Interviews and Articles Archive

HOLIDAY MOVIE PREVIEW 2010 - Entertainment Weekly

2010-11-14T08:08:00.001-08:00

Highlights from ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY’s November 19, 2010 issue

(on newsstands nationwide Friday, November 12):

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY’S

HOLIDAY MOVIE PREVIEW 2010

Colin Firth in The King’s Speech

Apparently, being Colin Firth these days means being the most popular guy in the room. The veteran British actor is following up his Oscar-nominated turn in last year’s A Single Man with another career-capping achievement, this time in The King’s Speech (rated R, out Nov. 26). In the comedic drama, Firth plays King George VI, the 20th-century British monarch (and father of the current Queen Elizabeth) who was plagued with a crippling stutter until he sought the help of an eccentric Australian speech therapist (Geoffrey Rush).

Firth’s performance has already received such acclaim that he is destined to earn back-to-back Best Actor nominations, a feat accomplished in the past decade by only Russell Crowe and Johnny Depp. Now 50, the man best known as a heartthrob from such projects as the 1995 BBC miniseries Pride and Prejudice and two Bridget Jones movies is continuing to turn in the most complex work of his 25- year film career. “The stories about men my age are rather interesting. They have a past. Maybe I’ve been given an opportunity which has perhaps invited me to raise my game.”

To prepare for The King’s Speech, Firth pored over archival video footage of George VI (informally known as “Bertie”) delivering painfully awkward public addresses to crowds as big as

100,000. “You see first an expression in his face of ‘I can go on,’ ” says Firth. “Then he realizes he can’t. I remember him closing his eyes and just trying to gather. One of the things that brings tears to your eyes is the fact that he gets on with it. You start to get very moved by the dignity. It was incredibly painful to watch, but there’s something beautiful there, too.” Once shooting began, Firth fretted over getting the monarch’s stutter just right. “Colin was terribly afraid that he was going to stammer too much, that he was going to misjudge the level of Bertie’s affliction,” says director Tom Hooper (HBO’s John Adams). “I remember pushing him for the stammering to be more violent. I wanted him to be fully in the agony of it.” Firth also consulted his sister, Kate, a speech therapist. “I am quite concerned about how people who actually do stutter are going to take it,” he says. “Any smack of inauthenticity and you’ve lost the battle.”

So far the reception has been excellent for The King’s Speech, which has racked up prizes on the festival circuit (most notably the audience prize at the Toronto Film Festival, previously won by eventual Oscar favorites Precious and Slumdog Millionaire). Firth’s castmates certainly hope that the Academy takes notice of his performance. “They would get it right if they gave it to Colin,” says Rush, a Best Actor winner for 1996’s Shine and a shoo-in for a Supporting Actor nod for The King’s Speech. “A role of this scale, it is like climbing an Everest. And to not do it riddled with showy clichés, but to find a humanity and a depth and a layer that really empowers an audience’s imagination and draws them into something quite complicated? He’s good stuff.”

But Firth—who’s currently filming the spy thriller Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy with Gary Oldman—isn’t popping open the champagne just yet. “They say a week is a long time in politics,” Firth “A lot can change in terms of what people’s sentiments are.” He learned that lesson the hard way last year, when Crazy Heart’s Jeff Bridges entered the awards race at the last minute and won every major American acting prize. Firth, who lives in quiet West London with his wife, Livia, and their two young sons (“I’m all about the kids, really—look at the widths of the sidewalks here”), doesn’t foresee his life changing much even if this ends up being his year at the Oscars. “Come end of February,” he says, “whether I’ve been invited to the party or not, I’m still going to be taking out the trash.”

Info courtesy of Entertainment Weekly

Article: "King's Speech' nabs TIFF audience award " by Etan Vlessing (The Hollywood Reporter)

2010-09-19T12:33:00.000-07:00

The odds on Colin Firth grabbing the best actor Oscar shortened Sunday as Tom Hooper's "The King's Speech" picked up the top audience award at the Toronto International Film Festival.

Firth was edged out last year at the Academy Awards with his "A Single Man" nomination. But his star turn in the uplifting British drama as King George VI will give Firth bragging rights as the awards season gets underway post-Toronto.

Toronto festival director Piers Handling branded "The King's Speech" one of his "personal favorites" in this year's lineup, and praised the performances of Firth and fellow actors Helena Bonham Carter and Geoffrey Rush.

"It is a very, very moving story," he said of Hooper's portrait of the father of Queen Elizabeth II.

"The King's Speech" will look to follow a host of TIFF titles like "Precious," "Slumdog Millionaire," "No Country for Old Men," "Crash," and "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" that rode goodwill from Toronto with the top audience award trophy to Oscar success.

The 2010 class of Oscar contenders coming out of Toronto also includes Ben Affleck's "The Town," John Cameron Mitchell's "Rabbit Hole" and past Oscar winners and their latest films, including Darren Aronofky's "Black Swan," starring Natalie Portman, and Danny Boyle's survival film "127 Hours," which stars James Franco. MORE

"Colin Firth and star-studded cast deliver a British history lesson" by Richard Rogers and Vanessa Thorpe (The Guardian)

2010-09-19T11:47:00.000-07:00

An American theatrical phenomenon is staking its first claim on London's west end today in a performance in which all of the many actors involved, from Colin Firth to Juliet Stevenson, Sir Ben Kingsley and Sir Ian McKellen, will be happily upstaged by an unlikely rival – British history.

Firth is leading a host of talented names on stage at the Prince of Wales Theatre in the first British version of The People Speak, a show that aims to breath new life into the past by bringing audiences some of the most significant passages from recorded history.
Stars of the stage and screen will be joined by actresses Kelly Macdonald and Saffron Burrows, poet Benjamin Zephaniah, novelist Arundhati Roy and comedians Omid Djalili and Mark Steel, as Firth tests out the British appetite for a brand that has become as important to popular history in America as the BBC's television series Who Do You Think You Are?

"The People Speak is the perfect response to the abject misery of my history class as a schoolboy," said Firth. "Considering the immense riches that history offers us in terms of the best and worst of human behaviour – corruption, sexual deviation, rebellion and the struggle for power – there is no reason why history should be dry.'
The performance, which will be filmed by the History Channel..MORE

Interview: "Amanda, Colin and the word "Minge"

2010-03-06T02:52:00.000-08:00

Amanda Seyfried has a tattoo of the word 'Minge' on her foot because Colin Firth used to say it to make her laugh.

The American actress decided to get the etching - which is a British slang term for vagina - after her 'Mamma Mia!' co-star Colin Firth used the word repeatedly while filming and found it hilarious when she discovered what it meant.

She told Britain's Glamour magazine: "My and my best friend Rachel McDowell, who was in 'Mamma Mia!' with me, have matching tattoos, which say 'Minge'. I've never really been a fan of tattoos, but I wanted to see what it felt like. Rachel has a lot of them.

"Anyway, Colin Firth used to say that word on the set and Rachel had to explain to me what it meant. So it's on my foot. It's to make me laugh, and every time I look at it, I do."

Interview: "Colin Firth First Person Singular" (Filmink Australia)

2010-02-06T03:59:00.000-08:00

The March issue of FILMINK is available from February 15th across Australia, but you can buy the magazine now direct by emailing an inquiry to dina@filmink.com.au

This Interview is published thanks to FILMINK,

Australia's best movie magazine.

Interview: "A Single Man" by Simon Jablonski (Dazed Digital)

2010-02-04T03:50:00.000-08:00

DD: People are calling this your finest performance yet, how do you feel about that?

