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ON stage, Lee Evans has just broken a world record. He performed in Manchester last month in front of 10,108 people. It was the biggest live audience for a single comedy show on the planet. Ever.

If Lee Evans obeyed the normal rules of showbiz this would make him loud and overbearing with a towering ego who tramples over anyone who doesn't cater to his every whim.

But the opposite is true. Off stage, Lee Evans turns out to be a bundle of nerves, worries and anxieties.

"It's weird standing up there, because I don't think I'm funny at all - just an idiot," he says, beginning to stutter.

"It's frightening to talk about this... erm... audience, because I try not to think about the size at all.

"I am surprised so many people turn up, especially when there's so much more to do. After all it's just comedy - it's not that important."

How on earth does he get through his routine with so little confidence?

"I think that's why I keep working so much, playing live so much - because I'm not a confident person," he says.

"And I don't know if I'll ever be confident enough to stop.

"The thing is, I don't want to let anyone down - not just the audience, but also my friends who have had faith in me over the years."

His famous rubber face creases into worried furrows, until the conversation turns to the one security in his life - his wife Heather.

She's the only woman he has ever slept with, he's proud to admit.

Forget Steve Coogan with his lap-dancers and cocaine; don't even consider the lothario that is David Walliams - this comic genius has been faithfully married to his teenage sweetheart for 22 years .

"I know it's corny but I can't imagine how I would survive without Heather," he says. "In fact, I know I couldn't. And I think the same applies to her."

They met in a typically Lee way. He was standing on the pavement staring into thin air, and she went by on a bus.

"She was crying. I found out later it was because her mum was dying of cancer. About a week later I saw her at a concert. I was 16 - but even then I knew she was the one, no question.

"Three years later, we married.

"Of course, we have our tiffs, door slamming and all that - and she gets fed up with me, but that's life isn't it?"

The couple have one child - daughter Molly, 11 - and live in Billericay in Essex.

Lee would like more children he says, but they don't seem to have firm plans at the moment.

Maybe Heather finds it enough having two... one 11-year-old and one 41-year-old going on 14.

Lee has made a fortune from his tours, his DVDs and his film roles, yet they don't have a lavish home. Nothing at all like a footballer's, he says.

"I have a big problem with money. I don't actually know how much I've earned.

"When we married we had nothing. F*** all. And I'm still at that point in my head. I'm still worried about the mortgage.

"I know that sounds mad but I'm still in that mode because I don't actually know what we're worth.

"Heather deals with the money, the statements. She just says, 'I'll put it away.' I only draw out about £100 a week from the bank. That does me. I get some Ginsters pasties at the service stations on the way to the gigs and that's all I need.

"I don't go out and buy cars. In fact, I don't go out. When I'm not working, I just like being in the house with Heather and little Mo."

Lee's own childhood was far removed from this settled domestic bliss. His dad was a musician and the family followed his work. Young Lee lived in Blackpool, Liverpool, Scarborough, Bristol...

"Even now I never feel as if I'm from anywhere. That was a big problem for me," he says.

This, probably more than anything, explains why he's so insecure.

Yet his feeling of being an oddball may have helped him have such a hugely successful career.

He started off on the pub circuit, earning £200 a week. During a trip to the States, he was discovered playing at the Improv Club in Los Angeles and appeared on NBC. He won 5,000 dollars on a talent show called Starsearch.

He had only gone to the US to earn a bit of money for him and Heather, so he turned down the offers from Hollywood agents after his win - and returned home to pay off debts.

Then came the Perrier award- winning performance at the Edinburgh Festival in 1993, and his route to stardom was secured.

International fame, though, came with There's Something About Mary, the quirky US comedy from the Farrelly brothers.

What was it like to work with Cameron Diaz? "Cameron was such a good shag," he jokes. "She was lovely, really nice. She's really down-to-earth, very normal."

Other films include the gentle comedy Funny Bones and Luc Besson's sci-fi flick Fifth Element, as well as Highbinders with Jackie Chan.

Growing up with classic TV sitcoms like Steptoe And Son and Porridge, Lee always dreamed of having his own BBC series.

In 2001, that dream came true with So What Now? But the critics were less than impressed - and the experience has left Lee scarred.

He says: "I would never do television again because of that. Because they take the programme out of your hands.

"The series wasn't what I wanted and, as I said to Heather, the critics were right. Me and my mate Stuart - who I've always written with - we wrote the first one and then people started fiddling with it.

"They want me on the BBC but they don't know what to do with us. But it's not that important. It's just a bit of comedy.

"If I sat at home and went, 'Look at these reviews', Heather would tell me to shut up and stop moaning because there's people dying in the world. And she would be absolutely right."

Good Evans above
LIAM RUDDEN

PERRIER Award-winning funnyman Lee Evans is enjoying a bit of a purple patch at the moment.

Just a week after joking his way into the Guinness Book of World Records having played to the largest comedy audience ever - 10,108 people at the Manchester Evening News Arena last Sunday - the 41-year-old human dynamo pops up at the Playhouse on Saturday to play to another capacity crowd, albeit one of "just" 3053 on this occasion.

It is a gig that brings the Bristol-born amateur boxer turned comedian turned actor back to the city that launched his career with a Perrier win in 1993, a career that now includes starring roles on the West End stage and in Hollywood films.

"Because of the Edinburgh Festival, there was a time when I was better known in Scotland than anywhere else and I owe the people of Edinburgh for that," says Evans.

