Face to Face with Mr.Bean - Interview

Meet the quiet man behind the world's favourite accident-prone misfit

- By Richard Barber

Rowan Atkinson, 52, is one of England's most successful comedy actors and the quintessence of the funnyman who is both serious and somewhat tortured.

He won the affection of millions of fans around the world with his TV and film portrayal of the bumbling Mr Bean, who causes havoc wherever he goes. His second film featuring the character, Mr Bean's Holiday, has just hit screens around the globe.

Atkinson is the youngest of three sons of a prosperous farmer in the north-east of England. After high school (he attended the same one, two years behind Tony Blair), he studied electrical engineering at Newcastle and at Oxford, where he met Richard Curtis, a frequent collaborator on a range of subsequent projects, including four series of the BBC comedy Blackadder.

In 1990 in New York Atkinson married Sunetra Sastry, a former BBC make-up artist he met on the set of Blackadder. They have two children, Ben, 14, and Lily, 12. Atkinson is as resolutely tight-lipped about them as Mr Bean himself. He reportedly said: "There's only one thing more important than not talking about your domestic life and that's not talking about why you're not talking about your domestic life."

"People think," he has also said, "that because I can make them laugh on screen, I'll be able to make them laugh in person. That isn't the case at all. I'm essentially a rather quiet, dull person who just happens to be a performer." Reader's Digest begs to differ.

Reader's Digest: Was it hard to return to the character of Mr Bean after a ten-year break?
Atkinson: To be honest, I find all film-making difficult and quite boring, and not remotely funny. It's an anxiety-inducing experience. I'm always convinced I haven't got it right, although you eventually reach a point when you have to say enough is enough.

RD: So you're a perfectionist...
Atkinson: I think I am. The danger with that is the implication that everything you've done is perfect, which is a long way from the truth. But there's always the feeling that there's something just out of reach that's moving away from you all the time. That can be frustrating.

RD: And something, presumably, that you regard as an affliction.
Atkinson: Absolutely. I don't think perfectionism is an admirable quality. I think it's more of a disease, something to be resisted rather than encouraged.

RD: What is the greatest challenge of playing someone who never speaks?
Atkinson: When there are no words and the only way to convey what's happening is through physical expression, it's particularly hard to get it right. And it's a much slower process. Scenes take longer to get right. Wherever we were, we always ran out of time.

RD: Was Mr Bean's Holiday inspired by the classic French Monsieur Hulot film?
Atkinson: Not really. Hulot may have been in my mind, but a long way back. Jacques Tati was a great inspiration to me when I was young. I loved the visual comedy he promoted, but the two films are quite different. The essence of Monsieur Hulot's Holiday was that he was travelling for five minutes and on the beach for an hour and a half whereas Bean travels for an hour and a half and is on the beach for five minutes. It's the inverse of the Tati film.

RD: And both characters are different?
Atkinson: Yes. Bean is far more unpleasant, far more aggressive, far more self-centred. I've always regarded him as a child trapped in a man's body. It's something that gives him some of his appeal, although he's not essentially a particularly appealing person.

RD: Why was the film set in France?
Atkinson: Because we wanted Bean to be where he couldn't communicate verbally. He only knows what he thinks are three French words: oui, non and gracias*.

RD: Do you share similarities with him?
Atkinson: I hope not too many, though perhaps we're similar in some ways. He's someone who dresses very conventionally in his tweed jacket, red tie and white shirt. He believes in correct form. And yet, at the same time, he's a natural-born anarchist. I understand that. I'm certainly someone who likes to be modest and keep myself to myself and lead a normal, civilized, well-formed life. But there's also a naughtiness in me that wants to break out of that occasionally. The good thing is that I can do that through my acting. I don't have to do it in the street.

RD: Occasionally, though, you put your head above the parapet, as when you gave a speech in the House of Lords against a proposed government Bill intended to outlaw religious hatred.
Atkinson: Yes, I'm a great believer that there should be no ideas or notions that cannot be questioned or ridiculed or criticized. All religions deserve equal freedom of worship and practice, but none deserves the right to freedom from criticism.

RD: Away from public life, how do you like to spend your time?
Atkinson: Cars are my thing - motor racing, in particular. I haven't been allowed to race since February last year for insurance reasons to do with the film. And I've had a number of crashes in my time; it would have been hard not to, given my hobby. There was one car that gave me a lot of trouble... Well, I'd always blame the car, wouldn't I? But I've loved them ever since I was a child. Racing is like making a film. You say: "It's very difficult to make a movie - so let's make a movie." It's the challenge. I never get more nervous than I do before a race. It's like appearing on stage in front of a thousand people, but in the end, I enjoy racing more than acting.

RD: You are on record as being a supporter of the monarchy. Why?
Atkinson: I like the fact that it's so irrational, that it makes no sense, and yet it's something people really love and identify with. I suppose I'm a great believer that the most important things in life are in the end not rational. Love and beauty and art and music and friendship and spirituality and religion - these are the things that really root people. Democracy may be a valuable tool in underpinning an ordered society but it's not what people tend to remember at the end of their lives. Clearly, it makes no sense for someone non-elected to have a lot of power and the royal family may be no more than figureheads, but they mean something to those who like them.