"True Brit" -- Interview in Elle Magazine
True Hollywood story: It was 2006. She was blond-bottled-her blue-green eyes round as full moons and crying mascara-muddied tears down her pale cheeks. Judging by the length of her roots, she hadn’t left her Spanish deco mansion off Sunset Boulevard for three weeks, maybe four. Her brocade curtains were drawn, the only light emanating from a massive muted plasma TV mounted above a massive stone fireplace. MTV videos played like silent films.
Years ago we met on the set of a Golden Globe-winning film for which she was also nominated and a star was born. Today, I’d arrived to interview the beauty for a new project, only to find her unkempt, undone-as unmade as the pig-pink satin-sheeted bed she refused to leave. Only one person could drag this Tinseltown diva down Norma Desmond Drive: a man.
What’s his name? I asked, expecting “Off the record” or “I’ll never tell.” But the dame was willing and able and wearing the perfect negligee in which to tell all. His name was Russell Brand. He was a comedian, a recovered dope fiend and sauce monster, a former MTV VJ, and the host of England’s Big Brother spin-off, Big Brother’s Big Mouth. Back then, his name was just a whisper on this side of the pond. But she’d crossed over and seen his stand-up routine, which led her to see his lying-down routine, which itself was so routine that he did time in Pennsylvania’s KeyStone sex addiction clinic, where he curbed his enthusiasms yet still went on to win The Sun’s Shagger of the Year Award in 2006, 2007, and 2008 (now called the Russell Brand Shagger of the Year Award). He must be good. And by the size of the tears rolling down the doll’s face, he was too good. She was gone, baby, gone.
Five years later, Russell Brand, who by now is famous for writing a best-selling memoir, costarring in Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Get Him to the Greek, hosting MTV’s Video Music Awards, and marrying pop star Katy Perry, enters the living room in his own ’20s-era Spanish manse, radiating a charisma that’s so beyond the legal limit that it makes laughable a condition of his KeyStone celibacy contract: “No seductive behavior.” Seriously? The guy just shows up and he’s guilty.
Beneath a high forehead and strong brow, Brand’s features are fine: an enviable nose; wide-set almond eyes; full, ruby-tinted lips; and for a Brit, surprisingly perfect pearly white teeth. He sometimes tucks his curls behind his ears, exposing a strong jawline. At once he’s feminine and masculine and vulpine. Not someone to be taken lightly-or as lightly as he’d have you take him.
Now 35 and liberated from his libertine ways, Brand’s curse has matured into a blessing. “The greatest thing about Russell is that he loves women,” says Helen Mirren, his costar in The Tempest and this month’s Arthur, inspired by the 1981 film. “I don’t mean that in a nasty, venal, sexy way. Let’s say he likes women, he likes women of all shapes and sizes. It’s very endearing and charming. It makes you feel good.” She laughs. “It sounds silly, but he’s incredibly well behaved. Yes, he has a raunchy sense of humor-when he goes off, your jaw drops-but he’s kind and gracious.” She’d like to get him a message: “When you see Russell, tell him I’m wearing my safety pin. He was so sweet, he said, ‘It’s diamond encrusted.’ I wear it around my neck. Occasionally I wear it to keep my bra together.”
“What a charming thought,” Brand says, pleased. “A gift of mine, being part of Helen Mirren’s boob infrastructure.”
When word went round that Arthur was being remade, criticism flew. Why would anyone revamp the now classic film starring the late Dudley Moore as a lovable drunk Manhattan millionaire who falls for Liza Minnelli’s sassy Queens waitress? “People say, ‘How dare you?’ ” says director Jason Winer. “Then you tell them Russell Brand’s going to do it, and they say, ‘If anyone is going to play Arthur, he can.’ I was worried at first because in the original, Arthur is so charmingly drunk, and I didn’t know if Russell could carry it off. He had this bad-boy image. But we went to dinner, and the waitress was so smitten she couldn’t look at him. I saw Russell register this, and he gently told her, ‘I like your earrings; they’re an indicator that you have another life.’ He put her at ease in the most charming, generous way.”
( Read the comlete article here... )