"Winning the Perrier was the turning point for me. It was unbelievable. I'd been slogging around the clubs for many, many years when that happened. Suddenly people in England were going: 'Who's this funny-looking bloke?' "

More than a decade later and at an age when many of his contemporaries have become jaded, Evans remains hyperactive and full of wide-eyed wonderment, hopping from subject to subject just as he does during his rapid-fire routines.

"It's just nerves. I shit myself before I go on. I hate waiting back-stage and the nerves get worse the older I get," he says.

"Nerves" are also one of the reasons he doesn't enjoy the whole showbiz first night scene.

"The red carpet parties aren't for me, I just sweat profusely and get worried about what I'm saying," he laughs.

Evans was a 17-year-old art student when he discovered that comedy was the ideal vehicle to use to express himself.

"I left school with no qualifications and because I was a quiet kid who spent a lot of time on my own drawing and painting, I went to art college. That's really how it all began," he reflects.

"I had really hated school because I look at things from a completely different perspective. If the teacher was talking about some historic war I'd put my hand up and ask: 'Why did they do that?' and start flipping stuff around - it gave teachers the ape because they did not know where I was coming from.

"At art college they taught us how to express ourselves. It was all right to put out all the mad thoughts that I had in my head. That wasn't something you could do in our house. If you did, dad would go: 'Are you gay?' It was all a bit mad."

Evans' dad was a docker and his upbringing was typically working class.

"We lived on a council estate in Bristol, but my dad was also musician," he reveals. "He's from North Wales and my mum's from Ireland, so there was always music in the family. He started playing in clubs and when I was about ten we moved to London so that he could get more work.

"That's where I met my missus, at school in London when I was 16. We got married at 18."

The couple - who have an 11-year-old daughter Molly - celebrated their 22nd wedding anniversary earlier this year. However, when they first met, the young Evans was more likely to be found in a boxing ring than on a stage.

"Boxing was my dad's idea. He'd boxed in the army and thought it would be a good idea to teach my brother and I to take a punch. Every Christmas we'd get a pair of boxing gloves, but I'm not really a sportsman and wasn't that good, so I got beaten up a lot."

By the age of 17, the boxing began to take a back seat as Evans, like his father before him, began working the club circuit, playing drums with a band.

"A lot of what I did at art college involved music and when the band split up I went off on my own. Doing the club circuit I learnt to survive - and to move around a lot to dodge the bottles," he chuckles.

Since winning the Perrier, Evans has gone on to appear in numerous movies including Luc Besson's 1997 space opera The Fifth Element, Mousehunt with Broadway star Nathan Lane and Christopher Walken and There's Something About Mary. But it was in the 1995 bittersweet comedy Funnybones that he made his cinematic debut, as Jack Parker starring opposite the legendary Jerry Lewis.

"Funnybones was the first and I enjoyed doing that," he says, revealing that he was slightly in awe of his co-star.

"If I see someone I consider to be really brilliant I keep away from them. I get too nervous about talking to them.

"That meant that I didn't go near Jerry Lewis for about a month, until he came over to me and said: 'What's the matter? Have I done something wrong?' I said: 'No, I just didn't want to bother you.' But in my head I was just thinking: 'It's Jerry Lewis, for f***'s sake'."

Not happy with just breaking into movies, Evans is now also a regular in the West End where he was reunited with Lane in the musical The Producers, in which Evans was nominated for an Olivier for his portrayal of Leo Bloom.

"Stand-up is a good training for theatre. I'm not an actor. I work with actors and I ask them a lot of questions about what they do, but I'm just blagging it. If somebody says to me: 'Are you interested in doing this?' if I think I can contribute I say: 'Yeah, that's sounds all right'. It might fail, but at least I'm learning and doing something interesting and not prostituting myself."

REMARKABLY, however, despite being in the business almost three decades, Evans confesses that he is still struggling to find his niche.

"I had this discussion with my wife the other day. I said: 'When am I going to find the job for me? I don't know what it is yet'. "

Of course, if he does look too hard he may discover his vocation in life is something far more mundane than he might expect - he may, for example, be destined to spend the rest of his days filleting fish.

It's a thought that triggers an explosion of laughter from the multi-faceted performer who, when he finally regains his composure, muses: "Absolutely . . . it just might be."

All about Evans
JONATHAN TREW

PERFORMERS often take a dim view of their own work. Or at least they say they do. It's expected. Lee Evans goes a step further. "I started off cleaning toilets when I was 17 and I got the sack from that," he explains. "Then I was a window dresser for a couple of days until I was sacked from there. I'm still doing the same thing, just waiting for the sacking."

Since winning the Perrier in 1993, Evans has scored his own TV series and a number of packed tours of the UK's biggest venues. His current tour will see him play to more than a quarter of a million people. In his film career, he has starred in Hollywood films Mouse Hunt, The Fifth Element and the Farrelly brothers' hit There's Something About Mary.

His stage work has been no less successful. Last year, he played Leo Bloom in a West End version of The Producers, which was nominated for an Olivier. Earlier last year, he played Clov to Michael Gambon's Hamm in Beckett's Endgame. The Beckett Society sent Evans a letter congratulating him on his interpretation of the role. Ask him about it, though, and he still professes amazement that he was even allowed on to the stage.

"What was I doing there?" he says in bewildered but not entirely convincing tones. "I've always liked Beckett," says Evans, which may come as a surprise to his comedy fans. "I used to do paintings about Beckett when I was at art college. I really like him because I think he is really physical. I researched him when I was doing the play and found out that he had worked with Harold Lloyd and all these old comics. I put that spin on it in the show; put a lot of physical stuff into it."