Colin Firth: One thing that is satisfying, and a source of great relief, is that I’ve been asked to do a great deal more, the focus is on me more than it’s ever been. It’s much better than people saying, “they put a whole film on Firth’s shoulders and he dropped the ball.” So, in some ways it’s very gratifying. It’s very much in my hands and people like it and get it, so thank God. I only ever feel like I do what’s on the page, and there was a lot on the page this time. I got carried along on a free ride when brilliant people like Nick and Matthew and Julianne show up. Also having a director who has the time and patience to photograph something without me having to be flamboyant about it. I’m not the most demonstrative actor. I do like to try to do what I think people really do which is think their thoughts and feeling without indicating all over the place. And to have a director who has the patience to let it unfold, is not afraid of silence, is not afraid of stillness who doesn’t compulsively editorialise whilst you’re working, who just lets you get on with it and, when necessary, gets the camera close enough to pick up what you’re doing. That suits me and the way I work very well...more

Interview: "Colin Firth and Tom Ford make 'A Single Man' one of their single great achievements " by Carla Hay (The Examiner)

2009-12-14T06:26:00.000-08:00

Colin Firth and Tom Ford at the Toronto International Film Festival Press Conference for "A Single Man"

Colin, what’s your favorite color?
Firth: What’s my favorite color? Blue.

And how did it feel pulling the clothing off for your nude scenes?
Firth: [He laughs.] I preferred having it on.
Ford: Are you sure you don’t work for a U.K. paper? That sounds like a U.K. question.

Colin, was it difficult to shoot that scene when George gets the phone call that his lover has died in a car accident?
Firth: I find I can’t answer questions about that scene. I don’t know how it was arrived at. I do it happened the night Barack Obama was elected. It wasn’t the easiest day to be grief-stricken. I don’t know. I don’t remember.

We love to get on the set and kind of get emotionally ready. You go, "I’ve got the tears coming. Roll the camera. Here we are. I’m in the zone now." Roll camera. Cry. Histrionics. Or whatever emotion they’re trying to conjure. What I find difficult — and I remember we had exercises in this when I was a drama student — come into the room in one condition and be in another by the end of it. Something has to happen to change your mood. You can’t pre-prepare the end. So basically, I have to start the phone call happy, get a series of shocks, allow that to percolate, and end it in a state of complete devastation with the camera rolling. Tom let it go on; he let the magazine roll out, I think, for about 11 minutes...more

Interview: Colin Firth triumphs with an extraordinarily unique performance in 'A Single Man' by Carlay Hay (The Examiner)

2009-12-14T06:11:00.000-08:00

In a recent New York Times article about you said that Tom Ford called you "fat" before you started filming "A Single Man." What kind of changes to your diet or fitness regime did you make to get in better shape?I didn’t do much change to the diet. I just ate less, I guess. I haven’t actually spoken about what version of that is true. The subtext is definitely the thing, but Tom, if he said that, I filtered it out. I didn’t hear it.
He tended to handle me with honeyed tones. [He imitates Tom Ford’s voice] "You look great, really great. If you want to get a trainer, he’ll come to your house every day. I’ll pay for it." That means, "You’re fat." Whether Tom remembers literally having said it or having it euphemistically, it’s the same. And I guess he did me a favor: one final push in the war against gravity in my late 40s. It’s probably helpful...more

Interview: "Colin Firth plays against type" by Katherine Monk (Canwest News Service)

2009-12-11T10:07:00.000-08:00

Warmth radiating behind a cool exterior is a natural draw and, for Firth, it seems to be a natural state of being, because, at some level, you can tell he doesn't care about all this entertainment business hullabaloo.

Just watching him entertain questions from reporters as he sits quietly - and ever so elegantly - in his deco chair at the Toronto International Film Festival, Firth is the embodiment of alpha male tolerance: He's just rolling with the punches as he greets the non-stop parade of inquisitors more...

Interview:"Complexity of character excites Firth" by David Mermelstein (Variety)

2009-12-08T10:47:00.000-08:00

"I was faced with a character who has a fastidious exterior but within that experiences despair, frivolity, laughter, lust, regret, terror, melancholy, serenity -- all in the same day he's experiencing hysterical grief," says the actor. "I don't know how many roles I've had that offer that range of emotion and experience."

"I felt at liberty," he says. "In roles where the writing's not very good, you have to suppress things. It's frustrating playing someone stupider than you, but I had the measure of George: He was smart, and the way he masks his massive despair is poignant. That obsession with external perfection is a sign of panic. He has to control his exterior world because his interior one is chaos. His precision is all desperate measures more....

Interview: "Colin Firth, feeling 'Single' by Tina Daunt (LA Times)

2009-12-02T10:40:00.001-08:00

"There was a serenity on the set," Firth said. "I was given the space to engage and to feel it. Tom didn't bombard us with instructions; we weren't given any really. But you knew by the way he said, 'That was great,' if it was or wasn't great.

"The movie is about isolation and the agony of loving someone who isn't there anymore," he said. "It's universal. It doesn't matter what your sexual [orientation] is. Love is love." more....

Interview: "A Single Man" Colin Firth by Ian Freer (Empire)

2009-11-29T07:55:00.000-08:00

Interview: "My Kids Keep Calling Me Scrooge" by Siobhan Synnot (California Chronicle)

2009-11-07T12:02:00.000-08:00

"I suppose my fondest Christmas memory was when I was six years old and in that gap between understanding anything about it and the realisation that it was all a lie," says the deadpan actor.

"Mygrandfather dressed up as Santa Claus and disguised his voice and did a Santa Claus speech to go with it. I remember he did this amazing thing of putting some false rotten teeth in, which I thought was an incredible touch. It was verymagical."

"And I suppose my worst Christmas memory was when I found out they were his actual teeth."

"She (Livia) had been dating a doctor who was far more suitable," recalls Colin. "As an actor I had two strikes against me. I had a kid, that was three strikes. I didn't speak the language, I was 10 years older. It was like two tribes meeting. I had to court her."

The secret of his strong marriage, according to Colin is that his wife is a force to be reckoned with. "I'm attracted to frightening women," says the star. "I married one. She's bright, ruthless and efficient, knows me too well and is always a step a head," he laughs.....more

Interview: "Colin Firth's discomfort in skin-tight spandex for A Christmas Carol animated movie" (Telegraph UK)

2009-11-03T11:47:00.000-08:00

"The spandex that we were put in bulges in all the places you don't want it to bulge and resolutely refuses to bulge in the places you want it to bulge," Firth said.

''I tried every form of fruit and vegetable available to me in my trailer, every culinary item, juicers, blenders and I thought 'well no, it's the spandex so it's obviously not me I'm fine,' and then I walk into Jim, hung like a waterbuffalo.''

''I tried every form of fruit and vegetable available to me in my trailer, every culinary item, juicers, blenders and I thought 'well no, it's the spandex so it's obviously not me I'm fine,' and then I walk into Jim, hung like a waterbuffalo.''....more

Interview: "Colin Firth on A Christmas Carol" by Simon Brew (Den of Geek)

2009-11-03T11:39:00.000-08:00

Do you really hate Christmas?
No, I don't! I've just said [at the press conference for the film] that there's something that happens every Christmas that brings out the Scrooge in everybody! That's fair enough. There's always some person you don't want to hear singing a novelty song in the now increasingly three months leading up to Christmas. Please, never let that be me!

