I loved you in [the 1998 musical drama] Velvet Goldmine; a superb and disruptive movie. Did you enjoy the shooting? GasparGarcao
There’s an orgy scene which – in this very rock’n’roll way – we shot at 10am. It was a Steadicam shot, so everyone had to be acting all the time because you don’t know where the camera is looking. It was about a six-minute take where everyone was going for it in this big room. Then they go, “Cut!”, everyone stops, then someone says: “OK, go for another take.” I was with the wonderful Emily Woof and just had to get very intimate, very quickly. You stop, mark time and go back into it.
What does George Clooney smell like? TopTramp
George Clooney smells very George Clooneyish. I found him a very positive person. And annoyingly good at table football. I went to boarding school, so I’m very good at table football. I challenged him when we were filming Ocean’s Twelve. I thought, “I’m going to beat George Clooney here”, and he beat me 10–8. You can’t get that good without having played many games of table football. I still have a rematch in mind.
Do you still like acting? MsRizla
Well, if anyone watches it, [my new film] Doctor Jekyll proves I do. I’ve just come from Great Expectations, playing 19 characters. I’m going to Hamlet in January in New York, playing a similar number of characters. I love acting; it was my first love from the age of seven. I had a sense of humour. I loved watching comedy.
I didn’t know you could specialise until I discovered Monty Python. I have a separate acting agent to my comedy agent and I push things in parallel. I’ve been doing dramatic roles in films and on stage for 20, 25 years, and comedy for 35 years. Now I’m going into politics, like Glenda Jackson, so I’ll have to put that into hibernation. But I love acting. Bottom line of acting is to be truthful. Bottom line of comedy is to be funny. They’re slightly different and people get it wrong sometimes.
Did you get any official royal feedback after voicing the Queen [Elizabeth II] and Prince Charles in The Simpsons? TurangaLeela2
King Charles has a good sense of humour. I did a gig for the Prince’s Trust. I’m sure and he and Camilla married for love. I’m not into monarchy. I’m not into hereditary privilege, but I do think he’s had the patience of a saint waiting to be king. He was way ahead of the curve on climate change and organic farming. He’s tried to do good things before and is trying to do good things as king. Talking in the French parliament in French at a time that the Brexit government was saying, “separation, separation, pull back”, and he was saying: “No, we’re still here. A lot of us want to work and live together in some shape or form. What can we learn from other countries? What can other countries learn from us? Let’s move forward.” I think he has a good chance of doing some good stuff over the next decades, so I encourage him to live as long as he can and do these positive things.
What was your worst ever gig? nathanadler
When they’re filming live television shows in front of a studio audience, they’ll often have a warmup comedian. When they have to move cameras or change sets or costumes, they’ll bring back the warmup guy. They’ll talk room humour: “How you getting on? It’s Jack with a funny haircut …” and are very good at it. I never wanted to do sketch comedy or a sitcom, so I always said I wouldn’t do television. But I thought I could warmup because I’d done street performing and hosting at standup clubs. I did a couple – Red Dwarf and another variety show – and failed miserably, because room humour is not what I can do. I come out of the room and talk about things on Mars and cats with guns and whether whales are DJs of the sea. I completely failed.
Have you always known you were female, the more masculine presentation purely because you were playing more male roles? Or have you always been moving along the gender spectrum? jayBwalker
My genetics have not moved. I’ve always known that I had both boy and girl genetics. We know we are a mixture: XX and XY, not XX and YY. We start in the foetus as girls and some get coded boys. We have an obsession about separating with crowbars. I feel the spectrum is true – who you fancy, how you self-identify – and the slider can be anywhere. Since I came out 38 years ago, I have the gift of both. I was based as a cis male; now I feel more content based as a trans woman.
Why should voters take you seriously as a political candidate? Vivster
Why did anyone take Boris Johnson or Donald Trump seriously? If you look at the marathons I’ve run, the fact I’ve performed in French, German and Spanish, you’ll see I’m about making rather than breaking connections; about raising money to help rather than to hurt people.
Other politicians in our country and around the world have done massively negative, extreme rightwing things, using lying as a tool of politics. I’ve tried to be open. I came out as trans 38 years ago. I’ve tried to do things that have been honest – play with a straight bat, to use a cricketing analogy. Take me as you see me. I treat other people as I like to be treated myself.
I can communicate and I do have a world vision of the future: everyone in the world has the right to a fair chance in life. That’s 8 billion people. I want to start that fight in Brighton Pavilion. I’ll fight for Brighton, the country, for our continent, for our world – [the] 21st century is the coming of age of humanity. We’ll either make it fair for all 8 billion people this century, or I don’t think we’re going to make it to the next century with people spinning things so negatively, using lying as a tool of politics and there being no political consequences for such outright outrageous, overt lying. Why wouldn’t you take me seriously, given everything I’ve done in my life?
Are you an optimist or a pessimist: is your glass of Eddie Izzard gin half full or half empty? VerulamiumParkRanger
You’ll be interested to know, I’m neither. I’m a glasses two-thirds full person. If you’re trans and came out back in ’85, you’d better be positive. Otherwise, you’re just not going to get it together. I distinctly think there’s more goodwill than ill will in the world. I do think there are some individuals who get wrapped up in their own ego and, if they get to the top job in a country, start to remove democratic institutions or organisations and make things line up so they can get back in again, again and again, so that the democracy starts to fade away. They just seem to be locked into endlessly running the country and no one else can get a look in edgeways. So that is unfortunate.
But they seem to be a tiny minority where they get to these positions where they get their country in a headlock. Most of us are decent people. Even though we’re at a time when horrendous things are happening in the world, the vast majority of people in the world are still live and let live. So I will stay a glass two-thirds full person.
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