Not that all this mention of Beckett, art college and role research means Evans has any taste for luvviedom. His father had been a musician and entertainer, but an interest in the arts was viewed with a fair degree of suspicion in young Lee's house. Growing up on the tough Lawrence Weston Estate in Bristol, thespian tendencies were not encouraged.

"I went to art college when I left school, and when I brought work back home my dad used to think that I was completely bonkers," recalls Evans. "Before he was a musician he used to work on the docks in Bristol. It was all working class so he would get the ache about all that expressing yourself sh!t. He has mellowed over the years."

Evans Snr certainly sounds like the kind of man who would give short shrift to the more liberal theories regarding child development. He made his son take up boxing to harden him up. "I was a quiet lad and used to get beat up quite a lot at school," says the comic. "He sent me off to boxing to toughen me up. It actually made me worse. I'm scared of gloves now."

DESPITE his own career as an entertainer, Evans' father neither encouraged nor discouraged his son from a life on the stage. "He still doesn't really know what I do because it isn't talked about in the house. I hardly see him these days, but we never sit down and talk about anything regarding the stage. It's always family stuff, or he might just chuck his *** packet at the TV and shout at it: 'Bloody Queen! Gets on me nerves. That's our taxes right there that is.'"

I tell Evans his dad sounds fearsome. "He is dead hard and a father figure to look up to," he responds. "I've never seen him bottle out of anything. He's the complete opposite to me. Any trouble and I'm off. I don't know what he thinks [of his career] and he has never told me. What he instilled in my brother and me was a sense that if something goes wrong, you have to pick yourself up and get on with it, otherwise life isn't worth living.

"I remember my wife and I were in massive debt. I went to my dad and told him I didn't know what to do and he just said, 'Well, you have to sort yourself out.' He was laughing about it, saying, 'That's life. It's unfortunate, isn't it?'"

Such an uncompromising attitude might not appeal to everyone, but it has stood Evans in good stead for his dealings with Hollywood. In an industry where talking about the movie deal often gets more attention than the actual making of the movie, the blunt characteristics Evans has inherited from his father proved a double-edged sword. "The people in the industry are completely bonkers," he says. "They talk complete rubbish. They are all hooked up on this fame sh!t. They are like, 'We got a film. The director wants to have lunch.'

"I would say, 'I don't know him. Why doesn't he just ring me and if he wants me I'll have a go at it?' That was my attitude and I don't think they could get their head around it. There is a game out there and I don't know what it is."

Another factor is that Evans doesn't particularly want to be there to play the game. He calls LA 'the loneliest place on earth' and you don't have to talk to Evans for long to realise just how important his wife of 24 years, Heather, is, or his 11-year-old daughter Molly.

However starry Evans' job gets, it seems that it doesn't carry much weight at home and his family look upon his fame as something to be politely ignored. His wife won't even let him put up a picture of him meeting Cameron Diaz on the set of There's Something About Mary.

On the plus side, Evans says he can see some aspects of his job making an impression on his daughter. "It does rub off on Molly," he reckons. "She writes a lot. It's nice to see her expressing herself because it was never allowed in our house when I was a kid."

Thank Evans for little gurns!
Paul Taylor

SOMEONE once said that if genius is one per cent inspiration and 99 per cent perspiration, then Lee Evans is 99 per cent there. Yes, his onstage persona is the sweat-soaked, gurning gagster who will, predictably, have turned his suit into a dish rag by the time he steps off stage at the end of each of his three nights at the Manchester Evening News Arena.

But it is offstage that Evans's work ethic really runs riot. He is speaking to me after staying up until 3am perfecting the music for his new stand-up show. It has taken 12 months to assemble material for the show, and during half of that time he was otherwise engaged starring in the hit West End revival of The Producers. And then there is the script for a romantic comedy he has just polished off and would like to see turned into a movie.

"You always think tomorrow's just going to be the last day, so you keep working," says Evans, with wry amusement at his workaholic foibles rather than genuine distress. "I have had this discussion with me missus day after day. She says, `Why are you still up at three in the morning writing?' and I'm like, I bet I can make this better... and she goes mad."

In a poll earlier this year, Evans was the UK's third favourite comedian, after Peter Kay and Billy Connolly. But comedy has its north-south divide too. In the south of England alone, Evans was voted rib-tickler supreme. It's a far cry from Evans's wilderness years on the working men's clubs circuit.

"If you're brought up in a working class family, they say you've got to go to work. The object is to pay the rent," says Evans, who was born in Bristol but moved with his family to London when he was 13. "If you can pay the rent by doing gigs, then that's brilliant. I have had masses of jobs and I've been sacked from most of them. This job, I haven't been sacked yet. You have a bad night and you learn something and take that away."

It was in 1993 that Evans, now 41, won the Perrier Award at the Edinburgh Festival, but that came at the end of a long learning curve.

"People like myself were trying to push it as far as we could. I was walking on stage at workingmen's clubs going `Do you ever walk down the road and trip over?' No punchline. I was just doing observational comedy. It was **** and I just died on my arse for about the first eight years."

Asked for his worst gig , he cites a night when he was 20 at a workingmen's club in Wales. "I had this old Vauxhall Chevette which was falling to pieces and they decided to nick it because they didn't like that I was doing. But the steering lock was on so this bunch of blokes tried to push it down the road but it kept going round in circles." Then there was the night in Brighton when he was met with the kind of put-down to which no comedian has a merry rejoinder... a fire extinguisher lobbed from the audience.

"I walked on stage, saw something red and then it all went black and I was knocked out cold," says Evans. "I wouldn't mind, but I hadn't said anything."

