British comic Russell Brand is the secret star of Forgetting Sarah Marshall, playing the oversexed yet hard-to-hate rock star who takes up with the ex-girlfriend who the hero can't get over. Brand recalls that his character "was originally meant to be an author, very bookish. They very kindly, and fortunately for me, rewrote the part on our first meeting, when I was dressed thusly, in this sort of sexy-licorice, S&M, Willie Wonka, rocket-scarecrow attire. That worked out incredibly well for me." Brand, who was encouraged to improvise in the role, admits to having modeled his performance in part on the battling brothers of Oasis, Noel and Liam Gallagher. He also modeled it in part on himself. As Jay Clendenin of the Los Angeles Times summarizes his career highlights, Brand is "a proud three-time winner of PETA's Sexiest Vegetarian of the Year, the Sun's two-time Shagger of the Year and GQ's Most Stylish Man in 2006 and Least Stylish Man in 2007. He's also a recovering heroin and crack abuser whose bestselling memoir, My Booky Wook, opens in a clinic for sex addicts -- or, as he wrote, 'the terminally saucy.'" Always eager to push the outside of the envelope, Brand was once booted off MTV UK after appearing dressed as Osama bin Laden one day after the 9/11 attacks. (He and the network have since kissed and made up.) Asked about the incident today, Brand only shrugs: ""I was a drug addict then, and I thought it was funny. In comedy, I think one has no other obligation than to be funny. Now, on that day, I did not fulfill that basic obligation."
Since attracting attention during the Hackney Empire theater's annual "new talent" competition in 2000, Brand has built a career for himself as a stand-up comic and TV and radio personality, often using his own tabloid exploits as fodder for his act. He broke into American movies last year with a small role in Penelope, and is now filming a part in Bedtime Stories, starring Adam Sandler as a man who entertains his niece and nephew with stories that magically start to come true, and which, you know, sounds just horrible. More intriguingly, he's also said to be adapting his memoir with director Michael Winterbottom, whose sobersides reputation may have to be rehauled if he keeps launching British comedians onto the screen. Will the film verson include the scene at the GQ awards where Rod Stewart, of all people, in what may or may not have been a joke, talked trash about Brand from the stage in retaliation for Brand's having claimed to have shagged Rod's daughter? And if it does, will Steve Coogan play Rod?