Christmas used to be one special day.
Now it's become three special months! And I'm complicit in that this year! It's only the 3rd of November, and I'm going to be switching the lights on. I have to say, though, how much of a Scrooge do you have to be to not get some thrill of pleasure from switching on the lights on Regent Street. It's fantastic. I know it's early, but hey, Disney need a good run! [laughs]....more

Interview: "A singular man" by Susan Chenery (The Australian)

2009-10-31T11:13:00.000-07:00

"LAST time we met you may have noticed me looking at you strangely," the email said when Colin Firth went online one morning. "This is why," continued the email, going on to offer him a lead role in a film.

Trouble was, the email was not from any film director of whom Firth had heard. It was from fashion designer Tom Ford. "I didn't know what to think," Firth admits. "Like everybody else I thought, 'Isn't he to do with the fashion business, eyewear and all that sort of thing?' " Firth's scepticism was not unfounded; panic, in fact, might have been an appropriate response....more

Interview: "Dickens’s Victorian London Goes Digital" by Dave Kehr (NY Times)

2009-10-30T11:26:00.000-07:00

“A couple of technicians flew out to Shepperton Studios and started to take data on my face and body,” recalled Colin Firth, who plays Scrooge’s nephew Fred in the new film, “which meant standing in my underwear on a platform while something that looked like a laser beam scanned me up and down. I turned around and there was a kind of a gray, clay figure on a screen of me, with all of the shapes and contours. And then they did something similar with my face. They had me do a million different facial expressions while a camera took pictures of me.

“Then a couple of months later I was in Los Angeles having more stuff like this done,” Mr. Firth continued. “You go into rooms with lenses on every surface of every wall. They give you a heavy spandex suit covered in dots that are read by some sort of beam that shines across the room you are in. This room is not called the set, but ‘the volume.’...more

Interview: "The dashing Mr. Firth" by Marianne Gray (Couriermail Australia)

2009-10-23T23:00:00.000-07:00

He speaks Italian - his wife is the Italian documentary producer Livia Giuggioli - knows Italy well and has three children of his own.
"You don't consciously try to equate your own life with your work, but there was a familiarity here, with ideas and feelings about fatherhood, that just resonated when we were doing it.

But talking about his private life is not something you'll catch Firth doing willingly.
"The thought of someone wanting to write about me and my life makes my blood run cold," he says. "Even if an article is brilliantly written, it always feels reductive and surely we all resist being defined. "I would prefer it if you exhumed my life after I've gone." More

Interview: Michael Winterbottom on Genova (FILMINK Australia)

2009-10-16T11:58:00.000-07:00

The November issue of FILMINK is available from October 16 across Australia,

online or by emailing dina@filmink.com.au'.

This Interview is published thanks to FILMINK,

Australia's best movie magazine.

Interview: Colin Firth masters the art of getting older, wiser and better (The Examiner)

2009-09-30T22:40:00.000-07:00

Congratulations on winning the award for best actor at this year’s Venice Film Festival. People seemed to be impressed that you accepted the award in Italian. Your accent was pretty flawless. Did you pick up any tips from your wife on how to speak Italian? [Firth’s wife, Livia Giuggioli, is from Italy.]
No, she hasn’t taught me a damn thing! [He laughs.] I did know [I won the award] a few hours before. Word gets around a little bit. I’m not supposed to say that. The camera wasn’t on me when they announced it, so I didn’t have to do one those [he does a fake surprised expression on his face]. I knew nothing about [which film] won the Golden Lion Award or anybody else’s.
But I didn’t have to fake how I felt. Even when I talk about it now, still, it makes me a little speechless. What I first thought was, "That’s why people cry at the Oscars!" I’d never understood it. I wasn’t about to cry, but I can see why people get their breath taken away. It really is unexpected. It disarms. More

Interview: Colin Firth doesn't always have to play the romantic (Vancouver Sun)

2009-09-19T10:22:00.000-07:00

"There are certain times in one's career when you take a role out of necessity. You just need a job. That's a very real concern for almost every actor. But the luxury of being employed on a regular basis is you can afford to, you know, evaluate each project and what it means to you," he says.

"That's not to say I think I've made some shabby choices in the past. It just means I can make a noble choice over a shabby one."

The eyes smile. The mouth does not. More

Interview: Colin Firth: Making Dorian Gray Was Challenging (Sky News)

2009-09-09T10:45:00.000-07:00

The pair say they've become good friends but that hasn't stopped Colin from being honest about Ben's flaws.

"He's a real talent, I could see that from the first few scenes we worked together. But he keeps coming back to me for advice and when I offer it I just see this disappointment on his face every time. But he doesn't learn." more

Article: Weinstein Crowned Rights to 'King's Speech' Starring Colin Firth (IndieWire)

2009-09-03T11:25:00.001-07:00

Rights to "'The King's Speech" which will be directed by Emmy Award winner Tom Hooper ("John Adams","Elizabeth I") have been picked up by The Weinstsein Company from See-Saw Films and Bedlam Productions. David Glasser, TWC's president of international distribution and Tom Ortenberg, president of theatrical films made the announcement of the deal, which includes all rights for North America, Germany, France, Benelux, Scandinavia, China, Hong Kong and Latin America. The script is written by David Seidler ("Tucker: The Man and His Dream") and stars Colin Firth ("Bridget Jones, "Girl With a Pearl Earring") and Academy Award-winner Geoffrey Rush ("Shine, "Elizabeth) more

Interview: "Walk on the wild side" by Rick Fulton (California Chronicle)

2009-08-29T10:07:00.000-07:00

"The older you get the more they let you be jaded, or witty, maybe you're bad, maybe you're just disappointed - layers of experience. There's more to be had, so yeah, bring them on!

"If it's dad or grandfather, I'm in no hurry to get to that age. I don't relish the ageing process any more than the next person in any other aspect but it has brought me kids, which I love, and the roles are more interesting." more

Column: "If Jane Austen had a laptop" by Joan Wickersham (Boston Globe)

2009-08-17T11:28:00.000-07:00

But no: here is something called “Mr. Darcy Takes a Wife.’’ Oh, my. Does he ever. He takes his wife over and over and over, according to the customer reviews Jane reads as she scrolls down the page. Apparently this purported “Pride and Prejudice’’ sequel lets everything rip, especially bodices.

Also DVDs. She downloads some. She watches Colin Firth’s Mr. Darcy trying to cool his passion for Elizabeth by diving into a pond and emerging in a wet, clingy, see-through shirt. She watches Keira Knightley and Matthew Macfadyen as Elizabeth and Darcy, kissing in their pajamas. She sees her characters wearing more modern attitudes, and fewer pieces of clothing.

She looks up from the computer and utters the Regency equivalent of “What the - ?’’

More

Article: Basildon Park in £1 million face-lift (BBC Berkshire)

2009-07-10T17:00:00.000-07:00

Basildon Park has also been used as a filming location for Marie Antoinette in 2006, starring Kirsten Dunst.

Most recently the mansion was used in A Picture Of Dorian Gray starring Colin Firth.

"Surprisingly enough we didn't have any shortage of female volunteers wanting to come in and help that day," says Basildon Park house steward Neil Shaw....more

Article: "Like it or not, I'm involved" by Colin Firth (The Guardian UK)

2009-07-05T23:00:00.000-07:00

Italy is another relationship I can't wish away. My wife and children are Italian. I am completely in love with that country for better or worse. I was decorated by the Italian ambassador as an exhortation to promote Italy's image abroad; an easy task when it comes to food, wine, architecture, etc … but one which will be made almost impossible if Silvio Berlusconi does not improve his lamentable record on aid. For this reason Oxfam issued me with call-up papers once again. I've held the giddy title of global ambassador for Oxfam for a number of years now.