By 1995, Evans had his own Channel Four series, and Hollywood beckoned in the shape of movies such as The Fifth Element, Mouse Hunt and There's Something About Mary. If his 2001 BBC TV sitcom So What Now? foundered on unfavourable comparisons with Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em, Evans was soon back on a winning streak doing stand-up in the kind of venues more usually reserved for visiting American rock megastars.

Evans starred in a psychological thriller, Freeze Frame, and took to the London stage in Samuel Beckett's Endgame, playing opposite Michael Gambon. Then The Producers reunited Evans with Mouse Hunt co-star Nathan Lane last November, winning three Olivier Awards, including one for best new musical.

Now it's back to stand-up and his fizzing, hyperactive rants about the little frustrations of modern life and love.

Evans would by now have every right to be starry and self-satisfied. Instead he radiates humility, self-deprecation and a touching, old-fashioned politeness.

Despite the temptations of Tinseltown, to which he decamps on a regular basis, he is still married to childhood sweetheart, Heather. They have just moved to Billericay, Essex - Heather's home town - and they have an 11-year old daughter, Mollie. What does she make of what dad does for a living?

"I'm not sure what goes through her mind. It's difficult to say with kids," Evans replies. "One would hope you'd be a slight hero in her eyes, but I'm not sure. We don't take it so seriously in our house. It's not commented upon. We've got no pictures of me shaking hands with Cameron Diaz. Mollie's got to go to school and Heather does her thing and I think a lot of my comedy comes from that."

As for who tickles Evans's own funny bone, he gives an unexpected response. "I never watch comedy. It does my head in," he says, but then ponders a little more. "There's a couple of things on the telly... I like Little Britain, that's really good. I sit down and watch it with Little Mo, my daughter, and we both laugh at that."

Evans does not enjoy comparisons with Norman Wisdom, but he has the same bubbling energy. It is exhausting just to watch. It must be murder to sustain for over two hours on stage every night.

"It's very tiring. I'm just knackered at the end," he agrees. "My enthusiasm is I want to tell the audience something I've seen, and I can only think in a physical way.

"I spent a lot of time on my own as a kid. I was quite shy and I thought strange things. Now I'm doing the same thing I did as a kid, but people are seeing what I'm thinking."

Paramount Comedy Interview

Lee Evans is the most popular British stand up working in the world today. Having spent a few years on the stage and in Hollywood, Evans is returning to the spotlight with his brand new show the XL Tour 2005. All thirty dates up and down the UK are selling out fast, which is perhaps proof positive of the huge following Evans has gained over the years. We caught up with the sweaty, bendy one for a quick chat, exclusive to Paramount Comedy and just for you.

You're about to start your UK tour of quite big venues, but you’ve recently been doing a residency in the smaller Glee clubs for a couple of months - which do you prefer, the large auditoriums or the smaller, more intimate venues?

It’s the same really. I suppose at the end of the day I’m just so scared of about the material not going well, it could be anywhere, it could be a booth! I take each one as it comes - sometimes in the smaller clubs it’s quite nice because the audience are very close so it’s quite intimate, but in the large venues you’ve got to be a lot bigger on stage and it’s a lot more knackering!

Do you feel that your style has changed over the years or do you still have the same routine, same preparation?

Everything has stayed the same as regards to preparation. I just fill me pants basically - that's my preparation before a show really. But I'm happy with it, it's all going very well on that front. I’ve been in contact with Dynorod, they're really happy to come along on tour with me(!)

What are the best and worst aspects of touring?

It’s got to be the travelling really. You’re away for weeks on end and I miss my family a lot.

Do they ever go on tour with you?

Sometimes they come and visit but it’s difficult really because you’re working, My wife occasionally says that ‘we never see you’ and I say ‘all right, come then’, and she did once and she thought it was really boring! There’s nothing glamorous about being a comedian: you travel all day, you unpack bags, get to the gig, set up the gig, then go through your material, rewrite bits – it’s really tedious!

Have you got a joke or sketch that someone else has done that you wish you’d written?

I can’t think of any, no. I don’t watch a lot of comedy. At the moment I like Little Britain. I think that’s brilliant. I laugh a lot at that but I don’t wish I’d done it because that’s what they’re doing.

You've worked with comic legend Chevy Chase. Is he as difficult as they say he is?

Well he was certainly wasn’t with us. They always say that. Every time you arrive somewhere they say “ooh, watch out, he’s a nightmare”, and then you find they’re really nice people, I mean he never did anything to me and I never heard of anything. But I’ve seen a lot of it when I’ve been working in LA: people complaining that their coffee’s not hot enough. I can’t get me head around that! I think they’re just lucky to be there but they’re not interested in the creative process, they’re worrying about their coffee, which I find astounding.

Talking of the creative process, you’ve starred in End Game by Beckett. Was that ‘fill your trouser time’ when you had to tackle something like that?

Well I’ve been a fan of Beckett since I was at art college and we used to study his work and so I’m a big fan of his. I know he’s a big fan of physical comedy and he really likes timing and physicality and that’s the thing I got my head around. I really enjoyed, in particular working with Michael Gambon. He’s such a hilarious bloke to be with. It was one of the best processes I’ve been through, both the rehearsals and the play.

Do you like performing other people’s material?

I don’t like doing other peoples’ material, it’s a pain because there are certain restrictions you have to stick to because it has to be true to their work. Then again, if they let you play with it a little, it’s alright. End Game was like that. Me and Michael just sat in a room for three weeks rehearsing and we took from the script what we thought we saw in it. When I did The Producers Mel Brooks said to me “you’re a funny-looking idiot, so just do what you want.”

