He's the quiet man of the comedy blockbuster whose deadpan humour has won him countless fans. Now Will Ferrell is set to star in the feelgood film of the season, in which he visits a malaise affecting both the US and Ireland - offspring still living with their parents long after the arrangement has reached its sell-by date. Donald Clarketalks with the prolific comic actor.
WILL FERRELL IS, in some regards, not the sort of fellow you'd expect to achieve fame in the world of contemporary American film comedy. Superstars in that field have tended to be uncontrollable extroverts such as Jack Black, Jim Carrey or (groan) Robin Williams.
When you do encounter contained, deadpan comedy icons - Bill Murray and, from more recent times, Sarah Silverman spring to mind - their introspection appears to stem from some awful, hidden insecurity.
Now consider our Will. Even when running about the streets in the nude (see Old School) or ice-dancing erotically with Jon Heder ( Blades of Glory), he still seems oddly like a normal guy taking time out from his job as an insurance adjuster or a toll-booth attendant.
Ferrell, a frequent visitor to Ireland, has touched down in Dublin to promote an extremely funny new film called Step Brothers. The picture finds Ferrell and John C Reilly playing two grown men who, despite the arrival of middle age, have somehow failed to move away from their respective single parents. When Ferrell's mum marries Reilly's dad, they squabble like infants, break one another's toys and, eventually, establish a queasily close friendship. The boys are not quite children and they are not quite adults. There seems, in short, something wrong with them.
The film should be an exercise in sustained creepiness, but, once again, Ferrell manages to make something reassuringly normal of his character.
"We were conscious that they could be seen as having learning disabilities," he says. "We did have to worry a bit about that. The film is, however, also commentating on a very real phenomenon. I don't know if it happens here, but, in America, too many people are in a state of arrested development. They work for a year in a job and say: 'I want that company car! I want that promotion! I want it all now!' I think maybe parents have done this to kids by indulging them."
In his smart-casual clothes, a "Stop Global Warming" bracelet round his wrist, Ferrell, now a fit 41, doesn't seem too much like a selfish cry-baby. But I wonder if his performance in Step Brothersmight stand as an apology for adolescent misdeeds. Are we watching a taller, hairier version of the young Will?
"No, I don't think so," he says. "I don't think I was someone who thought I should be given things without working too hard. Though the young Will Ferrell did move back home and didn't leave again until his mid-20s. So I guess there's a bit of me in the role. But I got a lot more focused on certain, crazier aspects of the scenario when I began working on the film."
Sadly for those of us who like to think that all great comedians are constantly compensating for some trauma in their past, Ferrell seems to have had a fairly regular, happy upbringing. His dad, a keyboardist for The Righteous Brothers, did, it is true, break up with his mum when Ferrell was little, but his parents did a decent job of remaining on civil terms. Indeed, he credits the older Mr Ferrell with demonstrating certain sobering truths about the entertainment industry.
"I think that did help me," he says. "We would go to Vegas and watch him play. That was great. But then I'd watch when a job would end for him and suddenly he'd stop going out on the road. There was no insurance plan, no pension. So when I got a bit of success, I knew not to go mad and buy a Bentley. You have to be careful in this business."
Even now? Will Ferrell is currently one of the best-paid actors in Hollywood. He can't seriously still believe that he might end up washing dishes or laying asphalt. "Oh constantly. There is still that moment when a movie opens and you are holding your breath. Might it all be over? By then, when the film's edited, it's too late. You can't run into the movie theatre and shout: 'Stop it!'"
Given the deadpan nature of Will Ferrell's comedy it is, perhaps, not surprising that it took quite a long time for him to establish a foothold in the industry. If you make as loud - not to say as grating - a noise as that made by Jim Carrey then you will find it easier to shout your way into auditions. Ferrell, who grew up in a middle-class southern suburb of Los Angeles, studied sports broadcasting at college, but he always suspected that he had a talent for comedy.
"This all started with the excitement I experienced when I discovered I could make people laugh," he says. "I always knew that I could do that with my friends, but didn't know it on a mass scale until I began doing little skits for people. Then I took a six-week course in stand-up comedy at a junior college. At the end we did a little concert where we invited a few friends along. Everyone laughed, of course. The next week nobody laughed - and then the real work began."
After graduating from college in 1990, Ferrell, still thinking about being a sports broadcaster, joined a small cable television channel. Now back living with his admirably patient mother, he would slave away at the microphone all day and, when the night drew in, exercise his comedy chops with a prestigious team of improvisers called the Groundlings. In 1995, he was spotted by the producers at Saturday Night Live, the influential comedy sketch show, and elevated one big step up the ladder. "By then I'd realised I didn't want to read the news," he laughs. "I wanted to be like Chevy Chase and make fun of those who did."
