Donning wig, dress and thigh-high stilettos, up-and-coming British actor Chiwetel Ejiofor delivers his splashiest performance yet in the irresistible new comedy Kinky Boots.

By Ken Knox

Chiwetel Ejiofor has had an interesting career so far. After garnering global recognition for his acclaimed turn in Stephen Frears' Dirty Pretty Things as a Nigerian hotel worker who stumbles upon a black market for human organs, the British-born actor followed that performance with a string of diverse roles in, among others, Woody Allen's Melinda and Melinda, Richard Curtis' Love Actually, and most recently Spike Lee's Inside Man. It may be safe to say, however, that the actor got to stretch the furthest with his emotionally layered turn as a female impersonator in Julian Jarrold's Kinky Boots, a colorful new British comedy from the producers of Calendar Girls.

Based on a true story, the film relays the tale of down-and-out shoe factory owner named Charlie (Star Wars Episodes II and III's Joel Edgerton) who gets the bright idea to revive his floundering business by ditching the outdated English shoes his late father championed and creating a line of outrageous footwear for drag queens. Charlie's inspiration for the idea comes in the form of a chance encounter with one Simon, aka "Lola" (Ejiofor), a female impersonator in a local cabaret whose mighty frame proves too much for the delicate footwear he is forced to stuff his manly feet into. The two men forge an unlikely alliance, with Lola joining the factory to help oversee the new line and teach some of the bigoted employees a lesson or two in diversity and tolerance.

Though the role of Lola might seem an improbable choice for an actor with a reputation for playing somewhat brooding characters, Ejiofor says he "jumped at the chance" to bring the character to life. "My agents really loved the character and the script, and were very excited to hear what my thoughts would be," he says. "And I was just delighted to get involved, because I just felt that it was such an engaging, funny film with wonderful characters. And with the central two characters and their relationship, it was just something I hadn't seen before in that way."

Ejiofor says it was the dichotomy of Lola's personality that drew him to the role. "I was attracted to the duality of this very sassy, bold, cabaret star having this other side -- this very sensitive, very real, very nuanced side to her nature -- and that coming into stark contact with this rather conservative Middle England was just kind of irresistible."

For his audition, Ejiofor says he met with a few of his female friends to get some tips, but other than that, he spent very little time on preparation. "I was wondering what was already in me, and I kind of went out and I got this [long, Naomi Campbell-style] wig," he recalls. "I had a very strong sense of what I wanted Lola to be like, in terms of the realness and the attempt to avoid stereotypes, but also to be fun and funny, and I felt all of that was on the page."

After securing the part with an audition that Jarrold has since referred to as "very fresh" and "full of energy," Ejiofor came to fully inhabit the character through the physicalities he was forced to adopt via makeup and costumes. "With a role like this, a lot of the specific changes that you make physically end up being part of your research. Having acrylic nails and waxing your eyebrows means that, in the end, even when the cameras aren't rolling, you're always an off-duty drag queen. You get a real understanding of the day-to-day of the lifestyle." Including, he says with a chuckle, the character's struggles with footwear. "They had me in real stilettos, and I stumbled around quite a lot before I managed to find my feet, as it were. Every day getting out of those boots was blessed relief! It was almost worth getting into them for the joy of taking them off!"

Though Ejiofor got the chance to camp it up quite a bit in the film -- especially in the musical numbers set in the cabaret where Lola works -- he says he tried very hard to avoid playing to clichés or stereotypes. "It was always very important to me to make the character very real, and not just declare independence and make it a flamboyant one-man show, but really to be within the nature of the piece and the reality of the situation. I think if Lola was depicted with broad stereotypes, I don't think it would have been very honest. I don't think [the characters in the film] would have been able to get past that and really understand Lola as a person, so it was important to make her real and much more sensitive than that."

Ejiofor says he relished the opportunity to get in touch with his feminine side. "I was just really glad I could finally release it in some way!" he deadpans. Still, he admits that there were times in the beginning of filming when he was embarrassed to be seen off-set in his drag attire, but adds that he got over such insecurities relatively quickly. "Initially, when I was walking around in this off-duty drag queen way, I was explaining to people [who would stare at me] that I was doing a movie. And then I didn't understand why I felt that I had to do that. I sort of became much more attuned to Lola in those times when I refused to explain anything. I realized very quickly that when you're making films about issues you believe in, you find that you have to get behind the politics of what you're doing in a full-on way."

Unlike the role of Charlie (which was based on real-life shoe factory owner Steve Bateman), Lola was created from a number of drag personalities performing in the London area. (Several of these performers appear in the film as background players at the club where Lola works.) Apart from her dealings with Charlie, there isn't much of a back-story to the character. Ejiofor got around this by hanging out in some of the area's drag clubs, and by creating a juicy back-story for Lola. "I think being around the clubs and being around that whole vibe and the scene, I got a pretty good sense of Lola's youthful years when she was entering that SoHo life," he explains. "There was a lot of stuff that went into the research on the background that came out through researching the present. I definitely found that Lola had had a plethora of partners and had definitely really lived the SoHo life."

Having seen the film at a couple of festival screenings, Ejiofor says that he is happy with both his performance and Jarrold's overall vision for the story. "I think that Julian did a great job of capturing both worlds [Northamptonshire versus London], and I thought it was a lot of fun. The audiences that I have seen it with have responded to it in an incredibly exciting way. They've really gone for it."

Ejiofor thinks the movie has a lot to say about the human condition, especially in the way of celebrating the things that not only connect us, but also the things that make us different. "People have a tendency sometimes to feel that other people should be exactly like they are. But when asked the question 'Why should they be exactly like you are?' they run out of answers pretty quickly. Their perceptions are challenged. And I think that's part of what the film's saying -- that, of course, there is more that combines us all and separates us all, and I think that's pretty true of the real story [behind the movie]."

With his performance in Inside Man currently receiving critical accolades, Ejiofor appears to be on his way to becoming a Hollywood A-lister. He's just completed two other films, Michael Almereyda's Tonight at Noon and The Children of Men from Y tu mamá también director Alfonso Cuarón, though he maintains that Lola will always have a special place in his heart. "[Kinky Boots] is certainly for me one of the most interesting films that I've done, with a character that I just really adored creating and being and being able to walk in those shoes for a while," he enthuses. And even though those shoes were occasionally the bane of his existence, he insists that it was all worth it in the end. "For me, in the whole range of stuff that I've done, Lola is really special to me."