So, with an all too familiar sinking feeling, the ambassador agreed to go to Italy to try to do something to persuade the G8 leaders to deliver on their aid promises and prevent the overwhelming number of preventable deaths taking place daily on their doorstep. No problem....more

Article:" Andersson: 'Mama Mia! was surreal' by Mayer Nissim (Digital Spy)

2009-07-01T12:40:00.000-07:00

Andersson said: "It was probably the most surreal moment of my life. Björn and I were on one side of the studio and on the other side were James Bond and Mr Darcy singing the chorus to 'Waterloo'.

"They were probably thinking: 'What am I doing here?'"....more

Special Interview: "No more acting; Abuse fuels Meg Tilly's fiction", by Judy Gerstel (The Star)

2007-10-25T13:05:00.000-07:00

Still, Tilly is comfortable with her 17-year-old son, Will, wanting to become an actor like his father, Colin Firth, who lived with Tilly in British Columbia for several years after they made Valmont together and before he became a heartthrob as Darcy in Pride and Prejudice and Bridget Jones's Diary.
"He is very talented," she says with a measure of pride about her son.....more

Interview: "Family Matters" by Rob Driscoll (IC Wales)

2007-10-05T16:05:00.000-07:00

Archived completely due to unavailability on the internet

Forget glitz and glamour, Colin Firth returns to cinemas tonight in a poignant British film about a father and son. He tells Rob Driscoll about his own relationships with both his parents and his children

YOU could say Colin Firth is a bit of a chameleon. The heart-throb British actor has just returned from Greece where he has been singing some Abba.
Dressed in full obligatory ‘70s-style spandex, it was part of his performance in the film version of the stage musical Mamma Mia! with the likes of Meryl Streep, Julie Walters and Pierce Brosnan as co-stars.

And this Christmas he will be seen flirting outrageously with a dragged-up Rupert Everett in St Trinian’s.

It’s all a far cry from the role that made him a true superstar – the smouldering Darcy in the 1995 BBC version of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, which was sexed up by Cardiff screenwriter Andrew Davies.

But one suspects that, out of his latest big screen projects, the movie of which Firth is most proud is a far humbler, less glitzy affair.

Behind the clunky title of the new British film And When Did You Last See Your Father? hides a strongly emotional, unapologetic study of family relationships with the power to reduce many of its audiences – especially men – to tears.

Based on Blake Morrison’s award-winning autobiographical memoir of the same name, the film is an extraordinarily honest and unflinching exploration of a father/son relationship, as Morrison deals with his father’s terminal illness and imminent death.

In the film, Firth plays the real-life Morrison, with Jim Broadbent as his father Arthur, ultimately struck down by cancer. As soon as Firth was offered the part, there was no hesitation about accepting it.
“Everyone can relate to this movie,” explains Firth. “We’ve all had a father or a father figure. The issues in this film are so wired into absolutely all of us, that I really don’t think you have to look that far to find bits of your life that overlap.
“One of the reasons why people respond so much to this story is that everybody’s got unresolved issues in any important relationship, and this story is so starkly honest about that. Yet you don’t come out of the cinema depressed.
“It gives you some rather difficult truths that apply to all of us, and I think there’s something soothing and edifying about that. I don’t know why, I don’t know if it’s because you realise you’re not alone with all your inadequacies in that department. But I think it makes you feel actually better than coming out of a sugar-coated fantasy.”

Indeed, the very notion of Hollywood getting hold of this project and heaping it with gloss is a terrifying one. The strength of And When Did You Last See Your Father? is in its deadpan truths and refreshingly un-flashy honesty.
Firth immediately empathised with a screenplay that refuses to shirk from all those petty embarrassments of a suburban upbringing in baby-boomer Britain that still hover over his conscience.

In the film, Firth’s parents are played by Broadbent and Juliet Stevenson, while his wife is played by Gina McKee. TV star Sarah Lancashire makes a telling big screen debut as a family friend of the Morrisons whom we slowly realise means much more to Arthur.
The essence of the central father and son relationship is further expressed through flashbacks to Blake’s teens – a family holiday, a fumbled affair with the au pair – where the awkward and introverted Blake is constantly crushed by his father’s flirtatious ways and need to be the centre of attention.
“The more you enter the film, it’s clear that there’s so much of this that is immediate to everyone,” says Firth, whose own father is 73.

At 47, Firth is also a father himself to three children – the younger two by his Italian wife Livia Giuggioli.
“My father couldn’t be more different from Arthur Morrison, but I still had issues, and I have that dreadful piece of programming in my system, that however far I think I’ve gone in life and however much I’ve moved beyond the trials of living with my parents, it only takes five minutes walking into the parental home and I’m 16 again,” he smiles.“The film’s made me realise that there’s the danger we let our parents die with things unsaid – though, of course, I’d like to think there’s nothing unresolved with my parents.”

Firth had read the book on which the film is based several years ago, although he never imagined seeing it on the big screen.
“I loved the book from the moment I read it for all sorts of reasons,” recalls Firth, who is an executive producer of the forthcoming documentary feature In Prison My Whole Life, the latest film from Welsh director Marc Evans.
“I responded to the flavour of the ‘60s, the ‘80s, washing your car on a Sunday, putting up a camping tent come hell or high water, being stuck in the family car in motorway traffic jams, all of that.
“It was such a self-contained piece. The adaptation is quite a big reinvention of the book. There’s nothing of a film in the book. There are little episodes you can imagine being filmed, but it doesn’t have that shape, that quality – it doesn’t cry out to be a film at all. It’s a series of brilliant, courageous observations.”

Familiar as he was with the material, there wasn’t much time for the eternally-in-demand Mr Firth to prepare for the challenge of playing an autobiographical figure.
“My preparation basically involved getting on a plane in New York and arriving just in time to shoot,” he chuckles. “It was a bit on the hoof. I’d lived with the idea of it for quite a long time. But I’d met the director Anand Tucker before, we’d chatted about it, and I’d known the book for a good 10 years. And then there was a lifetime of having a Dad…”

As for Firth’s own parenting skills, he insists he tries to make himself available to his children.
“I think that’s a constant issue for any working person, questioning your availability,” he says. “Actors, in fact, have quite a lot of down time, and however all-consuming the work period is, the down time is real down time at home, probably more so than with people who have a regular job. So one thing balances off the other.”

Firth is optimistic that there will be a very real audience out there for this movie, which stands out from the usual diet of formulaic thrillers, romances, comedies and period adaptations. “I really do think its success hinges on its unflinching honesty,” he says. “Blake wrote the book fairly soon after his father’s death, and he was probably in an unguarded period.
“He might have been more cautious if he’d written it a bit later on, but what we have is something very real when it comes to warts-and-all portrayals. If it was just the usual love-fest, I don’t think many people would care.”

And When Did You Last See Your Father? opens today.

Interview: "Proof good guys can finish first" by Evan Fanning (The Irish Independent)

2007-09-30T15:48:00.000-07:00

'HAVE you seen Rock 'n' Roll, the Tom Stoppard play?" Colin Firth asks me. Colin Firth is a vinyl junkie, which is why we're talking about a Tom Stoppard play and not about his acting career, or his relationship with his father, or even his new movie, And When Did You Last See Your Father?

