Fame is extraordinarily difficult to obtain, but for Russell Brand, it's even harder to become famous for a second time. A mega-celebrity and a legendary lothario in the U.K., the eccentric comedian has just recently begun to hit it big in North America - and going through it all again is taking its toll.

"It's bloody tiring!" says Brand. "You forget the amount of effort that goes into creating phenomena. Now, I’ve got an air of expectation and colossal entitlement."

In the U.S., Brand finds himself having to explain himself more frequently, especially when it comes to his fashion sense: the slight 33-year-old dons a lot of black leather, with his shirts unbuttoned down to his navel and his long hair teased up several inches above his head. He looks like the love child of Captain Jack Sparrow and Steven Tyler.

"People look at me with an air of presumption. Without the fame, my haircut seems like an indicator of mental illness,"he quips. "They have no idea the sheer willpower it takes to get my hair to go this high."

But despite their initial confusion, American audiences are coming around to Brand's unusual humour, which is somehow a combination of self-deprecation and self-aggrandizement. His role in Forgetting Sarah Marshall, that of sex-crazed rocker Aldous Snow, was originally written as an entirely different character, but the script was given a complete overhaul once Brand entered the fray.

"I went to the audition and [star] Jason Segel and [director] Nick Stoller enjoyed it so much that they decided to change the character there and then on the spot," he remembers. "It was a natural extension of getting the part and rehearsing the part and I kind of am glad, really, because it did create a personality and that, in turn, became helpful and useful and funny. That process has continued as now, I'm working with Nick Stoller on Get Him To The Greek with Jonah Hill, where I play Aldous Snow again, but this time, back on drugs."

The Brit also just completed his first U.S. stand-up special, Russell Brand in New York City. In the one-hour special (airing March 14 on the Comedy Network), Brand covers everything from his unique style to his turn as host of the 2008 MTV Video Music Awards - an especially unusual gig for him, given that MTV fired him from their U.K. network in 2001.

"It was a little bit odd because, you know, I'd been sacked from there and there was a little bit of history, so it was a little peculiar to go back into that environment," he says, adding that the experience got even stranger when he received several death threats following the awards telecast.

"They wanted to kill me on the basis that I had urged America to vote for Barack Obama!" he remembers. "God knows how upset they must be now that he’s got in. But I probably can't take all the credit for America's shift to the left, I suppose."

Despite Brand's ostensibly flippant attitude toward the absurdity of his life, most of his comedy comes from his rather dark background, which includes a struggle with bulimia and a history with hard drugs.

"A lot of the things are actually bloody awful – death threats, pain, addiction – but these things become funny if you look at them right," Brand explains. "I'm tuned into being funny, so anything that goes through the filter of me becomes funny. It's a life of colossal distress and despair, really, but once it's filtered, people laugh."

And it all goes toward the greater good – or Brand's greater good, at least. Every bizarre story builds his reputation (and his hair) even higher, helping Brand to return to the level of fame to which he's grown accustomed.

"I've been not famous for a little while and it was… not as good. I recognize that it's completely ridiculous. But I have to justify myself less," he says. "Now, people will meet me and I've already seduced them on television or in a film, so it saves valuable time."


Russell Brand in New York City airs Saturday, March 14 at 10 p.m. ET on The Comedy Network.

Related Links:
• Russell Brand Gets Fired From the BBC
• Best and Worst Moments from the 2008 MTV Video Music Awards
• Review: Forgetting Sarah Marshall

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