From cop to high-heeled drag queen

Chiwetel Ejiofor in Kinky Boots

He's gone from unpronounceable to unavoidable - actor Chewitel Ejiofor seems to be everywhere at the moment.

That's him stealing the show as drag queen Lola in the British shoe factory comedy Kinky Boots.

There he is playing the erudite baddie The Operative on the DVD of sci-fi flick Serenity. That was him as a cop in Detroit crime flick Four Brothers and again flashing a police badge alongside Denzel Washington in Spike Lee's thriller The Inside Man.

Turn on the television tomorrow night (TV One 9.55) and Ejiofor is in A Knight's Tale, a modern adaptation of one of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.

Ask the English actor of Nigerian parents (whose name is pronounced "chew-it-tell edge-oh-for") the reason for his sudden ubiquity and he's stuck for words.

"Ah ... I don't know. I've been very fortunate with the directors I have worked with. It doesn't happen all the time that one can read a sequence of scripts and really be energised and do each on its own merits.

"I wasn't trying to do lots and lots of movies. It was just great to read so many scripts that I really liked.

"I loved this doing this film Kinky Boots and Serenity was an extraordinary experience as well."

Playing the drag act cabaret singer Lola - as well as Lola's straight-laced off-duty incarnation Simon - represents Ejiofor's most attention-seeking role yet, since first coming to notice in Stephen Frears' illegal immigrant drama Dirty Pretty Things.

In Kinky Boots, his performance energises the otherwise predictable Full Monty-like tale of a struggling English shoe factory diversifying into the footwear of the title to save itself from closure.

"I found it irresistible really - the conservatism of the middle England shoe factory and the sassy, bold-but-sensitive, intelligent drag queen."

It was a role that required some research, he says, on the phone from Sydney where he is on a promotional tour.

He frequented the drag clubs of London and talked to the performers - some of whom ended up in the cabaret scenes - and clientele.

"In some ways it was the easiest research I had ever done for a film because it was just a good laugh. I was very keen to give Lola some individualism rather than something that was a cliche idea or caricature."

So far as strutting one's stuff in those towering heels ...

"I did all the sort of classes. Such as they are."

There are classes? Like, cool.

"Wouldn't it be brilliant?" he laughs, "wouldn't it be a better world if on a Friday night there were classes for guys learning how to walk in four-and-a-half inch heels. Just after boxing class."

Oh and Ejiofor had to sing too. On the accompanying soundtrack album that's him between songs by James Brown and Nina Simone, despite having never done any singing in his stage career before.

"But I wanted to go there with the character. It was important to me [that] it was her show - she wasn't singing to a backing track or anything. I didn't know what my singing voice would be like - people have said it's good so I was happy with that. I was also happy with the idea that it didn't sound so great because it's Lola's show basically. What comes out comes out. I was happy either way."

No, he didn't keep the clothes, as many actors do after a screen role.

"I didn't in the end. The last time I got the boots off, on the last day of shooting, I was pretty relieved I was out of them - they weren't clothes I was desperate to hang on to. But they looked fantastic."