What’s your favourite Mel Brooks film?

Blazing Saddles easily! I did like The Producers although it had a dodgy end to it.

Do think acting will every take over from stand-up as your number one passion?

Whatever comes along I put in what I can and then see if people like it. I did a long run in an improv club in LA and that’s how I got to do a couple of films for Dreamworks and Twentieth Century Fox: I was just there doing stand-up and they approached me about doing films and I said ‘yeah all right, I might as well! To be honest, that’s all I’ve ever done. I’m here now talking to you and I don’t know quite how I got here! I still don’t really know what I want to do!

OK, time for the quick fire round! Have you ever had to call the police?

No. Not yet. They’ve called a few times though. I do look a suspect.

Who would you like to have dinner with alive or dead?

My wife. I haven’t seen her for ages. I wouldn’t mind a bit of dinner with her to be honest.

Clowns: funny or just damn scary?

I used to like clowns, all this myth about ‘ooh they’re really scary’ I actually genuinely like them.

What should there be a law against?

Law. We should have no laws. We don’t even know what the law is here. Do you know what the law is? I don’t know.

Where was your worst holiday?

I can’t remember. I can’t remember the last time I went on holiday!

Favourite Superhero?

I think Superman because he wears his pants on the outside, which would be a lot quicker in the morning. He obviously sorted that out from the beginning.

Favourite TV programme of all time?

Time Team, because they all look like they cut their own hair!

Lee's big freeze
Jun 15 2004

Rob Driscoll, The Western Mail

Lee Evans is either a very brave man or he's just mad. Take his recent, disturbing flirtation with danger. "I was walking across Hungerford Bridge in London when I saw these two really dodgy-looking guys, and one of them was just staring at me," he recalls in his typical, motormouth fashion.

Anyone else would have averted eye contact and swiftly moved on, but not this livewire comedian and writer with cinema box-office hits like There's Something About Mary and Mousehunt to his credit.

"I looked back at him, and he was mouthing something not very nice at me," says Evans, recreating the stranger's slow, four-letter threat to chilling effect. "So I went over to them, and I said, `What's the matter?' And this guy said really nastily, `What do you want?' And I said, `Well, what I want is witnesses to the violence that is now going to take place!'

"It completely stunned him, and I went on my way. But I've done that a few times. Even as a young kid, it was about survival. I've learnt you can put a monster on tilt." He pauses, meaningfully. "I'm still about 16, mentally."

He is actually 40, yet it's a miracle that this pint-sized, monkey-faced chancer with the sticky-out ears gets home all in one piece some nights. Maybe it's a reaction to being bullied at school, which resulted in him clowning about to save his skin.

But dig a little deeper and Evans is far more than just a cheeky chappie with a joke for every situation. For one thing, this is a guy who never does things by halves. For his latest screen incarnation, as a psychologically-damaged murder suspect in the dark and disturbing thriller Freeze Frame, Evans shaved his head and entire body, including his eyebrows, and locked himself away for three months in his hotel room during filming.

"Yeah, the method man!" he laughs. "Molly, my daughter, was a bit freaked out by my look. She was constantly rubbing my head. I just said, `It'll all grow back'.

"There were all these stories knocking about the film set that your eyebrows don't grow back, but thank God they did. I use them a lot - they're very useful to me."

But why go to such extraordinary lengths in preparation for a film role?

"If I get involved with something like this, I don't care what's come before, whether I'm Lee or a stand-up or whatever - I just want to get into the material," he explains. "So I just shaved everything - well, down to me Calvin Kleins.

"I tried waxing but it really hurts. But it was shaving the eyebrows that was weird - I had no form of expression."

Turns of phrase spew out of Evans left, right and centre, and you can instantly see that he's both a hugely talented comedian and writer.

He also takes his work seriously - hence the locking himself away. Indeed, he completely separates his work life from his family life to such an extent that he won't see his wife Heather and their 10-year-old daughter Molly for weeks on end, because getting into a part and filming it requires his complete, 100% attention.

"My family life and what I do outside is a completely different entity," he says. "When I'm at home I'm Lee, I take out the rubbish and I take Molly to school in the mornings. When I'm working, I prefer to immerse myself in the material and then pop out the other end - even if it takes months.

"I suppose there's a slight amount of punishment about it. Sometimes I feel I deserve it, that it's meant to hurt. I'm not sure where that comes from. Honest, I'm not in therapy!"

Maybe it's part of his upbringing - and his little-known Welsh descendancy. He is the youngest son of a miner's son, a man's man who gave Lee boxing gloves for Christmas and brought him up to believe that work was something you did to put the bread on the table, away from the home, away from the wife.

Evans revels in his Welsh links. "My dad is from Rhyl," he says, really rolling the "r", "and my grandfather is from Pontypridd. They were all miners, the Evans men, they're all short and red-cheeked, and they can sing like birds."

He says that probably the proudest moment of his life was being made a Fellow of Cardiff University.

"I got this letter from them and I just cried, because I knew that my granddad was over the moon," he says.

"To be a fellow of Cardiff University is just amazing. I went down there and I had to give a speech in front of all these very artistic drama students, and it gets to you, it's wonderful. My father is passionately Welsh, he had it drilled into him as a kid. They're very proud of their flag and their rugby team and their singing."

Evans grew up on a tough council estate in Bristol, and he has generally happy childhood memories. His father was a dustman, but also a touring musician, and he would be away for months on end.

"Dad's still working and he's as hard as nails," he says. "And my mum - I love them both, they're brilliant people, very eccentric."

