Stand-up comic Eddie Izzard has moved on from movie appearances in person to providing the voice for E. Nesbitt's famous wish-granting Sand Fairy in Five Chidren and It. Steve Pratt reports.

EDDIE Izzard has never quite managed to emulate his stage comedy success on the big screen. His films have had only modest success and, in the case of The Avengers, landed with a gigantic flop at the box office.

He's on safer ground in Five Children And It, a film adaptation of E Nesbit's tale of childhood adventures and magical wishes. Izzard provides the voice of the animated It - the grouchy Sand Fairy who can make wishes come true.

"I wanted my voice to have this European thing, which came into my head when I was reading it," explains Izzard. "There was a certain pressure - maybe from America - saying this would not work. My answer to the people of America not being able to understand a European accent was, 'Hasta la vista, baby. I'll be back'. That guy had an Austrian accent and everyone found it very groovy, so it just shows Middle America can swing with anything it wants to."

He describes It's accent as somewhere between French and Italian. "He's 2,000 years old so he must've picked up a few accents on the way," says Izzard. "I became slightly more English when he was drugged. So I liked the fact that when he was off his face, he's slightly more English, which makes us more sexy."

And what would he ask for if he had a wish from It? "I want unlimited wishes, I've already worked that one out. If I had one wish, it would be able to speak every language," he says.

This isn't the first time he's lent his voice to an animated character. He did one before for Wallace and Gromit creators Aardman and has just voiced a Disney animation The Wild.

A huge fan of The Simpsons, he also has ideas for his own animation series with a character called Pants Cat. "I felt this would be a great way to get my comedy out without having my face all over it, so I could have free rein to do dramatic things without people going 'total association'," he says. Some of Izzard's past movies have sunk without trace but that won't happen to his next, Ocean's Twelve, in which he joins George Clooney, Brad Pitt and Catherine Zeta Jones in the Ocean's Eleven sequel. "Unfortunately, it's just a cameo role, but it's great to be in it. It was fun to do and I'll try to do every opening I can. I did two scenes, of a film that has about 400," he recalls.

He'd already met Pitt and his wife Jennifer Aniston when they come to one of his shows in LA, so he tried not to get star-struck. "On the first night I was playing poker with Brad Pitt, Elliot Gould, Michael Douglas and Don Cheadle. So it was great - playing poker in Rome on a rooftop watching the sun go down," he adds.

* Five Children And It (U) opens in cinemas tomorrow.

Published: 21/10/2004