Saturday Night Livecontinues to occupy a bewilderingly significant position in American culture. First broadcast in 1975, the show did launch such stellar careers as those of Dan Aykroyd, John Belushi and Bill Murray, but, in recent years, SNL has been responsible for unleashing less lovely campaigns of terror by the likes of Rob Schneider, Adam Sandler and Chris Farley. Never a success when broadcast outside the United States, the show travels about as successfully as does Phish, grape soda or Nascar racing.
"The show is cyclical," Ferrell says. "It has low periods and high periods, but it keeps steaming along. It's remained influential. Lorne Michaels, the creator, really has an eye for talent. It does seem to be always at the eye of the storm culturally. If you want to know what's going on in a particular era look to the show."
To be fair, the show did seem to wise up to the terrifying potential of George W Bush at an early stage. Long before W had secured the nomination for president, Ferrell had already perfected a highly influential impersonation of the pretend Texan. Though Ferrell is an unreformed liberal, some commentators felt that his version of Bush - amiably bumbling, rather than sinister - may actually have boosted the candidate's run for the top job.
"Well, I'd played him a few times in an early series, before the election, when he was governor of Texas. Then I played him as a candidate. Lorne had the idea and I didn't think very much of it, because, frankly, I never thought he could possibly win. I guess I may have been a bit naive."
At any rate, Ferrell's gift for underplayed comedy eventually secured him a series of big movie roles. Neither A Night at the Roxburynor The Ladies Mandid much business, but Old School, in which Ferrell played one of several grown-ups returning to campus, ate the box office alive in 2003. Co-starring Vince Vaughn, Jeremy Piven and Luke Wilson, the film sat on the borderline between civilised grown-up humour and the truly idiotic gross-out antics of American Pieand Freddie Got Fingered. Ferrell is in the happy position of appealing to both boozed-up kids and their more sedate parents. And there's nothing Hollywood loves more than a guy who can cross demographics.
It comes as no surprise to discover that Ferrell has not used his power to set up a crime family or embark on an invasion of Mexico.
Polite, ordered and hard-working, Ferrell now lives with his Swedish-born wife, Viveca Paulin, on the outskirts of Los Angeles and takes the most civilised of summer holidays.
"We like LA. It's home for me," he says. "My wife was born in Sweden, but lived in America most of her life. So my oldest son is now bi-lingual, which is great. We go back to Sweden every summer where we have a nice cottage in the woods."
What do they make of Ferrell in Sweden? Are they a bit less pushy? "Yes. I think you are treated differently there. They ignore you more, but in a good way. In Sweden somebody will come up to you and say: 'Oh are you that actor? Yes? It is nice to meet you.' And then they'll expect you to get back in line with everybody else, which is how it should be. There's none of this fawning you get in the States. Of course, that can be fun too."
Success has happened at a slow and gradual pace for Ferrell. He appears to have enjoyed the steady ascent and admits to no overpowering ambitions to direct, play Shakespeare, record a song cycle or do any of the other things that comic actors get up to when they achieve a little leverage. In the recent Stranger than Fiction, a more serious type of comedy co-starring Emma Thompson, he did, however, show traces of a more sophisticated talent than we have hitherto seen.
When is he going to make like Carrey and start rooting around for an Oscar?
"More serious roles are something I do think about," he says. "But I always make it clear that I am not possessed by that urge. I do not walk around thinking: why won't they take me seriously? I have something to prove like every other creative person. I have ambitions. So, yes, I do want to develop other projects that are more serious, but I don't want to do that just as a way of saying: 'Look at me! Look at me!'"
Indeed, anybody who has dealt with Ferrell declares him the least self-important of fellows. Earlier this year, the Literary and Historical Society at University College Dublin invited him to receive an honorary award. Ferrell duly donned an Irish rugby strip and delivered an impressive stand-up routine. Mind you, this country does have a special place in his affections.
"That UCD thing was a fun way to end a trip here," he explains. "My name is Irish. As far as we can establish it always was Ferrell, though, and never Farrell. But we know there is some Irish there. Still, being American and from everywhere, I sometimes feel a little guilty that I am identified as being Irish and nothing else."
For all his reserve and sobriety, Ferrell does appear to enjoy meeting fans and chatting to the journos. Yet I can't imagine he is the sort of chap who went into show business purely to become well known. Would he admit that fame was, to any degree, a spur?
"Oh, I think that's a good question," he says, and pauses for a long time. "I think anyone who does this job has at one point dreamed about having people recognise them. Being accepted or recognised on a wide scale when it first starts happening is a lot of fun." He smiles and rubs his chin.
"You know you can be having a bad day and someone will walk by and say: 'Hey, I love you, Will.' That really cheers you up. Here I am having one of those days where I just don't think I'm funny and some guy says he loves me. That's a really lovely thing."
So if you see Will Ferrell strolling down your street - and you just might - you know what to do.
Step Brothersis on general release
INTERVIEW
INTERVIEW
WORDS DONALD CLARKE