Eighteen months or so ago, Evans was particularly thrilled to be back in Cardiff filming Plots with a View, the still-unreleased comedy-drama about rival South Wales funeral companies, in which he plays Christopher Walken's sidekick (the wonderfully named Delbert Butterfield); an extraordinary cast also includes Brenda Blethyn, Alfred Molina, Robert Pugh and Naomi Watts.

"I think it will be coming out - it's already been released in Australia," says Evans. "I approached it as a fantastic piece of work experience - working in a funeral parlour with Chris Walken as the owner. We even danced together - full-on Bob Fosse stuff, with jazz hands!"

Evans's fame as a stand-up comedian really took off when he won the coveted Perrier Award at the Edinburgh Festival in 1993, but now, like Robin Williams and Jim Carrey before him, he has successfully made that most difficult of transitions, and proven that his talent extends far beyond the confines of live comedy.

Yet he reckons his showbusiness career happened almost by accident. He has certainly never had any kind of career plan.

"You go off and you work with people like Nathan Lane and Chris Walken and Brenda Blethyn, and you just sit and watch how they work," he says, suggesting that is the bulk of his "craft".

"When I left school I had no qualifications, because we moved around so much. So I went to art college, because I've always sketched and drawn, and it was like a revelation. I was sat in the corner, sweating and nervous, and that was OK; I was painting huge pictures, my brain was working and they let me be myself, and it opened me up.

"From that point I've done the same thing. That's how I got to do There's Something About Mary. I was in Los Angeles, doing the improv club at NBC, trying to pay my rent of 80 bucks a week. Then the Farrelly brothers came in, and said they'd like to work with me on their next film.

"They're a couple of obsessed, mental Irish blokes from Boston. We were drunk in a bar and we came up with my character, and I had free rein to do what I wanted with it."

He's done his fair share of big Hollywood movies, from There's Something About Mary to The Fifth Element to Mousehunt, but Evans is not necessarily looking for Stateside fame and fortune. Some Hollywood films he knows were just bill-payers.

"I did this awful film, The Medallion, but the reason I did it was I'm a big fan of Jackie Chan," he explains. "I wanted to know how he works, and all about his physical stuff. I worked with his stunt guys, learnt about line work, flips, somersaults. If you work with Jackie Chan, you come away with a part of him - he takes you under his wing, he teaches you so much. So I took that away from the film, at the very least." The low-budget British film Freeze Frame is undoubtedly Evans' most serious and uncompromising work yet, a million miles from his most familiar image as a modern Norman Wisdom.

This is the eye-catchingly original work of new writer-director John Simpson. In it the all-shaven Lee plays murder suspect Sean Veil who, after being traumatised by his near conviction for a series of brutal murders, videotapes himself around the clock to provide a rock-solid alibi should he ever be accused again.

Lee's performance is a revelation, particularly his depiction of Veil's paranoia. Almost all of the film was shot in a Belfast prison, and the camerawork pushed the available technology to the absolute limits. Evans himself had to familiarise himself with the technology, as he had to wear his own video-camera himself during much of the shoot.

Yet once he'd read the script Evans did not need his arm twisting to take the part. Neither is he worried that the grim and unsettling nature of the piece will alienate his fans, more used to his screwball comedy style.

"I'm a real sucker for young, first-time, inventive writers like John Simpson, and it gives the whole project a real energy," says Lee.

"You get these big scripts, $US42m budget scripts, all special effects and so on, and you're bored."

Not once did Freeze Frame's tough subject matter depress him. "It's just really interesting to see who that bloke is, and you can go as dark as you like," he says. "In actual fact, it's sometimes more playful than comedy."

Evans remains modest, even self-deprecating, about his contribution to such envelope-pushing projects: "I'm not an actor, I'm blagging - I'm trying to learn," he says.

"My business in this life, if you like, is to try and contribute in a small way to these things, trying to use that to the best of my abilities."

Turning 40 earlier this year, he insists, was no big deal.

"I was waiting for something to happen - and I was looking down, but nothing fell," he says. "So it was just me, Heather and Molly - we sat down and had a meal. It really wasn't a big event. I thought that it would change me, that I'd be more of a man, and less apologetic, but that didn't happen. There was no line that I stepped over, I'm still the same idiot."

Home is clearly a very important place for Evans, and once there, the doors are closed and he's husband and father, full stop. The only film of his that Molly is fully familiar with is Mousehunt.

"She loved that," he beams. "I think she's a fan of me, Lee, but I'm not sure she's a fan of what I do; I don't know if she knows what that is.

"But she knows I'm away a lot, and work hard. Molly's growing up as quite a studious, artistic person, so whether that's my work ethic rubbing off or whatever, I'm quite pleased about that. She's not a screaming nightmare."

This is an extremely busy year for Evans.

In March he played Michael Gambon's crippled servant in a short but acclaimed London run of Samuel Beckett's surreal and downbeat Endgame. In the autumn, however, comes the big one - he'll be starring with Richard Dreyfuss in the eagerly-awaited West End production of The Producers, a transfer of the Broadway musical based on Mel Brook's cult comedy classic film.

"At the moment I'm going to a voice coach, which is really to make your voice last, to get through nine shows a week," says Evans, who will play meek accountant Leo Bloom to Dreyfuss's theatre producer Max Bialystock.

"And I wanted to work with Mel Brooks. I've met him a few times in New York - that came about through Mousehunt, working with Nathan Lane, who starred in The Producers in New York, and he said I'd be great in it. Then Mel got in touch with us in London, and asked would the monkey-boy do it?"

