For comedic starof ‘The Tempest,’playing’s the thing.

By DAVID CARR Sitting at a rehearsal for the new film version of “The Tempest,” Russell Brand, the British comedian and actor, is asked to introduce himself as his character, the jester Trinculo. He takes off, unpacking a Shakespearean origins myth, riffing through a magpie’s love of shiny things, the glow of a king’s approbations, the jester’s high-low perch and, of course, God and nature’s destructive habits.

“That’s one thing I learned from me dad: The world is a malevolent force, and it will destroy you,” Mr. Brand says in the five-minute monologue. “The only people who survive in life are the people who refuse to fail. They refuse. They just clamber over any obstacle.

They see obstacles, and they see opportunity. There is a staircase, and they will tread, they trudge, over any toil and mud and fifth and sludge and escape somehow with a gleaming jewel clutched in a clammy paw.” Th e routine is either a cheap stunt or a bravura extemporaneous performance .

It’s always hard to tell with Mr. Brand. Mr. Brand, 35, first won notice for turning his own life into a performance piece about the wages and splendors of addiction. It’s all on lurid display in his first book, “My Booky Wook: A Memoir of Sex, Drugs, and Stand-Up.” His second, “Booky Wook 2: This Time It’s Personal,” picks up where the first left off.

And that means a Mr. Brand without mood-altering chemicals, as he has been happily sober, he says, for nearly eight years. Yes, he has a bawdy, filthy personal history, but it’s not what he features anymore. In the new book he speaks about another addiction ? fame ? and addresses how he came to love (and, just last month, marry) the pop singer Katy Perry.

As the book reflects, Mr. Brand’s plot to be famous since doing stand-up in 50-seat rooms in London is very much on schedule. On the way, he sobered up, and landed some breakout gigs. Doing stand-up comedy ? his “Russell Brand: Scandalous” toured the United States, Britain and Australia last year ? informed his work in films in many ways, he says.

(It also brings in money for Focus 12, an addiction recovery charity he supports.) When he was given an unexpected slot hosting the 2008 MTV Video Music Awards, he was a hit. Judd Apatow built a movie around him: “Get Him to the Greek.” And in addition to playing Trinculo to Helen Mirren’s Prospera ? her gender-bending take on Prospero ? in “The Tempest,” he and Ms. Mirren recently filmed a remake of “Arthur,” to be released next year.

(Julie Taymor, who directed “The Tempest,” pronounced Mr. Brand “a dear person, lovely and sensitive.”) Mr. Brand grew up, he says, “seeking fulfillment through fame.” “And now having achieved it realized, ‘Oh wow, it isn’t actually that valuable.’ Of course I enjoy giving interviews or having money or staying in nice hotels and these things, but ultimately it’s a very hollow, brittle experience if not nourished and underscored by something valuable.” “The Tempest” is hardly Mr. Brand’s first encounter with Shakespeare.

In 1995 he was accepted to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and Drama Center in London. It did not go well. “ I got thrown out because I was a junkie and a drunk, but not before I learned a thing or two. In Elizabethan theater, the places where Shakespeare was performed, they would do cock fighting and dog fighting and put a monkey on a horse’s back and sic dogs on it. That’s what it was competing with, so you had to be as viscerally entertaining.”

He said he had learned much working with the Oscar-winning Ms. Mirren. In his book he describes how he said goodbye to her after making “The Tempest.” He was fleeing to the airport and had somehow been left clutching a pair of yellow underpants from his costume. A master of improvisation, he presented the garment to Ms. Mirren .

Mr. Brand said he was certain that she treasured them. He keeps his gaze remarkably clear and direct. Still, there is a photo shoot to attend to, so out come the rock star sunglasses and a glint of mischief in the eyes. After all, he has an image to uphold.