Cover story: Cheers to life after Friends; Actor David Schwimmer tells John Millar he is having fun and loves a beer since the hit TV show bit the dust.

Byline: John Millar 

DAVID SCHWIMMER became a household name when he starred as Ross in Friends for 10 years - but now it appears he might just as easily have been a success propping up the bar in another award-winning TV series, Cheers.

It turns out the 38-year-old star is a fan of pub life - which is one of the reasons he's enjoying so much his stint in London's West End, starring alongside Catherine Tate, Sara Powell, Lesley Manville and Saffron Burrows in the stage play Some Girls.

He says: 'I'm having a blast. I went to a great pub, the pub life here is the way to go. I had a great time in a pub for seven hours one Sunday.'

Clearly though, David, who looks relaxed and trendy in a dark blue pinstripe jacket, blue t-shirt and jeans, isn't hanging about in the same sort of boozers as mere mortals like you and me. 'Coldplay showed up,and bought a round for everyone.That was cool.'

What isn't cool as far as the tall American star is concerned, however, is the English passion for supping warm ales. 'I like cold beer,' he says, explaining his refusal to go the whole hog into English pub life.

David didn't say, but I'd suppose pork scratchings are also a no-go area.

Since Friends ended, he has kept himself busy. Before heading to the West End he spent some time travelling round Europe with mates, starred in Turnaround, a play that poked fun at Hollywood and starred in a small indie movie called Duane Hopwood that was a hit at the Sundance Film Festival.

Ironically, perhaps his most high profile role since Friends has been in a movie in which he never makes a single appearance on screen. David teamed up with Ben Stiller, Jada Pinkett Smith and Chris Rock to provide the voices of a bunch of zoo animals in Madagascar, the latest cartoon from DreamWorks, the studio behind the Shrek hits.

The creatures break out from New York zoo to rescue a friend and after being shipwrecked they all find themselves trying, and failing, to cope with life in the Madagascar jungle.

Although he is best known for Friends, there's much more to his acting career. His movie roles have included Apt Pupil, Six Days Seven Nights and The Pallbearer and there have also been other TV hits such as Band Of Brothers. But he admits that doing a cartoon voice was vastly different from anything else he has tackled.

'It wasn't without its challenges, because none of us were in the same room at the same time,' he says, referring to the tradition of stars having to record alone in a recording booth, when they utter a line over and over again. 'So instead of being able to respond to another actor, you had to really use your imagination.' He said this part of the process making Madagascar awoke recollections of childhood games. 'It was like as a kid, when you would build a fort in the backyard,' he says.

'So a lot of the work, for me at least, was trying to give the directors as much to choose from as possible. I would do the line 20 different ways, knowing that eventually they would cut it together.

But it was really freeing not having to worry about how you look.'

David, who plays Melman, a hypochondriac giraffe, didn't have to think twice when he was invited to join the cast of Madagascar.

'This is really an exciting time and the opportunity to do this movie was something I'd always wanted to do.

'Jeffrey Katzenberg - the boss of DreamWorks Animation - called and said 'Hey, what do you think about being a giraffe?' 'I'm a huge fan of animated films so I was completely thrilled when he called me,' he says. 'When I heard they wanted me to play a giraffe I was even more excited. I've always loved giraffes.

'Of the four animals in the group, the giraffe was the most appropriate for me to play. He's the tallest and coolest of the animals in the movie. Okay, not really - but he is the tallest.'

Although he likes to joke about his character's charm he reckons Melman was a comic hoot from the moment he saw how the animators decided he might look.

'When they showed me this clay model I burst out laughing as I thought he was barely able to hold himself up on these stilts,' says the star.

'He was not comfortable in his own body. I thought it was hysterical. Also he kind of has a long face, and I've been told I have a long face.'

CLEARLY not a student of the school of method acting, David adds that he kept his preparation for the cartoon down to the minimum.

'I knew what giraffes were like, I'd seen a lot of them,' he says. 'But I did a little bit more research on the web. I didn't make a special trip to the zoo to study them, however. I'd seen a lot.'

Being asked to get under the skin of a giraffe reminded New York-born David of his days at drama school.

When he was studying his craft he spent a whole season at school when he and the rest of the student actors had to pretend to be animals.

'The first animal that I chose to do was a penguin because you had to go to the zoo and study an animal intensely for three weeks and they made me laugh so I studied them,' he says. 'If I were to come back it might be interesting to be something that flies, because we don't enjoy that experience. So it would be an eagle or a hawk.'

In the movie David's giraffe character has an abundance of worries about the state of his health but he doesn't have any similar phobias. 'I have some fear of being way out in the ocean by myself, swimming.You go out there and think everything is great and then you see you're pretty far out, and maybe it's time to head back in'.

Although he didn't have a showbiz background, his father was a lawyer, David took to acting after being encouraged to attend a summer acting course at university. It was clearly the right move to make because when producers were putting together the TV comedy that became Friends, David was the first of the team to be cast.

But before all that small screen fame, he had concentrated on performing classics such as Shakespeare, Shaw, Ibsen and Chekhov.

Even today he says he still gets a tremendous kick out of stepping onto a stage. 'If I could only perform in one thing it would probably be live theatre,' he says. 'But I feel fortunate that I can do all of the different things, theatre,TV and film. But to do this animation is a different experience, another chance to grow as an actor and try something I've never tried before. I hope I'll be able to continue doing all of those things#Madagascar is out on July 15

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Lots of fun: David Schwimmer does the voiceover for Madagascar; TV smash: David with; Jennifer Aniston in Friends