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Bill Murray wears his heart on his sleeve

By Garth Pearce
THE GUARDIAN, LONDON
Friday, Oct 28, 2005, Page 16

Bill Murray is expected for lunch in a quiet backwater at the Cannes film festival. A limousine with tinted

windows edges its way around a line of parked cars along the narrow street. A posse of film types

assembles to greet the star and the car doors are opened with a

flourish. Out steps an unknown couple, surprised at the fuss. As they do so, a scooter splutters into view, sounding like a clapped-out lawnmower, with Murray's familiar figure perched on the saddle.

"I always like to have my life in my own hands," he says.

Of the Hollywood stars who have made a business out of laughter on screen, Murray is one of the most enduring. Other comics who

followed him into the movies from America's anarchic Saturday Night Live (SNL) have gone on to greater riches -- Jim Carrey and Mike Myers among them -- but, at 55, Murray is recognized by his

contemporaries as the king. Will Ferrell, the latest SNL recruit to films, can recall each twist of Murray's act.

"He would come on as a guest and I'd watch him from the sidelines, thinking, `How can he be so cool?"'

Murray's confidence, though, is surprisingly fragile. He'd had a terrific audience reaction to the previous night's premiere of his latest film, Broken Flowers -- indeed, it was on the strength of this that he'd agreed to meet me.

"I'm happy," he says.

At the premiere, he says, he'd been uncertain and edgy.

Once the applause started, it went on for five minutes. Broken Flowers went on to win the Grand Prix, regarded as the festival's runner-up prize.

Murray plays a successful,

middle-aged man called Don Johnston -- and yes, there are several in-jokes about Don Johnson of Miami Vice in the script. He is dumped by his latest girlfriend.

Johnston begins to crisscross America in search of clues from four old flames: Laura (Sharon Stone), Dora (Frances Conroy), Carmen (Jessica Lange) and Penny (Tilda Swinton).

"Just the very thought of someone my age going to visit old girlfriends had instant appeal," says Murray.

What gave it an added frisson was that Jim Jarmusch, an independent director, was not under the sway of any film studio. He told his actors they could play their first scene with Murray any way they wanted. "Tilda Swinton's first words to me were, `What the fuck do you want, Donny?'" Murray recalls. "They kept that line in -- it really woke me up."

At last year's Oscars, when he was beaten to a best actor award for his performance in Lost In Translation, he alone among the other four nominees didn't applaud Sean Penn's victory.

Murray has made more than 40 movies and there's still no big prize in sight. Comedy, however well done, is at the bottom of the barrel when it comes to awards. He knows it. So do Steve Martin, Jim Carrey and Mike Myers. "Even Charlie Chaplin knew it," Murray says.

Four years ago, he was in hot water on the set of the high-profile Charlie's Angels, in which he played the Angels' chief, John Bosley, with a glamorous line-up of Cameron Diaz, Drew Barrymore and Lucy Liu. He made a chance remark to Liu about the quality of the script.

"She got furious with me because she thought it was a personal assault," he says.

Murray did not feature in the sequel. He was getting a reputation as not the easiest man to work with.

By the late 1990s he was in need of a box-office success and quality, and he found them both with three independent, or at least

independent-minded, film-makers: Wes Anderson, Jarmusch and Sofia Coppola. With them, he reinvented himself.

For Anderson, he was a

somewhat sinister industrialist in Rushmore, Gwyneth Paltrow's

uptight husband in The Royal Tenenbaums, and, most recently, nonchalantly funny as a washed-up marine explorer in The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou,

appearing much of the time in a wetsuit and capitalizing on the

pathos and sense of expected failure that have always been enjoyable elements in his performances.

Murray's second wife, Jennifer Butler, is at home in Los Angeles. She rarely travels with him because they have three young sons.

"I know what it's like to be that stranger's voice calling in," he admits.

There is also that little-discussed subject -- loneliness.

"The oddest feeling of all was after the death of my mother, Lucille, 10 years ago. My father had already died, but I always had some attachment to our big family while she was alive. She was from the previous generation, which kept us all going. She was always interested in all of us and would pass on all the news from various uncles and aunts. But when she died, I felt bereft. It seems strange to say now that I felt so lonely, yet I did ... I feel like shedding a tear here and now just talking about it."

You wouldn't have known. Murray's face does not change much. An occasional frown, perhaps, or a tightness around the eyes, an overall impression that he would rather not be here talking about himself.
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