Comic writer/actor Rowan Atkinson, Mr. Bean himself, boasts a three-decade TV and film career, including Mr. Bean's Holiday which hits the big screen Friday.

Rowan Atkinson is intelligent, articulate and even handsome -- pretty much exactly what fans of Mr. Bean don't want to hear.

Find him in any situation where twisting up his face or falling down are not required, and Atkinson is unrecognizable as his most-famous creation.

The long-awaited second movie, Mr. Bean's Holiday, opens Friday across Canada, and the comic writer/actor came here recently to promote it.

Atkinson, 52, has been declared one of the 50 funniest people in Britain, but those who know him only as Mr. Bean might not realize that his comedy career spans 30 years.

Long before the childish and vaguely malevolent Bean character brought him global recognition, Atkinson was famous for his work in the BBC's satirical series, Not The Nine O'Clock News, as well as the spectacular 1980s sitcom Blackadder. He has also enjoyed a steady film career that includes roles in such movies as The Witches, Four Weddings and a Funeral, Scooby-Doo, Johnny English, Keeping Mum and Love, Actually, among many others.

Mr. Bean's Holiday finds our bumbling hero on a trip to France, a vacation somewhat complicated by the fact that he is mistaken for a kidnapper. Bean winds up in Cannes and, by mistake, in a movie -- but not before he has fulfilled such Beanish activities as dropping raw oysters into a woman's purse.

Atkinson is well aware that Bean is not a favourite of critics, but it hardly matters -- the new film already is playing in theatres in Europe and Australia, where it topped the box office and already has earned hundreds of millions of dollars. Children, in particular, are Bean fanatics.

Even so, Atkinson says, fans who approach him in public do not automatically expect him to be funny.

"It may have been the case once upon a time," he was saying on a visit to Toronto, "but I do a lot of appearances and interviews as myself. I tend not to promote myself as a personality. I tend to avoid red carpets. Although," he murmurs, "I didn't for the premiere of Mr. Bean in Montreal. That was a bit mad. Very sweet, actually. People know now that the characters I play are quite distinct from who I am. Maybe it's something about my personality. People seem to know that within about five seconds."

Well, he is serious.

On the subject of the current state of British humour, Atkinson says, "Sometimes the outsider's view is coloured by particular incidents or reporting, which give a certain impression of the nation and how it's managing itself, when in fact, in my opinion, things haven't changed that much."

Atkinson says he laments that there isn't a "really well-financed, satirical, topical comedy show on television in Britain at the moment. There are so many things I think people should be making jokes about, and writing sketches about, at the moment. Every week that goes by, I think, 'Someone must do a sketch about that,' but in the end there isn't the motivation or the money to make it work."

RUDE JOKES

He does admire one show, Little Britain, and says it's similar to what he and his colleagues were up to 30 years ago with Not The Nine O'Clock News.

"There's no doubt you can still make some pretty barbed and rude jokes on TV," he says, mildly.

Atkinson, who has two older brothers, was born in Durham, near Newcastle, and studied electrical engineering at both Newcastle University and Oxford.

He has always kept his private life very private; he has been married since 1990 to Sunetra Sastry, and they have two children. Atkinson is known to collect and race fast cars and is said to be particularly fond of Aston Martins.

Keeping a low profile does not impede his ability to make comedy, Atkinson says, because he doesn't need to be out and about in quite that way.

"I've never been a particularly devoted observer of people. I've never been one of those who sat at bus stops and decided to watch the next 25 people who catch the bus," he says, smiling. "It's not my way. What is interesting," he adds, more seriously, "is whether your lifestyle changes, or your exposure to the normalities of society changes, such that you're not as well informed about how the majority of people are living and acting, and that may well be the case. Maybe as one gets wealthier, or older, you naturally move in different circles or do different activities."

On the film front, Atkinson says he might do a sequel to Johnny English. He sounds quite excited about the possibility of playing Mr. Micawber in a feature film version of David Copperfield. There have been recent TV movies and mini-series of the Dickens work, but, "The last person who played that character on the big screen was W.C. Fields," he says.

UNCOMFORTABLE

Prior to Mr. Bean's Holiday, Atkinson starred in Keeping Mum, a comedy/drama mix in which he played a pastor with marital trouble and a homicidal housekeeper. "That was fun," he says. "I'm always a bit uncomfortable when I do something like that because, clearly, I'm not playing to an obvious strength of mine. I often worry I've had a pretty good stab at this, and it basically works, but I can't help thinking somebody else might be able to do it better. And that's not a particularly happy feeling," he says, smiling and looking a bit sheepish.

"I'm always sorry when I play parts that are relatively straight or serious. That was the closest to me I've ever played in any role. Which probably doesn't say much about me and my personality."

ROWAN ATKINSON FILE

The strange case of actor Rowan Atkinson/Mr. Bean:

1967: Rowan Atkinson is 12 years old, and upon reaching the usual state of adolescent self-consciousness, stops being funny for his school classmates.

1975: At about age 20, Atkinson is at Oxford and is asked to do a sketch in a show. While considering whether to do it, Atkinson has a look in a mirror, pulls funny faces, and begins to make absurd babble noises; he later describes this moment as a precursor to Mr. Bean.

1979: With writer and collaborator Richard Curtis, Atkinson creates Mr. Bean for his appearance at the Edinburgh Festival. Atkinson says Bean was created when he was asked to do physical, rather than verbal, comedy.

1988: Mr. Bean turns up in a 30-minute special for Thames Television.

1990-95: The Mr. Bean series runs on British TV. The original series consists of only 14 episodes, and was the highest rated comedy series ever in the UK. It became a hit series around the world and is still playing somewhere on TV, at all times, in reruns.

1997: Bean: The Movie.

2002: Mr Bean: The Animated Series. Atkinson voiced his character for 26 episodes of this successful cartoon show.

2007: At last! Mr. Bean's Holiday.

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