His collection, he says, is big. "It hasn't been expanded in many years, but it's big for where I stopped buying. It takes up a few shelves... and I've still got the turntable," he says, rather enthusiastically.
Despite being a lover of vintage vinyl, Firth has embraced modernity and now downloads most of his music -- mainly, he says, due to "laziness". However, the perfunctory nature of buying online has made the 47-year-old somewhat nostalgic for a different time.

"In some ways the download thing has driven me back to the hard-copy satisfaction," he says. "CDs never gave me that anyway. Every vinyl lover bangs on about the cover and the artwork and the gatefold and the inner sleeve, and I was a sucker for all of that. And CDs were crap....more

Interview: "Colin Firth: portrait of a young writer" by Sheila Johnston (The Daily Telegraph)

2007-09-22T15:39:00.000-07:00

"If a film succeeds in weaving a spell over you, you won't really question it." When he was shooting Girl With a Pearl Earring, everyone was sceptical about the choice of Scarlett Johansson. "By the time it came out, there was endless talk about how uncannily like the girl in the painting she was.....more

Interview: "Colin Firth's Darcy dilemna" by Tim Teeman (The Times UK)

2007-09-20T15:26:00.000-07:00

Something went awry in Firth’s teenage years. “I loathed authority but was frightened of it. My rebellions were sneaky, passive. I didn’t smash windows or get into fights – if I did I was strictly on the receiving end. Like Blake, I took refuge in books with the hope of getting laid by name-checking Dostoevsky. It wasn’t Hardy or Austen for me, but Camus. I grew my hair long, pierced my ears and then got slightly stranded by the punk thing.”

Firth Sr could cope with the long hair but not Firth’s “bad choice” of friends. There was a charismatic hard nut at school who led Firth astray. Or “the misdemeanours that go along with wanting to be rock-and-roll and hippy, the music festivals, staying out late.” Drinking? “I was a bit naughty in that respect,” he says. Drugs? Firth looks stricken. “I’m not at liberty to go into detail about such misdemeanours. Yeah, it was all the usual stuff. If Labour Cabinet ministers can confess to some of those things, I probably can as well.” How did your father find out about the drugs? Did you smoke cannabis at home? “Nahhhuhhhh,” Firth mutters. “It was a whole series of things and was as much as to do with what he suspected. It wasn’t one incident.” The worst rows with his father “were about washing dishes and homework. There wasn’t a massive meltdown,” he insists.

But his teenage rebellion was concerted. “I would have gone to university had I not allowed myself to be derailed into moody adolescent laziness. I liked to characterise it then as a defiant decision to resist the system. But I was just resistant to schoolwork. If someone wanted me to read Shakespeare, I wanted to read Thomas Mann. If someone tried to make me listen to Brahms, I had to listen to Hendrix.” On the morning of A-level retakes, “I thought, ‘F*** it’ and went back to bed, it felt like a treadmill I didn’t want to be on.” Firth pitched up, “like Dick Whittington”, in London wanting to act and he got a job at a theatre switchboard. He read Kafka in his cubbyhole, and “stared into the abyss”, until he met a casting director who smoothed his way into drama school and then to a part in Julian Mitchell’s Another Country....more

Interview: "Colin Firth: Eben verrückt ... (just mad)" by Leif Kramp (Teleschau Gemany)

2007-08-01T15:10:00.000-07:00

Original interview with thanks to Angelika.
Translation with thanks to Colinfever and Carola.

In our interview Colin Firth speaks , with a twinkle in his eye, about his relationship with children, the curse of Mr. Darcy and he lets on why he would sometimes rather occupy the director’s chair.

T: In you new movie you fight for the well-being of the 12-year old Roman Emperor Romulus Augustus . Do you get along with children in real life as well?
CF: I’m dealing with them, nothing more. I do like working with children. But I usually like it best if they are someone else’s children. (laughs) It can even be fun to be with them, because I can make myself scarce any time they start getting on my nerves. And I can return as soon as the storm calms down.

T: You are a father yourself. Where do you get parenting tips?
CF: In spite of the scores of books on parenting , that can be found on mile high shelves in bookstores ,we haven’t improved as parents. Even an armada of guide books doesn’t help. Everyone has to find their own way- there is no easy solution, even if the books suggest otherwise.

T: Why is it that you appear to be playing a brusque character most of the time?
CF: I am not interested in characters who are sociable. Indeed I find them most unpleasant. People who don’t have any problems and don’t search for them and have everything just fall into their laps, aren’t interesting in real life or in a movie. Even action heroes, whom we love best, follow the Harrison Ford principal: You never know how he’ll master any given challenge.

T: Your greatest success was as a romantic hero- your favorite role?
CF: To be honest I have always been fascinated by Indiana Jones. The concept is pretty easy; ordinary man against destiny. Nobody knows if he will make it. He has obstacles to overcome he has to be honest with himself in order to make it. Inadequacy. Failure, it doesn’t matter which. That is what I’m interested in.

T: Do you feel haunted by Mr. Darcy?
CF; Not really. Darcy is someone who is mostly mentioned when I am sitting among journalists. I do know that I will be connected to this character for my whole life. But he’s no ghost always hovering around me. Sometimes I even forget about him, especially when I am at work. Then suddenly he is here again, when I am sitting in front of a microphone and I know that I have to talk about him once again.

T: Sounds like torture.
CF: To be labeled or categorized means to an actor to have a recognizable name, an identity which makes you well-known to the masses. That can be useful.

T: Do you think you could have achieved a similar popularity with another role?
CF: Who could have foreseen this? An archetype comes into being when people are ready for that character it has to be the right time. They recognize in it their hidden wishes and fears. A hundred years ago it was Dracula, a lascivious figure, that stole people’s souls and sucked their blood. Frankenstein became an icon because the, then still young, industrial society had waited for a character like that, who showed people that he could surpass himself. That he could bring creatures to life, but wasn’t able to control them.
On a much less unspectacular level I also hit the right nerve at the right time with Mr. Darcy. But to this day I can’t really explain why. He was pretty unfriendly, distant , and ignorant.

T: Are you more attracted to amiable or ambivalent characters?
CF: I think all actors have an inclination to the dark side. And I try to help my characters get a certain kind of ambivalence even if they are amiable. I am always searching for particular features that make the role more versatile.

T: Where lies the appeal of obscure characters?
CF: As actors we shouldn‘t judge our characters, but justify them and their actions, even if it might appear strange to the audience. After all we hope to get them on our side in the end. You can’t immerse yourself into an identity and leave out what you don’t like. It’s all or nothing. Mr. Darcy is an appalling patron in the beginning and I really tried hard to increase the distrust of the audience. In the end it’s a much better experience if the audience likes one or more traits of the character and doesn’t begrudge Darcy his success in capturing the girl’s heart.

That’s an enormously long journey taken in an incredibly short time for an actor, but the sympathies of the audience is much more sincere because they thought differently of the character before.

T: Is this the reason why you often portray a character who is actually deeply kindhearted underneath it all?
CF: Even roles of criminals have potential. The most favorite villains of movie history are the ones that can get the audience on their side. Take Hannibal Lecter for example, a nearly ideal model of a criminal icon in movie history: reason for its popularity is Anthony Hopkins’ charisma. It’s simply incredible that a worldwide audience will favor a cannibal! But ever since then we can’t get enough of his movies, no matter what topic, as long as Anthony Hopkins is in it.

