Steve Pratt discovers why ex-EastEnder Jimi Mistry decided to play a talking book and how the actor is coping with Hollywood.

FORMER EastEnders actor Jimi Mistry spends most of his latest film being carried around. In the comedy fantasy adventure Ella Enchanted, he plays a talking book named Benny. This talking volume has all the answers to help the heroine Ella of Frell on her quest to break an obedience spell that forces her to do everything she's told.

Benny's all-moving, all-talking head is on the cover of the book that Ella's takes with her, so the actor spent much of his time filming on his own. His head was put on the book later through the magic of special effects.

"It was mainly all blue screen work with me strapped to a chair in the middle of the studio," he explains. "I'd move my head and look a certain way. It was good to have a taste of what working with special effects was like. I worked a few days of quite solid filming.

"They were long days because the whole idea of the technique was that every time the book moved, my field of vision would move with every single movement. So I had to do it looking in all different directions."

You can understand him saying that Benny the book wasn't the sort of part an actor gets to do every day. He saw the results in odd circumstances too. "The weird thing was I got to see it in the strangest of places. I never got to see the film over here and when I was in America this year, I was in my hotel room looking at the in-house movies and there was Ella Enchanted..

"So I watched it there and then. It was really good fun. I have a three-year-old child myself and thought that this is something she'll be able to see."

He did get to meet the other cast - and become human - in the film's finale, a song-and-dance number set to Elton John's Don't Go Breaking My Heart. "So I got to hang out with some of the other cast. Although all my other stuff was pretty contained, it was shot in Ireland in October and it was really lovely," he says.

Mistry may have played Albert Square's doctor, Fred Fonseca, but his career has taken off in movies rather than TV. The film of East Is East brought him to public attention, having been with the play since the first workshops and London production.

He followed that with the leading role in The Guru, in which Bollywood and New York collided. My Kingdom, starring Richard Harris, and Ismail Merchant's The Mystic Masseur are among other film credits.

"I didn't plan anything," he says. "You have some people who say they would love to films and others who don't. I didn't set out to do that, but the kind of work and process of working in films suits me the best.

"I would find it quite difficult working on something every day for the foreseeable future."

He certainly didn't hang around in EastEnders too long. As a result, he's not as closely associated with the BBC1 soap as other actors who've tried to move on into other areas.

"When I was in the show I made a point of doing my job and going home," says Mistry. His gamble paid off. He's hardly stopped working in movies since leaving, with The Guru especially raising his exposure abroad. "That gave me more of a profile internationally and was a really good opportunity - and it was a lot of fun and hard work," he says.

He goes back and forth to America as the work demands it. "I find it a difficult place to be. It's all about the work and I'm not someone desperate to be in California and make it out there regardless of what I do," he says.

Mistry was born in Scarborough, although his parents weren't living there at the time. His mother was visiting his aunt in the town when baby Jimi decided to arrive unexpectedly. But he retains fond memories of visiting relatives in the town.

He has several other movies awaiting release, including Touch Of Pink which was seen at the Sundance and London Film Festivals. Dead Fish sees him appearing with Gary Oldman and Robert Carlyle in "a really spaced out film with all these amazing character actors". He's also made a rom-com in Bristol with Jennifer Love Hewitt called The Truth About Love and another drama, Things To Do Before You Are 30.

At the moment he should have been shooting Mission Impossible 3 with Tom Cruise but the start date was delayed until next year. Looking on the bright side, it means he's been at home with his family instead of away for nine months. He doesn't know if he'll still be in the movie when it finally starts shooting. At present, he's in the process of putting the final details to a couple of projects to start after Christmas in England. "It's a question of raising the finance, that's the thing we're always having to deal with," he says.

* Ella Enchanted (PG) opens in cinemas tomorrow.

Published: 19/12/2004