was born to be famous. But whether it is the British tabloid press hauling him and Jonathan Ross over the coals after their prank call to Fawlty Towers actor Andrew Sachs went horribly wrong or being arrested after confronting a photographer who attempted to take lurid shots of his then-girlfriend-now-wife Katy Perry, you have to wonder if the Essex-born stand-up comedian-turned-film star believes that his celebrity status is all it's cracked up to be.
"It's not really, mate," he admits. "It's strange when you're famous. You have many more obligations than you think you would but I still prefer it to other jobs that I've done."
Subtitled "This time it's personal", Booky Wook 2 is a more comfortable read than 2007's My Booky Wook, in which the 35-year-old recalled his rise to fame and his battles with alcohol, drug and sex addiction. Having been clean for around eight years now, the incorrigible bon viveur's second memoir appears more concerned with his romantic dalliances.
He begins by delicately recounting how he seduced Kate Moss after a gig in the upstairs room of an Islington pub in 2006. The book ends with him meeting his match and, indeed, his future spouse when he encounters Perry at last year's MTV Video Music Awards in New York.
"This book was easier to write because I'm more experienced as a writer," he says. "I also wasn't having to chronicle such difficult times, which were characterised by addiction, arrest and madness."
Brand is certainly no stranger to controversy. The day after September 11, he was fired from his position as a presenter for British MTV after arriving at work dressed as Osama bin Laden.
Since then he has regularly courted the wrong kind of newspaper headlines. He drew the ire of the American media and received death threats after comparing Britney Spears to Jesus Christ and insulting then-President George Bush at the 2008 MTV Awards.
"I've never deliberately tried to be in a scandal," he says. "It just seems to happen by accident."
He seemed to have gone too far when he and talk show host Ross left inappropriate messages on Andrew Sachs' answer machine during the recording of their BBC Radio 2 show in October 2008, referring to how Brand had slept with the former Manuel's granddaughter, Georgina Baillie. Following an orchestrated campaign by the Daily Mail, the BBC received nearly 40,000 complaints and was forced to suspend the pair. Brand immediately resigned. Ross followed suit this year.
However, it could have been a blessing in disguise for Brand, who turned his attention to the United States, regularly charming audiences on the nation's late night chat shows. After appearing in several British productions including 2007's first St Trinian's update, his Hollywood breakthrough came with 2008's Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Brand played hedonistic rock star Aldous Snow, a role he reprised this year in Get Him to the Greek.
"I trained as an actor when I was younger so now that I've had the chance to be in some movies, it's been fun because I've already had the practice," says Brand, who attended Drama Centre London in the mid-90s.
He was expelled during his final term after he stabbed himself with broken glass following a poor reaction to one of his performances.
"The school was all very serious, with lots of nudity, crying, Stanislavski and Strasberg," he recently told the New York Times. "I got thrown out because I was a junkie and a drunk, but not before I learnt a thing or two."
Brand claims to have based Snow on former Oasis songwriter Noel Gallagher, although the washed-up frontman's over-the-top antics have been compared to his own outrageous behaviour. "Most actors use themselves to some degree but I really like playing Aldous because he's like a man-child," says Brand. "It's interesting to play somebody who is so innocent. So I'm learning a lot."
He takes on a similar character in Peter Winer's upcoming remake of the 1981 classic comedy Arthur, which is scripted by Borat/Bruno writer Peter Baynham. Assuming the role originally made famous by Dudley Moore, Brand is drunken millionaire Arthur Bach, whose heart is torn between Greta Gerwig's working class shoplifter and Jennifer Garner's uptight heiress, whom he must marry if he is to keep his fortune.
"I love the original film, although I was too young to see it when it first came out," says Brand. "But I do remember that when I first saw it. I thought it was an amusing, brilliant film."
But rather than having his every need attended to by John Gielgud's uptight English valet, Brand's Arthur is nursed by Helen Mirren's nanny Hobson.
"Helen Mirren has a very sexy type of chemistry and it changes the dynamic of their relationship because it means that there is an element of maternal sex appeal," laughs Brand.
Brand will have to extend himself further in Spider-Man: The Musical, director Julie Taymor's big screen reimagining of William Shakespeare's final play The Tempest. Appearing as court jester Trinculo, whom he describes as "a scruffbag," he once again stars alongside Mirren, who is taking on another gender-bending role as the magician Prospera. "It's lovely because of course it's with Helen again and Julie Taymor is such a visionary," says Brand, whose co-stars also include Alfred Molina, Chris Cooper, Djimon Hounsou, David Strathairn and Alan Cumming. "To work with the text of Shakespeare is a real challenge. It makes you approach language and think about things in a different way. It's very exciting."
In Booky Wook 2, Brand compares how the British tabloid press and reality television programmes like Big Brother mutually devour each other to Duncan's horses in Macbeth, which he describes as similar "forebears of the apocalypse".
He is also a long admirer of Jack Kerouac, duplicating the journey that the characters take in the Beat Movement pioneer's seminal 1951 novel On the Road in a 2007 BBC documentary.
"I've always been fascinated by language," he says. "I love it, especially when it's used in a humorous context and it's about being funny."
With director Peter Maysles (Gimme Shelter) and executive producer Oliver Stone, Brand is currently working on a documentary that explores the concept of fame, a subject that is surely close to his heart. "It's been a very cathartic experience," he says. "It's about celebrity, consumerism and the way that our culture is going at the moment. Hopefully it's going to have a big impact."
But despite making it big in Hollywood, Brand isn't forsaking his comedy roots and has plans to tour Downunder in 2011.
"I'm going to be doing some stand-up in New Zealand next year," he announces. "I've never been to New Zealand before so I'm really excited."
Booky Wook 2 by Russell Brand is out now (HarperCollins $39.99).
