http://www.usatoday.com/life/movies/news/2008-04-15-russell-brand_N.htm
'Forgetting Sarah Marshall' star Russell Brand leaves a mark
By Lael Loewenstein, Special for USA TODAY
LOS ANGELES — Most people wouldn't show up for an audition, admit they hadn't read the script — and then land their first role in a major motion picture.
Russell Brand is not like most people.
At a casting session for
Forgetting Sarah Marshall, which opens Friday, the British comedian, 32, confessed that he'd only managed to take a "cursory glance" at the screenplay. Then he added with a flourish, "Would you mind telling me what it's all about?"
Instead of showing him the exit, actor/writer Jason Segel and director Nicholas Stoller were so intrigued by Brand's combination of honesty and bravado — not to mention his outlandish appearance — that they urged him to improvise.
Never mind that Brand, known for rocker threads, gravity-defying hair and a loosely androgynous persona, was nothing like the bookish character Segel and Stoller had envisioned as the film's romantic rival. For the man who lures comely Sarah Marshall (Kristen Bell) from her longtime boyfriend (Segel), they'd been thinking "more along the lines of a Hugh Grant type," recalls producer Judd Apatow.
Stoller at first thought the casting director was playing a practical joke. "But Russell was so persuasive, so funny and so real," he says, "that we decided we had to rewrite the character as a rock star."
As Aldous Snow, Brand mixes a rocker's charisma, a bad boy's sexual magnetism and the comedian's own quirky charm into a tempting cocktail. Critics and preview audiences are abuzz over Brand's scene-stealing performance. The latest in a line of Apatow-shepherded comedies to fuse adolescent male humor with emotional warmth (
The 40-Year-Old Virgin,
Knocked Up),
Sarah Marshall looks to be Brand's ticket to international stardom.
Though he enjoys massive popularity in the U.K., he's relatively unknown in the USA, something he freely mines in his standup performances: "What's the point," he muses, lamenting his anonymity in America, "of having such preposterous hair with no fame to back it up?"
Preposterous or not, Brand's hair has become as distinctive as his personality, which he's quick to distinguish from that of his on-screen alter ego. Unlike the relatively plainspoken Snow, Brand demonstrates verbal dexterity and an agile mind, both on stage and in person.
And over a vegetarian lunch at Hollywood's Chateau Marmont, Brand is sweet and unfailingly polite, not at all like his aloof and self-important movie character.
In person, in fact, Brand is a slightly dialed-down version of his standup persona, which might best be described as manic existentialist. A question about romance, for example, can unleash an elaborate response that references Nietzsche, Depeche Mode, the Bible and
The Matrix. A query about balancing humility and narcissism might provoke ruminations on consumerism, quantum physics and Nelson Mandela's human rights struggle.
Like his comedy idols Richard Pryor and Lenny Bruce, Brand freely confesses his own weaknesses, openly using his personal travails for comic fodder in his standup routine.
A recovering addict, he'll delve into rapid-fire, stream-of-consciousness stories about his days smuggling heroin. As for questions about his own sexuality, Brand identifies himself as resolutely straight — the tight leather pants, he says, make him less off-putting to men.
Brand admits to having supplanted his drug and alcohol dependency with a seemingly insatiable quest for success. Asked if he can imagine attaining the same stature as pop culture icons (and former Chateau Marmont denizens) Jim Morrison, James Dean and John Belushi, Brand replies, without missing a beat, "At the very least. I have a huge hunger in me."
At his current pace, he certainly has a shot. His slate is packed with projects that span film, TV, Internet, radio, newspapers and books; there's hardly a medium he has overlooked.
Brand says, however, that it's not fame that feeds him — it's the thrill he gets from performing.
"The way I justify my incredible appetite for recognition," Brand says, "is that I would do this happily for the rest of my life for nothing because of a devotional, religious, vocational love of what I consider to be an art form. I love standup comedy. I love making people laugh."