Mrs Doubtfire has a nasty turn

ROBIN Williams appears to have mis-read the entry in his appointments diary. The American actor and comedian appears to be under the delusion that he's been booked for a stand-up comedy performance. Put him in front of an audience, no matter whether paying public or prying press, and he'll perform.

This shouldn't come as a surprise. Interviews with the star of Good Morning Vietnam and Mrs Doubtfire inevitably turn into a one-man show, not the usual question-and-answer session.

He's passing through London briefly to publicise his new film One Hour Photo, a thriller in which he plays a creepy technician who takes an unhealthy interest in the snaps of one family that brings film to be developed. The role is one of a hat-trick of movie villains - Insomnia and Death To Smoochy feature the others - that Williams has done in quick succession.

Getting him to talk about his "dark period" is easier said than done. Given a roomful of people, he loses no opportunity to crack jokes and offer impersonations of everyone from George W Bush to Peter Lorre. "Can I begin by asking you a serious questions?," says one interviewer. "Eight inches," replies Williams deadpan, before adopting a deep voice at the suggestion that these dark roles give him the opportunity to exorcise his demons.

Then he glides smoothly into Bush-speak: "And before we go into Iraq I want them to know one thing - I'm not giving up the energy tapes, the Enron tapes, that's not negotiable. Cheney will not testify, given the fact he's had a heart attack today... I hope."

He's clearly no friend of the present US administration, something that proved a great help during his return to stand-up performances over the past year. He began his career on the comedy circuit before hitting the big time on the big screen. Williams says performing live comedy again "more than recharged my batteries - it overloaded them".

Two months after the terrible events of September 11, he was on his feet telling jokes. "People were saying we need something to deal with what's happened. They were in total shock and then, like always, you come out of shock and there's rage and in some cases denial, but that's the White House," he says. "It's the idea of going back out and talking in a humorous way about something so awful. You couldn't deal with the incident itself, it's pretty much a no-fly zone, but you could talk about all the measures that have happened afterwards.

"Like airport security. In America before, this was insane. 'Get on the plane, oh is that a gun? get on the plane'. And now you can't bring a nail clipper on a plane. What are they afraid of, that you'll go, 'give me the plane or the bitch loses a cuticle?'."

By now he's into his comic stride. "You're the only people hanging in with us. God bless you. It's Tony going, 'I stand by my slightly damaged friends in these troubled times'. And Bush is looking at Blair like, 'I can't even spell some of the things he says'."

The voices of Bush, John Wayne and an English lord are employed as his political narrative takes in Congress, the House of Lords and back to George W. "Remember when he almost died from a pretzel? Even his own dogs were licking him for the salt. They didn't care," he says. "Every day he does something that's like a comedy gift. He spoke to the Stock Market and it dropped a point a word. Him talking about business ethics is like a leper giving a facial.

"Going back on stage, talking about what we go through every day, has been great. Now anytime anyone criticises him, it's 'you're a traitor'. It's the idea of how do you deal with it and, in a way, the only weapon you have is comedy."

Occasionally, much to the relief of his publicity people, the conversation drifts back to One Hour Photo. He wasn't particularly looking for a change of image. It just so happened the three dark roles came his way one after another. "They were so good and so strange, I had to do them. They're not normally what I get offered," he says.

'It's been a privilege to play these type of characters because you are no longer bound by the laws of likeability. It's a kind of surprise attack because people think, 'oh, it's that nice man'. Even in Insomnia people thought, 'he wouldn't do anything awful and, even if he did, it wouldn't be that bad'. Then they realise he's an evil bastard. It helped the movie because it confused people."

Pausing briefly to discuss Insomnia co-star Al Pacino, nipple clips and sheep noises (good taste forbids me to give details), Williams admits to joking around between takes on the set. "If you stayed method all the time you'd drive people crazy," he says. "When you are acting and working, you get very concentrated because you have to. We can do wild stuff and then be these nasty, wild characters."

Then he's off on another freefall routine ranging from Forties screen villain Peter Lorre to attending Scottish comedian Billy Connolly's birthday party. The talk turns to therapist wife Pamela Stephenson writing Connolly's autobiography. Williams says in a nudge, nudge, wink, wink way that he wouldn't mind being the subject of her scrutiny. "I think it began as a doctoral thesis about her writing about celebrity and she kept going with it, analysing what makes a comic run, which is a bizarre concept to begin with. To have someone that funny write about you is a great thing. There's a biography of Peter Sellers out right now written by an unfunny man, which is a bit like having Ray Charles as an art critic. You want to have someone with a sense of humour writing about you."

Via the island of Gozo ("doesn't that sound like a bad Disney character?") we arrive, through talk of his 50-plus age, to botox as he supplies both questions and answers. "What did you do?". "I injected botulism, I feel so good about myself. I have no wrinkles." "You also have no expression."

Williams turning nasty on screen came as a blessed relief for those who thought he'd become too sentimental and touchy-feeling in films such as Patch Adams, in which he played a doctor who dressed up as a clown and used comedy to cure patients. "I would read reviews about other movies and they would attack me again," he recalls. "One woman reviewed another movie and said the people who made that movie should be put on the same desert island as the people who made Patch Adams and may they drown with Robin Williams. Somebody must have had an awful experience with a clown. I would try and stay away from papers, then even people parking your car would go, 'I'm sorry about the movie, Mr Williams'. It's nice with these new films, because they are so different, to just change perceptions. That's so great."

The only time he's temporarily lost for words is when asked to name his most embarrassing moment. "Me in a thong was one," he says. After a pause, he recalls meeting Laurence Olivier when he was a presenter at the Academy Awards ceremony. "He said, 'are you going to wear make up?' and I said, 'no', and he said, 'don't, it makes you look effeminate.' It's hard to pick the most embarrassing. Performing really in weird places. Saying things at the wrong time. I'll try and think of one and email you."

* One Hour Photo (15) is now showing in cinemas.