ONE of the abiding images from the new movie musical extravaganza Moulin Rouge is the sight and sound of British actor Jim Broadbent, resplendent in huge fat suit and ginger wig, cavorting with dancers while singing Madonna's hit Like A Virgin.

Yet when he first talked to Australian director Baz Luhrmann, who made Strictly Ballroom and the Leonardo DiCaprio Romeo and Juliet, about the project, he was quite honest about his qualifications. "I said, 'I can't sing and I can't dance'," he recalls, "and he said, 'I think we can get round that'." How they did that was to put someone else's voice on the soundtrack when Broadbent's character had "truly operatic moments".

It's typical of a visually exuberant movie that redefines the movie musical genre by mixing and matching a catalogue of popular music, taking in everything from Elton John to Paul McCartney, from Queen to David Bowie.

And centre stage at the Moulin Rouge itself is Broadbent as the larger-than-life Harold Zidler, the Parisian nightspot impresario who believes the show must go on despite the romantic drama being enacted by Nicole Kidman's flame-haired singer and courtesan with Ewan McGregor's passionate writer.

Broadbent is increasingly in demand for US-financed movies following scene-stealing performances in Woody Allen's Bullets Over Broadway, Little Voice and the Gilbert & Sullivan biopic Topsy-Turvy, for which he won best actor at the Venice Film Festival as W S Gilbert of Gilbert and Sullivan fame. More recently, he played Bridget's father in Brit-hit Bridget Jones's Diary.

Making Moulin Rouge entailed spending eight months in Australia, filming in studios down under. "The culture shock was doing a musical," says the actor. "I was in Sydney but the work is similar. It was a theatrical piece and quite like doing a big extraordinary show at the National. It was big, loud acting."

Zidler's look took a long time to achieve through make-up and costume, and wasn't very comfortable. "The padding was huge, a body suit that came down my arms and legs - a great foam construction which had a personal air conditioning unit with a tube that blew air up my trouser legs," he recalls.

"We were dancing and striding around in the Australian summer and although they do have quite good air-conditioning, it was quite physically demanding. "It was eight months with one and three-quarter hours in the make-up chair each day and then the padding. It was just the extent of it all. You are buoyed up by the fact that you are doing a musical and there are a lot of wonderful people in it.

Both Kidman and McGregor were keen to show off their vocal powers. "They loved the singing," he says. "Nicole had a lot more dancing too. Both have got lovely voices and were thrilled to get the chance to throw them around a bit."

Although he acknowledges that the character of the Moulin Rouge impresario is heightened and made larger-than-life in the movie, he doesn't think it's too far removed from real life. "I've met quite a lot of Zidlers, one used to run Nottingham Playhouse," he says. "I've done a lot of films that extol the virtue of live performance. Little Voice was another, and Bullets Over Broadway. I've my years on the stage behind me and I think film directors can spot I've done a lot of theatre."

The look of the film is not unlike a painting by Toulouse Lautrec, the artist who frequented the Moulin Rouge and who plays a key role in Luhrmann's story. When the cast met for a month of rehearsals, he says the actors were provided with a lot of research, both visual and written material, about both Lautrec and the Moulin Rouge itself.

Since Moulin Rouge, Broadbent has made two more movies including the high profile US-backed Gangs Of New York, the new drama from director Martin Scorsese in which he stars with Leonardo DiCaprio and Daniel Day Lewis.

Filming took him away from home again for seven months, to studios in Rome where 1860s New York had been built on the backlot. "The most fantastic set you can imagine," he says. "I play Boss Tweed, who's based on a real character. He's a corrupt politician who tries to manipulate the gangs."

Then he returned home to make a small-scale British movie completed in just five weeks. He plays John Bailey, widower of writer Iris Murdoch. The film, directed by former Royal National Theatre boss Richard Eyre, is based on Bailey's book about Murdoch's battle with Alzheimer's. Kate Winslet and Hugh Bonneville play the younger Iris and John. "It's a love story," says Broadbent.

As for his chances of becoming a pop star, he's not holding his breath. There's been no word yet from Madonna with her reaction to his all-singing, all-dancing version of her old hit Like A Virgin.

* Moulin Rouge (12) opens in cinemas on September 7.

Published: 31/08/2001