T: Anthony Hopkins is a famous representative of the English Method Acting.. How different are Hollywood and British cinema?
CF: I’ve worked with innumerable American actors and by now it is quite unusual to me to be in a British movie that doesn’t have an American actress in its cast. The difference between Hollywood and British productions isn’t that big. It’s mostly the audience that assumes an entirely different philosophy.

T: why is that?
CF: It might be cultural differences, which don’t have anything to do with quality. While Americans prefer to film a drama that takes place in a trailer park, the British might decide to make a movie portraying a conservative Prime-minister. I’d love to see Eminem in the role of the British conservative.
He might even pull it off. The cliché of the pompous British actor is no longer valid.: Daniel Day-Lewis, Tim Roth, Gary Oldman are all very versatile and have been featured in more US productions than European ones. My schooling in London was based on Stanislawski and Strasberg, which was also Method Acting , yet I have developed an American way of approaching acting. It all got mixed up quite fast.

T: How do you prepare for a role?
CF: Nowadays I no longer prepare myself as intensively as I did in the past. I used to research for weeks and tried to adapt myself to my character’s situation in advance. When I was in my twenties all young actors trained for boxing rolls, because we were all fascinated by Robert De Niro’s “Raging Bull”. We no longer had the desire to be the typical British actor. It was a real cult that developed around the Method Acting. A whole generation of drama students was hypnotized by it.

T: Why do you think differently today?
CF: There is a danger that the method will eclipse the performance itself. It can have positive results when an actor doesn’t put his role aside after the filming is done, just so he won’t distance himself from the character, but often that gets more attention than the movie itself. When Renée Zelllweger makes changes to her body in a way that would be out of the question for most actresses ;then you can talk about an amazing achievement. And all of us are impressed by the magic of the change. However everyone involved in the movie was bombarded with questions about her diet. The move itself became unimportant. In my opinion the process shouldn’t become the actual product for the public to become interested in.

T: Are you happy in you occupation?
I experience true happiness, if you can call it that, when we rehearse, best on stage. In the moments when I perform for an audience or when I film the finale scene I simply fulfill my contract. I am nothing but a hard worker.

T: Isn’t it time then to think about alternatives?
For many years I have been traveling from one movie set to another and have worked with very many capable directors. And sometimes they really haven’t got a clue . On such occasion I have often thought to make suggestions, in a way that would sort out the misery within 5 minutes. But I didn’t. Maybe it is just an illusion that I could direct a movie. I’ve even dabbled in scriptwriting. But the greatest difficulty is that success dilutes the will to change. It is much easier to accept the next offer of a role when things go well. And the times are very good at the moment. Until I feel a deep dissatisfaction, my alternative plans are put aside.

T: What does acting mean to you?
CF: One thing I can say for certain is that acting doesn’t help at all when you are having emotional problems, it even makes it worse.

T: What do you mean?
CF: Someone who behaves in real life like an actor, a bank assistant for instance, would quickly end up in a mental institution or prison. A lot of successful actors use bad expressions and have no sense for what kind of behavior is acceptable . You can’t really blame them, since we are permanently encouraged to cultivate such feelings in our line of work. Besides nobody cares if the actors becomes a better person or not when the filming is done. If one works in a mine you might inhale toxic fumes and as a flight attendant you might become dehydrated. Actors just have to struggle with bad social manners.

T: You hear over and over again that actors expect therapeutically consequences from their occupation.
CF: A movie isn’t supposed to heal you, it is supposed to work in itself. I remember a famous colleague at the theater, who was completely mad. I won’t mention his name of course. He was on tour in Europe with a play that used a lot of body paint. Someone discovered that he had bruises under his body make-up, which he never washed off. A doctor talking to him for hours wasn’t concerned about the bruises but his mental health and diagnosed him as mentally ill. This colleague had to work mighty hard so he wouldn’t be admitted to an institution. They thought he had already found his institution on stage. If he weren’t so talented he’ d been already in a mental institution. What we actors do is simply mad.

T: What can be done about that?
CF: We have to pay attention not to lose our sense of reality.

Interview: "On the move: Colin Firth" by Garth Pearce (The Sunday Times)

2007-06-17T15:03:00.000-07:00

So what does he drive? A classic Jaguar perhaps, or maybe something discreet from Bentley? No, until a couple of years ago at least, Firth, 46, was to be found behind the wheel of a dependable Morris Minor. He was still happily driving his very first car, bought in his twenties for £2,000. It might not have won over Bridget Jones, but it was good enough for him. “I am not a Bentley sort of chap,” he confides".

He says the new Prius will be ideal for his young family. He and Livia were married in 1997 and now divide their lives between Italy and London with their two boys – Luca, 6, and Mateo, 3....more

Article: " We must stop a deportation that is likely to end in murder" by Colin Firth (The Independent UK)

2007-02-26T13:56:00.000-08:00

Since then he has observed all restrictions imposed on him and reported weekly to police. He is also engaged to a woman from the DRC who has exceptional leave to remain. His detention notice includes unsubstantiated charges: "You have previously failed or refused to leave the UK when required to do so." There is no evidence of this. It also reads: "You have not produced satisfactory evidence of your identity, nationality or lawful basis to be in the UK."

People who flee their country never do, as the adjudicator had pointed out. But the HO obviously thinks he is Congolese, or they wouldn't be deporting him there.....more

Interview: "Colin comes home" (Total TV Guide)

2006-12-22T14:53:00.000-08:00

When fictional drama Cathy Come Home was first shown on British TV in 1966, it was such a realistic look at the issue of homelessness that many viewers mistook it for a documentary. Forty years on, a new one-off drama about social exclusion, Born Equal, hits our screens.
And while it’s unlikely to have the same shock value as Ken Loach’s original film—viewers are used to seeing gritty social dramas— it promises to be just as bleak and thought-provoking.
Boasting an all-star cast, Born Equal interweaves the stories of several characters whose paths collide in and around a London B&B that houses the homeless and dispossessed. The story was given an even rougher edge by writer and director Dominic Savage’s style of letting his cast improvise much of the story themselves at the start.
“I’d never done anything like this before, where there’s absolutely no dialogue to begin with,” says Colin Firth, 46, who plays Mark, a wealthy but disillusioned City worker. “You just jump in cold, which is a bizarre feeling. You’re flying by the seat of your pants all the time.”
Despite money, status and beautiful, pregnant wife Laura (Emilia Fox), Mark is dissatisfied with his life and finds himself moved to do something more, with devastating consequences.

“Mark works in a world of big business, a world of self-interest, and it bothers him, and for one reason or another he ends up working with homeless people,” says Colin, who made his name as the moody Mr Darcy in the 1995 TV version of Pride And Prejudice and whose recent work has been on the big screen in films such as Bridget Jones’s Diary, Love Actually and Girl With A Pearl Earring.
“Perhaps some of what he goes through is a product of a mid-life crisis, problems with his marriage or his wanting to run away from feeling trapped.”
But things spiral out of control when he becomes involved with a teenage runaway, Zoë (Nichola Burley), who begins to rely on him.
“Mark is a sympathetic character at times, but there are other times when his behaviour makes it impossible to feel that about him. In trying to assuage his guilt, he ends of hurting a lot of people,” explains Colin, who lives in London with his Italian TV producer wife Livia and their two sons Luca, five and Mateo, three.
The actor feels that his character is not so far removed from those he helps.

“It’s not just about middle-class versus sleeping rough. Mark is as alienated from his life in his own bedroom as he is from life in some underpass. He and Zoë have something in common in that they’re both fugitives. In Zoë’s case it’s more understandable but with Mark it’s much less defined.

