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No matter what he does for the rest of his life, Rowan Atkinson will always be Mr. Bean.

Despite memorable performances in Four Weddings and a Funeral, Love Actually and Scooby-Doo and the starring role in the cult television series Blackadder (which he co-wrote), the British actor is so identified with his lanky, infantile antihero that even if he changed his gender, grew a long blond mane and won an Oscar playing Ophelia, all we would see is Bean's scrunched up, neurotic vulture face.

Not that Atkinson is complaining. His creation, begun as a mimed stage act, has been spun into an international television phenomenon (like Friends or The Simpsons, Mr. Bean is always on somewhere in the world), then a sweet children's cartoon with a corresponding line of toys and products, and now two enormously successful films: 1997's Bean: The Movie, which made a tidy $250-million-plus worldwide, and the new Mr. Bean's Holiday, opening Aug. 24 in Canada, which has already hauled in close to $190-million in other markets.

Talk about nerd chic.

Mr. Bean appears to be becoming less malevolent with each new outing.

It wasn't a deliberate move, but I think you do see a slightly nicer side of him. He's still a child at heart, and exhibits the characteristics of a nine-year-old boy. He's naive and immature, but he's also vindictive and nasty when he doesn't get his way. I wouldn't like to think that he had suddenly become endearing, I wouldn't want to think that he'd learned anything. My fantasy about Mr. Bean is that at the end of this movie he went home and instantly forgot about all the nice people he'd met.

You're not softening him for the American audience?

In the first movie, we had this thing about him "seeing the light," seeing how inconsiderate he'd been — you know, that change people are supposed to undergo in American movies. In this one, there's no obvious expression of regret. I've always been slightly surprised by how endeared people are to the character. I've always regarded him as unlikable.

Did you have any idea you were creating a global character, something that would speak to audiences from Montreal to Dubai?

No, not initially. He was really born as, you know, 'what Rowan does on stage when he's not talking.' But I remember being in Venice in 1985 and seeing postcards of Duran Duran and wondering why music assumes an international audience? Why doesn't comedy have that freedom? Especially purely visual comedy. So we put him on television and found that he could be part of world culture.

Why has Mr. Bean never been more than a cult figure in North America?

One of the problems is his breadth of appeal. The comedy is dead simple, non-verbal, and doesn't require any intellectual conceit to work. It's not cool comedy. It's not hard, it doesn't have the same bite, the edge that appeals to late teens. I shrink to use the word 'bland,' but Mr. Bean's very accessibility mitigates against it being well defined.

There's much speculation in academic pop-culture studies about Mr. Bean's sexuality.

I see him as an asexual being. He's a child at heart, and I think children should be asexual, certainly in the way we depict them. Intriguingly, there was an early version of this movie called 'Mr. & Mrs. Bean,' but we didn't pursue it. It just felt uncomfortable, the idea of him having a sexual relationship.

Who was going to play Mrs. Bean?

Kate Winslet.

Perfect.

Oh, no, no, we never actually asked her

When a group of British sailors were held captive by Iran's navy last winter, one of the Brit sailors said the Iranians called him "Mr. Bean." Is Mr. Bean the archetypal Brit — fussy, nerdy and estranged?

I don't know if the Iranians thought the sailor was an archetypal British person, or if he just looked like me. I don't know if Mr. Bean was just a character the Iranians knew very well, or if they thought Bean was the quintessence of Britishness.

I've been to Britain, and it's full of Mr. Beans.

Yes, yes, I suppose so. And he does dress in that conventional way. I've never regarded him as such, but perhaps I'm blinkered. He does have a kind of Britishness, in that he's torn between conforming and not conforming.

Do you get carpal tunnel syndrome in your face from making all those gestures?

I haven't had it yet I mean, it's only for short periods of time that the expressions become extreme. Most of the time it's just that [makes a Mr. Bean grimace], and I can maintain that for hours without even noticing I'm doing it.

Can you imagine Mr. Bean outliving you, the way Inspector Clouseau has outlived Peter Sellers?

I hadn't thought about that. I … don't … know … I suspect somebody could play him, but it would be difficult. Or maybe it wouldn't be? If anyone does do it, they'll have to create their own version. There could be a Son of Bean, I suppose.