Wild Welshman on Board

Here are a few things you should know about Rhys Ifans:

He’s Welsh. He describes himself as a “marionette on a bungee.” He pronounces his name “Reece,” not “Rice.” He’s totally comfortable hanging around in his underwear. He lives with a fashion designer, which means he can’t hang around in his underwear as much as he’d like. He smokes Benson and Hedges, but only the kind sold in Europe, because those seem more unhealthy than the American version. He will not apologize if he throws up in an elevator after drinking all night. He would like to be a rock star. He swears a lot. He thinks interviewing a phone book would probably be more interesting than talking to an actor. Oh yeah, he’s Welsh.

Rhys Ifans may be the most interesting actor you’ve never heard of, a situation his publicist, manager, agent and the people promoting his upcoming film, “Human Nature,” would like to change. They’re trying to spread the word.

But Ifans is not adept at promoting himself. He dreads it. “I went to Cannes with this film last year, and Cannes was the most despicable event I’ve ever been to as an actor. It was show business in its stinking extremis. I felt like livestock.”

The thing is, he’s Welsh. He’s reticent. There’s something about doing too well. Leaving home. Money. Success. It’s embarrassing. “I don’t need to be a celebrity to leave this planet,” he says. “I mean ‘star’--that’s the best.”

He rolls his eyes at the concept, and it is here that you think: Oh no, not another celebrity in a non-celebrity posturing mode. But Ifans seems truly embarrassed by the whole discourse on stardom. And he’s wearing the same clothes that he wore last night. His baby-fine blond hair is spiked in a bed-head hairdo that, you suspect, is wholly the product of his waking up and forgetting to comb it.

“I don’t really think about that and about my image,” says the 34-year-old actor. “If you approach it with this celebrity mask, you’re going to get screwed.”

But the interview requests are unlikely to stop any time soon. “Human Nature,” scheduled for an April release, is the second feature from screenwriter Charlie Kaufman, whose offbeat 1999 comedy “Being John Malkovich” was a hit in both independent and mainstream circles. Ifans’ “Human Nature” performance, as a feral ape man named Puff, garnered praise at its Sundance screening in January.

“What you get from Rhys that you don’t get from anyone else is that soulfulness,” says Anthony Bregman, one of the producers of “Human Nature.” “He can be antic, and even dangerous, but in a totally disarming and vulnerable way. But he plays it in a way that sucks you in.”

Ifans seems destined to be one of Hollywood’s “un-stars.” John Cusack is one; Matt Damon is not. The aesthetic is quirky, but not so quirky as to be inaccessible to the mainstream. The vibe is comical, yet dark. Ifans’ film roles have included a murderous, perpetually stoned twin brother (“Twin Town”), an itinerant soccer lad recruited by an American football team (“The Replacements”), and a laze-about Welshman who burps, drinks, and spends most of his days in his underwear (“Notting Hill.”) Most recently, he portrayed a mournfully homesick Welsh journalist who befriends Kevin Spacey’s character in “Shipping News,” perhaps Ifans’ most restrained role to date. In each film, Ifans morphs seamlessly into character. The overall effect is a level of transparency that would be haunting--were he not doing something that makes you laugh out loud.

“When comedy is used as a sedative, it’s awful,” Ifans says. “But when it’s used properly--when it questions, when it titillates, when it digs--then it’s the most potent dramatic device there is.” He is a fan of Kaufman and Kaufman’s directing/producing cohort, Spike Jonze, the director of “Being John Malkovich.” “They all use humor to seduce you to think about the darker themes, which is the ultimate. It’s like a weapon.”

