A new inspector calls

Steve Martin as the bumbling Inspector Clouseau

10 April 2012

Why on earth did he risk it, I ask Steve Martin. "Well I turned the role down in my head about three times and officially about twice," he replies drily. He's talking about the wisdom of accepting his latest role: that of the bungling Inspector Clouseau, a part which Peter Sellers made his own in the Sixties. "We've had a lot of people attack the fact that I was taking on the role," he continues, "no one had the confidence we could do it."

Released next month, The Pink Panther brings the inspector back to the screen and makes no bones about its origins. The familiar pink cartoon character appears in a lengthy credit sequence accompanied by Henry Mancini's incomparable theme tune.

The film takes Clouseau - and us - back to his beginnings in a prequel of sorts. We meet the bumbling policeman as he is plucked from obscurity in southern France by Chief Inspector Dreyfus (Kevin Kline) to solve the murder of a French soccer coach and the theft of the priceless Pink Panther diamond.

Astonishingly, Martin's Clouseau really does succeed in erasing some of the memory of Peter Sellers. His inspector is less pompous, less stupid and more endearing. There's a dash of David Suchet's Poirot, as well as a sweet romantic sub-plot with Emily Mortimer. This Inspector Clouseau is vulnerable. And he wears a beret, not a brown hat.

It's a featherweight film which was expected to be a disaster. Who, after all, wants to see Clouseau played by anyone but Peter Sellers? But Martin makes it work and the farcical set pieces are undeniably amusing. Audiences have flocked to see the movie and it is one of the year's surprise hits in the US with a box office gross of more than $50 million and counting.

It's faintly disappointing that, in person, Steve Martin is not a particularly funny man. Indeed, he comes across as intensely serious about his craft. He's extremely self-possessed, verging on the smug.

He gets up to some of the silliest slapstick seen on screens for some time in The Pink Panther, but Martin, now 60, feels no need to grandstand or perform in interviews. Dressed in a smart black suit and tie-less striped green shirt, the silver-haired comedian is not unpleasant when I meet him in Los Angeles, he's just not as, well, funny as I was expecting.

He had to think very seriously about taking on the role, he tells me; Blake Edwards, the director of all Sellers's Clouseau movies, was "not a fan" of the remake idea. But the director, Shawn Levy, who had worked with Martin on Cheaper by the Dozen, was determined to get him on board and, eventually, the
actor crumbled: "I started discussing the idea with Shawn and I had a few ideas for the script and slowly we got our confidence up."

To make it a work, it was vital that Martin made Clouseau his own. "I didn't want to steal anything from Peter," he says. "I think the only thing I did that he did was karate chop once, half-heartedly, but I was careful about it and I felt after a while that it was coming from me and not channeling Peter."

Martin co-wrote the screenplay, or, he corrects, rewrote the existing screenplay, creating many of the showpieces and throwaway moments in the new film himself - not to mention his own uniquely stylised French accent.

There is one side-splitting scene in which he is trying to learn how to say "I would like to buy a hamburger" with a language coach to prepare for a trip to
New York. Martin goes headto-head with Sellers on the absurd accent and comes up with a different, equally funny interpretation.

"I wrote that line about 25 times in the script," he explains, without cracking a smile. "I knew that when you read it, there was nothing amusing about it. I just hoped it was funny when I did it. We had no idea it would turn out as well as it did."

Hardly a bumbling idiot, Martin does admit to sharing one characteristic with the inspector - his blind confidence. "That's something I grew up with," he says. "I had it for as long as I didn't know that the odds were so great against you." That confidence, which some might read as arrogance, comes no doubt from his happy childhood in California.

Although born in Texas, he spent his formative years in the sunshine, learning his first performing skills while working at Disneyland as a teen. By the time he was in his early twenties, he was performing his own stand-up comedy material in clubs. In his thirties, he was blazing a trail as one of the biggest stand-ups in America.

It was only a matter of time before he devised a film vehicle to suit his flamboyant style. He co-wrote and starred in The Jerk, in 1979, becoming an instant film star and paving the way for other contemporary comics such as Robin Williams and Billy Crystal to take a stab at the movies themselves.

A string of well-received hits followed, including the much loved The Man With Two Brains, Roxanne, Father of the Bride (with Diane Keaton) and last year's downbeat, mid-life crisis movie Shopgirl (with Claire Danes). The inane, softer, family-friendly fare has made Martin one of the most bankable movie stars in the world.

Quite the renaissance man, Martin has also successfully dabbled in novel writing and experimented with theatre. Is he never satisfied? "I think it's not just comedians but people in the arts in general who battle demons," he says. "It's one thing that actually makes you creative, although I've never found that happiness inhibits my output.

"People in the arts are constantly vulnerable to criticism, and you get it from the most unlikely places. You know, you can be surfing Amazon.com and suddenly a bad review of you pops up, you know what I mean?

There are terrible reviews for a book you've written and there is also high praise, so you're all over the place. It's a very insecure profession really. Maybe that's what generates the unhappiness."

His personal life hasn't always been as secure or as discreet as it is now. He has a dazzling string of former partners including his English actress wife of eight years, Victoria Tennant, and exes Linda Ronstadt, Bernadette Peters, artist Cindy Sherman and Anne Heche, who famously left him in 1996 for Ellen DeGeneres. He was also linked with Helena Bonham Carter for a while.

At present, he says, he is happy. "I have a long-term relationship with a woman and I keep it private because I don't like prying, and it's better to keep those things to myself," he says. Although he has never had a child, he says it's not impossible at 60. "Or maybe it is," he says finally cracking a smile.

Maybe he's just too busy with his work? "I do think my comedy writing has gotten better," he says. "I think I still have my enthusiasm. I think I am a better craftsman and I still enjoy it."

But Martin is long past musing over what makes something funny. He worked that out a long time ago. "I am more aware that I have only so much time left and want to make every moment worthwhile," he says.

"I have learned how to abort things that I know are going to be a lot of time spent frivolously. I feel very, very good about getting the opportunity to play this kind of comic role in an essentially juvenile comedy. It makes me feel really good to still be active as a physical comedian."

And what about Peter Sellers? Does Martin worry about what he would think? "I do wish Peter Sellers could see it. I really do," he says confidently. "After all, I'd be fine if somebody wanted to remake The Jerk."

The Pink Panther is released on 17 March.

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