As if all that isn't enough, the workaholic Evans also burns both ends of the candles on his own writing. Even when he is at home he has a room across the way from his house that he works in, morning until night.

"I'm working on something now which is an outright comedy, and a love story," he says. "I've spent months in that room with my mate Stu, from Brighton, in a room surrounded by paper. I love that sort of process. At the end of the day, we're exhausted.

"We've been writing this for a year, and I find it intensely interesting. Ever since I was at art college, I've always been like that.

" I love that side of the job. It goes with everything I do. If Mel Brooks rings up and goes, `Do you want this job?', then I'll work 24 hours a day to get it right."

'I'm just a pleb having a go'

He's a successful comic making it big in serious movies. But Lee Evans still thinks he's an idiot, finds Aida Edemariam

Thursday June 17, 2004
The Guardian

During the filming of Freeze Frame, Lee Evans spent two-and-a-half months shuttling between Cromwell prison in Belfast and his hotel room. He didn't see his family, he ordered all his meals from room service, he refused all invitations to the pub. He even went so far as to wear a mini-Steadicam for most of his waking hours. No wonder the movie - about a loner who was once arrested for murders he didn't commit, and now videos himself 24 hours a day to always have an alibi - feels claustrophobic and paranoid. This wasn't just devoted method acting, however. Every morning Evans had to shave all visible hair - his distinctive curls, his arms, armpits, legs, eyebrows - and he was embarrassed. "I did go swimming one day though, and I was quick! I was like a bullet."

It might have been odd down the pub, but on film it's striking. Along with his hair, he has shorn off everything he's famous for: the jokes, the desperate entertaining. Even in Endgame - in which, at London's Albery this year, he played a much-lauded Clov to Michael Gambon's Hamm - there was a place for the disjointed, manic capering typical of his stand-up. But there has always been a certain neediness about him, on stage and in person. He is exaggeratedly humble, eager to please, calling the photographer sir, thanking me for taking the time, apologising profusely. It would be going too far to say it's put on, but it's certainly disconcerting when you think how successful he is. In Freeze Frame, you suddenly see how close neediness is to paranoia: Evans looks hunted, vulnerable, but also rather terrible.

"I spend my life ensuring I'm seen," says Evans's character Sean Veil, and the clever thing about this film is it takes to a logical extreme the inescapability of CCTV. The twist is that even this inverted and obsessively maintained Panopticon - Veil's warren-like quarters are riddled with cameras, he wears one when he goes out - won't necessarily save him. Cameras can lie; technology can, by definition, be manipulated.

The press material says Evans is making the transition "that proves his talent extends far beyond the confines of comedy" - which is a little slighting of his life's work. But with such comic masters as Eddie Izzard fighting to be taken seriously, you can see their point. So is this the new Lee Evans, all serious? He laughs his characteristic, nervous, high-pitched laugh. "I hate talking like this." But he has a go. "It's difficult to explain. Everything is quite simple. You see something, and you read it, and it's very interesting, and you feel you can contribute something, artistically. Whoops. There I go again."

But he has summarily rejected other stage-acting offers, even the suggestion that Endgame should be taken to New York. Been there, done that, and anyway, "I don't consider myself that way inclined, really." But The Producers - his next West End effort, scheduled for the autumn - is a play. "Yes, it's kind of a play, isn't it? A singing play. Oh, I don't know. Musicals. Suddenly everyone knows the words. I never get that thing, everyone starts singing, then everyone else sings the same, and I'm like, 'How did you know the words? I've just met you.' I never get musicals." Which the producers of The Producers might find an entertaining sentiment.

There is always the day job, of course. Evans has been described as an "alternative comic in clubland, and a traditionalist among alternative comedians"; his jokes are of the observational school, relentlessly quotidian ("Banal," he says): about the necessity of listening to your wife, the difficulty of getting home when drunk, the sheep-like British on package holidays, sharing a bathroom. There's no shortage of toilet humour. What sets him apart is his manic physicality. As he pings back and forth across the stage, as if there are springs in the wings, there is a much-remarked-upon, supplemental entertainment in watching his sweat progress through his suit - to his back, the tops of his arms, inside his elbows, even through his lapels.

He has known he is funny, he says, since he was born. How? "Well, look at me." OK, then: unusually prominent ears (you can see through them, eerily, at one point in Freeze Frame), slightly simian, but basically quite cute. I don't know what he's talking about. "Well, that's all good and right, but the instant reaction is: here comes an idiot. That's fine. I don't mind being that. It just made my mates laugh." "Idiot" is a word he uses about himself a lot, the way gay people might use the word "queer": it's pre-emptive, celebratory, slightly awestruck, an endearment.

His father is also a comedian and a musician, and still tours; when Evans was a child the whole family went along. Evans, who stood backstage to watch, hero-worships him. But it also meant he was dragged from school to school, dependent on his older brother, who would "always be the one to beat off the people coming at us". When, in 2001, in Tony Grounds's film The Martins, he played a father on an estate whose desperation at being reviled by the system and humiliated in front of his children explodes into violence, he accessed his own growing-up: "The crying without making any noise."

At 15, in his last year at school (in Essex, which provides his accent), he noticed a girl on a bus. "Actually, her hair. Her mum was dying, and I saw her go by on her way to hospital. And I was talking to a mate in the street, and I said, 'Who's that?' And he went, 'I dunno.' She looked distraught. And about two weeks later, I met her coincidentally when I went to see this band play - and we got on really well. I made her laugh, I think."