With thanks to an English Fan

Interview: "Nowhere Like Home" (Radio Times UK)

2006-12-22T14:43:00.000-08:00

On seeing Colin Firth in Dominic Savage's powerful tale of homelessness, Born Equal, you could be forgiven for thinking the part he takes is hardly a stretch. After all, as Mark, a City hedge fund manager, stricken by guilt at his own wealth and with a desire to help London's most needy, Firth, 46, appears to be playing the kind of comfortable, urban, middle-class role that over the years has been, if not his bread and butter, then certainly his focaccia and olive oil.

But, as the actor is at pains to point out, the role took him outside his comfort zone in more ways than one. It's been suggested that to play a City boy with a conscience could be the ultimate challenge for any actor, but Firth found it difficult initially because the world of finance is a mystery to him.

"I don't know people from that world at all," he says. "I don't understand it. I look at those screens and the figures and I feel like I'm drowning."

This unfamiliarity became more of a problem because of Dominic Savage's improvisational method of film-making. The director discussed with his cast the outline of the drama, which sees Mark befriend teenage runaway Zoe (Goldplated's Nichola Burley) sleeping rough in London, but left it up to them to come up with their own dialogue.

"I don't have anything in common with that character except that we might share an English accent," explains Firth. "And that makes finding his words difficult. My way into the character was to see him as a guy for whom something snaps and his excuses don't add up, whether it's fear of fatherhood [Mark's wife is pregnant] or just finding life empty. That's something almost everybody has experienced at some time."

With admirable candour, however, Firth - whose grandparents were Congregationalist missionaries - admits that the biggest difference between him and his character is that, unlike Mark, he doesn't have a guilty conscience.

"My own view is that Mark is a colossally naive person, and that's a challenge for me," he says “I’m naïve about a lot of things , but not in the areas that he is. I did my soul-searching many years ago. Now , when I see there’s something I feel I can do, I just do it and I know it's inadequate, but I just live with the shortcomings. I throw my hands up and say, 'Yeah, hypocrite! Contradictions? You've got me!' I live quite comfortably alongside my excuses now. I'm not the soul-searcher I once was."

Neither is that the only difference between the actor now and in his younger days. Asked if he considered sleeping rough for the purposes of researching his role, he laughs, "The short answer is I wouldn't dream of it now. But there was a time when I would have leapt at it. Even if the part didn't require it."

Born Equal offered Firth the further challenge of shooting on the streets of London. At one point this involved a fuIl scale row with Nichola Burley's character.
"There was no closed set," he explains. "It was just off Marylebone High Street. We just had to do it and b****r off before the neighbours got cross."

Yet, while the scenes were shot, nobody intervened - a fact that doesn't surprise Firth. "People don't want to get involved," he reasons. "{ think it's embarrassment, which is a British quality. I remember some years ago Ben Elton joking about an untended package on the Tube, saying that British people would probably sit there hoping it would go off rather than face the embarrassment of asking if it belonged to anyone."

Does this reflect one of the truths at the heart of Born Equal, that people prefer to look the other way, whatever the problem?

"Quite possibly," he replies. "I remember years ago in [Falklands War drama] Tumbledown the camera was hidden in the roof of a supermarket on the King's Road. 1 had half my brain hanging out and was one-handedly wheeling myself across the road. Everyone pretended I didn't exist."

Anne_Marie Duff

Anne_Marie Duff remembers Alan Bleasdale’s Boys from the Blackstuff (1982) as the television drama that first made her aware that perhaps the world wasn’t that great a place”

It's tempting to think that her moving performance in Born Equal may have a similar impact on a younger generation. The 35-year-old plays Michelle, a pregnant single mum who has run away to London with her daughter to escape domestic abuse. Michelle' s just one of the desperate people whose lives collide at a bed-and- breakfast temporarily housing the homeless.

The former Shameless star admits that the drama has been an education, and one that has caused her to question some of her self-confessed "woolly liberal" views.

"I had this scene where I was talking to a real social worker," recalls Duff. "I was saying, 'I'm a single mum and I have another child on the way', and she said, 'You'll be looking at three years before you get somewhere to live.' Facts like that blow your mind. I hope people will be affected."

From her experience on location she believes, like Colin Firth, that the general public needs to be affected. Duff's opening scene in the drama was shot on the concourse at London's King's Cross station, with cameras in the distance & the actress in apparent distress

Nobody, but nobody, asked me if I was all right," she recalls. "I was a heavily pregnant woman, for all they knew, with a six-year-old girl, sobbing my eyes out, and nobody asked, 'Excuse me, darling, are you all right?' I was shocked. You like to think yourself that there's no way you'd walk past someone like that."

For Duff, whose next TV appearance will be in ITV 1 's more upbeat The History of Mr Pally, due for transmission over Christmas, Born Equal carries a simple but powerful message. "I suppose the message is that these people are out of sight and out of mind," she says. "It's asking us to question that."

Dominic Savage

It is a measure of Dominic Savage's life less ordinary that as a child he worked with both the idiosyncratic film director Stanley Kubrick and the hyperactive infant hoofer Bonnie Langford, and survived to tell the tale. The former was as a child actor in the 1975 film of Thackeray's Barry Lyndon; the latter, somewhat less grandly, as an organist on 1970s TV tot -talent programme Junior Show time . Both were way-stations on his long and winding road to being one of Britain's most respected filmmakers, one associated with hard-hitting, socially conscious films like this latest project, Born Equal.

In work such as Love + Hate and When I Was 12, Savage has marked out his territory--identifying with the underdog and aiming to give a voice to his social conscience, he believes comes from growing up in Kent, where his father entertained holidaymakers with organ recitals in the summer months,and scratched a precarious living the rest of the year

Inspired by his chidhood meeting with Kubrick, Savage quickly realized despite a brief stint at stage school his future lay behind the camera. After graduating from the National Film School he began making documentaries – until he was exposed by a tabloid newspaper for having staged scenes in a film called Rough Males, which supposedly folIowed the lives of a group of Manchester wideboys

"It hit the front page of the Daily Mirror chuckles Savage. "I had that page ‘Fake doc' - framed in my loo for a while”

Savage abandoned documentaries for dramas, albeit ones shot in his unorthodox fashion, with a strong sense of realism ,no rehearsals and improvised dialogue .

His track record made him an obvious choice when the BBC were looking for a new film to mark the 40th anniversary of Ken Loach's landmark drama Cathy Come Home. Although Born Equal has no direct connection with the original (early, mistaken press reports suggested it was to be a sequel) Savage was delighted to get the call To Colin Firth and Anne- Marie Duff in his cast of starry British talent, he added David Oyelowo as a Nigerian desperate to bring his father to Britain, and Robert Carlyle as an ex-con trying to find his mother.

"I was very interested in people who just don’t have anything in life," explains Savage .No-one to turn to and nowhere to go. Above all, what this film deals with is a lack of love, a lack of family, a lack of everything. It's not just about not having money, which is bad in itself"

Like Cathy Come Home, Born Equal at times makes uncomfortable viewing. While the showing of the former famously led to the creation of homeless charity Shelter, what does, think his film can achieve?

"As long as we think about those people's lives, about this ridiculous gap between the very rich and the very poor and our consciences are stirred, I'll be happy”, he says. "I think it's a warning that there by the grace of God go us. It woildn’t take much for it all to fall apart. There aren’t the safety nets out there that we think there are.