Kaufman doesn’t quite know how to respond to this praise. He is famous for his reluctance to discuss his work and sees himself as neither subversive nor quirky, At least, he doesn’t set out with that plan in mind. “I try to think originally,” Kaufman says. “I deal with things that are important to me, and I’ve done it with comedy because I like comedy. To me, anything that’s really comedy is always dealing with something that’s hard, otherwise it doesn’t have any resonance. “

The characters in “Human Nature” aren’t exactly likable; Tim Robbins is an anal-rententive scientist and Patricia Arquette a hirsute woman. Ifans plays Puff, a man-child who was raised in the jungle by his father, who has an affinity for apes. Puff howls, masturbates in public, eats with his hands--and is wholly satisfied with his existence. By the film’s end, he is a tormented, ascot-wearing sophisticate who can discern between a salad fork and a dinner fork and hold forth eloquently on the finer points of philosophy, and then engages in frantic, tortured sex with prostitutes.

Although the three characters aren’t classically comedic, the film is funny--it’s a twisted take on “Pinocchio,” in a way. It’s central theme is the inherent superiority of the natural world in comparison to the aritificial; what is socially acceptable may win out, but the consequences can be tragic.

Ifans (who says he was cast by Charlie Kaufman’s dogs--they howled when they heard wailing on the audition tape) is comfortable with abandoning what is socially acceptable, which came in handy since Puff wears diapers for a good portion of the film. “Not every actor can appear in diapers and not make you really embarrassed as an audience,” says Kaufman. “It’s not about wearing them. It’s about making an audience feel comfortable with you wearing them, which is all about how comfortable you are, deep down, with that kind of thing.”

Ifans “was completely natural,” Kaufman says. “He made it seem normal. And that’s pretty impressive. Diapers are not like underwear. Diapers are embarrassing. As a concept.” So, one could argue, are saggy white Jockeys, but then Ifans pulled that off, too, in “Notting Hill.” As Spike, the feckless Welsh alter-ego to Hugh Grant’s bookish Brit, he stole the movie. American audiences remember him as the Underwear Guy, but Ifans is fine with that.

Rhys Ifans cries. a lot. He cries when he thinks of Puff’s childlike innocence; he cries when he thinks of his Welsh ancestry; he cries when he thinks of the first time he ever recited Shakespeare. And, somehow, all of these moments are connected.

The son of schoolteachers, Ifans is a product of Wales’ vibrant youth theater, and he won a scholarship to the elite Guild Hall drama school in London at 18. He is passionate about language. He grew up speaking Welsh, and still dreams in Welsh, he says. And when he says this, he cries. It’s not a sobbing, I-want-to-go-home moment, but more of a wistful one: an acknowledgement that America, in spite of its can-do optimism, is definitely not home, nor will it ever be.

The word for this feeling in Welsh is hiraeth. It means homesickness, Ifans explains, but an adult homesickness. “It doesn’t mean you want to go home to live. It means you want to go home to die.”

Ifans feels hiraeth constantly; it’s an involuntary pull, like an umbilical with a certain elasticity. The feeling reminds him that the door he entered the world through is the same door he’ll exit from.

There is no English language equivalent for hiraeth. Nor is there a simple translation for the experience of being Welsh, other than, perhaps, “deeply confusing.” “Tragic.”

“Beautiful.” “Magical.” “Horrible.” “Alone.” Ifans could talk about Wales all morning. It’s where he draws his strength, and much of his humor, in fact. “You know, the highest accolade for a Welshman in the Welsh-speaking culture is to be crowned as a bard . . . a man of words,” he says.

On the other hand, it’s painful being Welsh. To have been conquered and marginalized by the British. To have two languages--one for home, one for the world. To be able to read the ancient texts and feel connected to all that history. “You feel a bit as if you’re in a line of people and each is telling someone a story and you’re at the end of it. Sometimes it’s beautiful, sometimes it’s a lot of baggage.” And here he gets teary once more.

Yet Ifans is determined not to be a “tragic Welshman,” as he calls it. And so, the 6-foot-2 marionette on a bungee waits. It’s complicated, being an outsider. But it’s a great place to be a spectator. Stardom, if and when it comes, will be OK. But he doesn’t need it. He will wait for the right part to find him. He will trust in the magical, natural, peripheral order of things. And yearn for home, where the rain never ceases.

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Janet Reitman is a New York-based freelance writer. She last wrote for the magazine for a special issue on individuals affected by the Sept. 11 events.