Chris almighty!

As I walk in to meet Chris O’Dowd, he notices that one of my arms is resting in a sling and immediately offers to help me out. But not in the normal, “let me get the door for you, are you alright carrying your stuff?” way I’ve been getting from kind strangers all day. No, instead, Chris O’Dowd offers to tell the world that he punched me.

“It’ll be brilliant! You’ll have a good story about your injury, get a good angle for your article and I’ll seem like one of those tormented rock star actors. We can say I got insulted by one of your questions and I punched you. Or maybe threw a chair at you in a fit of egomaniacal rage? Look, I just passed Johnny Rotten downstairs, I can’t compete with that level of cool without at least hitting a girl.”
Having moved to London in 2000, the Sligo-born star of The IT Crowd, The Boat That Rocked and Gulliver’s Travels hasn’t been home in a quite while.
“Yeah I thought it seemed like a good time to come back,” he wisecracks. “First you had the Queen, and then Obama, but it’s okay – the supporting acts are over. I have arrived.”
He certainly has. The obligatory rite of passage for Irish actors – appearing in Irish dramas such as The Clinic – done, O’Dowd moved to London in search of bigger roles. When he landed the gig as the awkward and workshy Roy in Channel 4’s hit comedy The IT Crowd, he instantly became known for his comic talent.
“It didn’t really occur to me that you could make a career out of it,” he says, “in the same way that growing up it didn’t occur to me that you could make a career out of being an actor. In Sligo that was like saying you wanted to be an astronaut. I think it just happened because when you come out of drama school you audition for everything, and back then I was a big dude, I was two or three stone heavier and had a shaved head – I was not an attractive human being! So I wasn’t going to get any of the serious or heartthrob roles – and that kind of led me into comedy. And it’s worked out!”
That’s an understatement. While his IT Crowd co-stars have become poster-boys for the London hipster scene, with Richard Ayoade directing the critically acclaimed indie hit Submarine, and Noel Fielding unofficially becoming King of Camden, it was O’Dowd who managed to break Hollywood. Snaffling roles alongside Steve Carell, Paul Rudd, Jack Black and Jason Segel – and currently in talks to join a spin-off of Judd Apatow’s Knocked Up – he’s done pretty well for a man who thought he wasn’t cool enough to fit into the London scene.
“I’d never get away with that, even if I tried to fake it,” he laughs. “I just accepted the fact that I was more suited to the heavy drinking side of the lifestyle, as opposed to that heroin chic thing Noel Fielding’s got going on.
“Just listen to me,” he adds in his crooning west Ireland lilt. “I’m not cool! Though it’s weird: I went to UCD and all the D4 kids used to slag my accent terribly, but apparently it’s okay for Hollywood! Actually working in Hollywood has been – easy’s not the right word, but in terms of comedy and tone it’s been quite natural, particularly in the SNL crowd because I think they’re quite aligned with that Irish slaggy humour – much moreso than British comedy is to either American or Irish comedy. British comedy is much more tight-lipped and derisive but America and Ireland seem to be on the same page.”
Not that he had this figured out when he took the job as Officer Rhodes, Kristin Wiig’s cheeky chappy love interest in Bridesmaids. Truth is that O’Dowd hadn’t read the entire script.
“To be honest one of my big faults is that I get too involved in a project and I begin worrying about everything. So I made a conscious decision to just read my part and asked everyone not to tell me about what was happening in the rest of the film so I could just focus on my bit. It meant watching the film was a joy, because I hadn’t seen most of it, and it genuinely is so funny. I was also conscious of the fact that I’m playing the girl here – the women are the hilarious leads, while I’m in the more passive romantic role, which is the role the actress usually takes. I think I do it well though. I just let my cleavage do the talking.”

Bridesmaids will be crashing into cinemas on June 22.