He and Heather soon married; they have a daughter, Molly, and live in Billericay. A strict separation of church and state operates: "In my house what I do has no significance." The family are not allowed to see him filming or in rehearsal. They tried that once, when he was filming with Jackie Chan. It put him off for days.

After school came art college, various jobs (window-dressing, painting, designing flyers), the obligatory years of terrible gigs, until he discovered the Comedy Store, where he finally felt at home. Through it all, Heather earned the money: "So I owe her now." Then, in 1993, he won the Perrier. He has been working flat-out since, touring, stints in Hollywood (such as his grotesque conman in There's Something About Mary), a TV series or two (not particularly well-received), grateful returns to touring: "Perhaps the establishment were angry with me, because I don't fit in - which is fine. I don't want to. It's nice to be on the periphery looking in. And to be an idiot. That's all right. I accept who I am. I know my place in society. I'm just a pleb havin' a go." Last year this pleb became the first solo comedian to play Wembley Arena, two sold-out shows. "An amazing experience - slightly surreal. And it only hits you about a week later. What the hell was I doing? What an idiot!"

After Endgame, Evans took a holiday, and two days later was cooped up with his writing partner, Stuart Silver, covering the walls and floor with bits of paper, raiding his little black book for jokes. It won't be long before he's back on the road.

FALL-DOWN FUNNY

For British standup comic Lee Evans,
everyday life can be a trip

By LAURA DeBRIZZI

Evans above: The boxer-turned-comedian, who's popped up in Hollywood films and the London theater, brings his physically wacky act to N.Y.

The British comedian Lee Evans has a knockabout dedication to his art that fits right in with being a former amateur boxer and manual laborer, a bloke who used to travel with his dad as the hard-working elder Evans made a living as a comic and musician touring British men's clubs.
"I've fallen off a few stages and into the band pit, [especially] back when I was doing colleges," confesses Evans, 42, who's known for, among other things, knocking himself about if it'll earn even the slightest titter from a crowd.

"I don't sometimes check the lights [onstage], and once, the lights were just shining directly up in my eyes," he says. "I just kind of ran, kicked the lights and went into the pit, landing on some guy's drum kit. I had to pay for those! But it turned out all right. I don't have joint issues - yet."

New Yorkers now have the opportunity to observe Evans' exaggerated actions - and reactions - as he fulfills his "dream" of headlining here. His show "Same World Different Planet" is currently up through June 3 at 37 Arts (450 W. 37th St.).

If Evans' face and rubberband physique seem familiar, it may be because he had a brief run of quirky character work in late '90s movies, including 1997's "Mousehunt" and "The Fifth Element," and 1998's "There's Something About Mary." In that Farrelly Bros. blockbuster, Evans played the poor, hapless Tucker, who shook and shimmied uncontrollably on crutches as one of Mary's (Cameron Diaz) many would-be disingenuous suitors. Those unfamiliar with Evans' wizardry for impressions and talent for pratfalls were so fooled by his spot-on physical quivers that they thought he really was disabled (casting that would fit in with the Farrellys' usual practice).

But in reality, the Bristol-born Evans is an average-looking bloke with a genius for lively stand-up that takes audiences on a graphic - though PG-rated - romp through the oddities in life that no one ever mentions aloud coupled with frantic movements to help reinforce the ridiculous. One bit, in particular, is especially relatable: the muted way in which almost all restaurant customers request the check.

"I'm guilty of it, too!" laughs Evans, who promptly demonstrates a patron using his index finger to paint a check mark in the air. "Why do we mime to the waiter? It's not like we're talking another language. And I certainly didn't order my meal this way."

Crossing the pond for material

The show is loosely based on Evans' family trip to America last year, and what he, his wife, Heather, and his 12-year-old daughter, Mollie, experienced while traveling from Florida to Chicago and, finally, New York.

"I talk about cellular phones, the Internet and New York itself. Like, for instance, how the cops can carry guns [here]," he says. "In England, cops just have a nightstick. If they want to use a gun, they have to call the head office and ask for permission. It's bizarre, isn't it? If you're gettin' shot at, you have to ring head office and say 'Can I have a gun please?' 'All right, be down in half an hour.' What good is that?!"

Evan's musings on everyday life have earned him plenty of accolades in the U.K., and he was an Olivier Award nominee for his performance as the twitchy Leo Bloom opposite Nathan Lane's Max Bialystock in the West End production of "The Producers." His 2002 "Wired and Wonderful" and 2005 "XL Tour" sold out London's Wembley Stadium.

The generally soft-spoken Evans is looking forward to pondering the differences in English and New York nightlife.

"In England, everything closes at 11 in the evening, whereas New York is a 24-hour thing. In England, people are wandering the streets at half past eleven bored out of their minds, drunk, staring at one another saying, 'What should we do now?' 'Well, I'm just gonna go punch this guy.' And that's where this hooligan element comes in! It's f-ing medieval!"

Worries about no worries

Evans' comedy, however, is as good-hearted as a curtsey and, despite the occasional danger to his physical self, sets him up in front of a crowd armed with only a chair, a microphone and a white towel.

"Truth be told, I feel more at home onstage than I do when just going to the store," he says. "I recently had to do some home improvement in our house and I got all the wrong stuff and I messed the whole kitchen up!"

And while the stage doesn't seem to be any safer for him, Evans prefers it to the preparation.

"Before I go on, I sweat, I can't eat - it's a nightmare," Evans says. "I get very nervous. I'm not sure if I could actually just stand there.

"But I never think anything I do is good enough. I don't know why my mentality is like that. I need something to worry about, to care about. If I don't have that, then I get really stressed that I'm not stressed."

Piczo