Interview: "We're too embarrassed to help needy, says Firth" by Alexia Baracaia (The Evening Standard)

2006-12-05T14:35:00.000-08:00

"People don't want to get involved. I think it's embarrassment, which is a British quality. I remember Ben Elton joking about an unattended package on the Tube, saying people would probably sit there hoping it would go off rather than face the embarrassment of asking if it belonged to anyone."

He told Radio Times he had a similar experience while filming scenes in Kings Road for the 1989 Falklands war TV drama, Tumbledown.

He said: "I had half my brain hanging out and was one-handedly wheeling myself across the road. Everyone pretended I didn't exist.....more

Interview: "Born Equal?" by Peter John Meiklem (Big Issue Scotland)

2006-11-30T14:25:00.000-08:00

Archived completely due to unavailability on the internet

Forty years after Cathy Come Home, the BBC's shocking film about homelessness, the station is confronting the issue again. As our government gears up to end homelessness by 2012, we find out if television can still change the world

Colin Firth will soon appear in the television equivalent of a Trojan horse. The Hollywood actor, famous for smouldering in that wet shirt in Pride and Prejudice as well as getting the girl in Bridget Jones' Diary, says his next project will be a surprise akin to a hidden army of Santa's elves climbing out of the Christmas presents. A new production, to be broadcast by the BBC in the run-up Christmas, it will bring stars like Firth, Robert Carlyle and former Shameless actress Anne-Marie Duff into the warm, festive living rooms of television fans.

Many of them, no doubt, will be expecting a wee smoulder or a bumbling joke from Firth: a good laugh before the holidays begin. But they'll be disappointed.

acclaimed Dominic Savage (Love and Hate, Out of Control) the film has been commissioned to mark the 40th anniversary of ground-breaking docudrama Cathy Come Home, the film that shocked 1960s Britain into confronting the grim reality of homelessness and led to the formation of housing and homelessness charity Shelter.
Firth is looking forward to raising some eyebrows. "If the audience tuning in to see me are expecting a romantic comedy then that would be great," he says. "I think all the cast would be thrilled by that kind of surprise. Personally, I don't want to be condemned to romantic comedies for the rest of my career. I like participating in something that goes into different territory."

Firth plays a businessman in the throes of a mid-life crisis who, after an attack of guilt, decides to help the homeless. He says his celebrity could be useful tool in encouraging the audience to deal with the tricky social problems behind the drama.

"There's something about familiarity which makes people engage. It's not just a man in a suit with crisis. It's him. I know him. It's his crisis. If people go with it, and sympathise with it, that might take them a bit further than they might otherwise might have."

When it comes to people living on the streets, part of the problem is that it's generalised in people's minds. The suspicion and fear and hatred can only be preserved if they don't know any individuals in that position." People stop hating a social group when they make contact."

Public outcry
Usually, nobody expects a television drama, especially one broadcast at Christmas time, to do more than keep the family's bums on the sofa for a few hours. But not every drama was commissioned to commemorate the anniversary of Cathy Come Home. That docu-drama, the first of its kind directed by a young Ken Loach, was broadcast in 1968 to a quarter of Britain's people. It appalled millions, leading to a political outcry that succeeded in provoking real social change.

Born Equal, too, aims to be an out-of-the-ordinary piece of work; no scripts were given to the all-star cast and the actors were expected to improvise the dialogue interacting with both actors and, like Cathy Come Home, real people who were homeless for many different reasons.

Director Dominic Savage says he wanted to produce a piece that was as true to life as it could be. Asked by the BBC to come up with a drama around homelessness he was quickly drawn to the lives of people living in homeless hostels and temporary accommodation. It's a story plucked from today's society - here in Scotland, as property prices continue to soar, 8,135 households, both individuals and families, are currently living in unsuitable temporary accommodation. But Savage says it will be difficult for his drama to emulate the success of Loach's Cathy Come Home.

"I don't think it can have that same impact. When Cathy Come Home was broadcast people weren't used to shocking material but now we're exposed to it all the time. It's a very difficult thing to shock people, to make them think differently or to change people. All you can do is make something that engages people, makes them think about others a bit more, makes them think about the injustice and inequalities in society and hope that people care a bit more about those who are less fortunate than them."

The issues facing homeless people have, in some senses, changed since the 1960s and Savage was keen to tell a new story. He says that hostels, and the events in people's lives that have led them to be there, were both the most "dramatically interesting" and the best way to expose the social inequalities in modern Britain.

"It's the idea of the journey to that hostel and why those people fall from grace. Something can go wrong in someone's life, suddenly they find themselves without a home, and that's interesting," he explains.

Falling from grace
Born Equal's plot - weaving in asylum seekers, battered mothers and recently released prisoners, all sectors of the population routinely in danger of becoming homeless - shows there are as many ways to "fall from grace" as there are people in the world. Homelessness has never been simply about bricks and mortar, as the old soundbite goes. Savage hopes his work will encourage his audience to think a little bit harder about their own lives.
"Anyone with any sense realises that all our lives are fragile and it doesn't take much for us to upset that balance and for us to be left in a desperate situation," Savage says. "That's what stirred me to make it.

"We live in our own bubbles. We just think everything's alright and we get locked into our own world. Lets break out of those bubbles and see what happens when people do. But, of course, there are no easy answers." Encouraging an audience to break out of their bubble is no mean feat, and Savage says he is glad to have his "extremely gifted" big name cast. He's hoping the draw of celebrity will bring an unexpected audience to his film where, the "Trojan horse" will both shock, surprise and fascinate.
"When you make something as dark as this then it's a difficult, emotional and harrowing journey. If you want to get an audience for this sort of thing you want to make it as attractive as possible to people. Those actors are very fine and talented and that was the reason for choosing them. But they are also the actors that people want to see.

"They allow people to come into a film such as this where they might have avoided it otherwise. It might be relegated to a late night slot if it was full of newcomers. You don't want that, you want to be in there and get as big as possible an audience watching it. You forget they're stars after a bit and you get on board with them as characters.

"It's an ambitious piece. I wanted to make a film that dealt with the huge divide between the people that have and the people that don't. It's by showing that contrast, that huge gulf, you can show people it's not right."

But can a bunch of celebrities in a TV drama really make people care? After all, homelessness isn't just a convenient background to filmmaker's story, it's a real and damaging social ill. According to Shelter, who this week marked the anniversary of Cathy Come Home with a reminder about the problems of homelessness today, Scotland is in the middle of a housing crisis. In 2005/06, 39,923 households were homeless.

Shelter claim nearly 30,000 children are homeless, most of them living in unsuitable temporary accommodation. At a screening of the 60s film this week, Shelter Scotland head Archie Stoddart called for more housing to be built to meet demand - and for continuing commitment from government and councils to reach the 2012 deadline set to end homelessness.

"You can hope that this drama will help but I don't think it will," says Anne Marie Duff. "I don't think people give a shit anymore. I'm a storyteller. You like to feel you've got some power some of the time, maybe, to change things or make people more aware. I just think a lot of people think the world is a ghastly place but don't act upon things."

Duff says audiences, like the society they live in, have changed since Cathy Come Home was broadcast 40 years ago.

"I think people have got less of a sense of community than they did in the 60s," she says. "I think we've been encouraged to be insular and not involve ourselves in other people's problems. There is a strange terror that if we do then they'll permeate and become part of your life."

Duff plays a heavily pregnant young woman who, with her child in tow, has run away from an abusive partner. Many of her scenes were shot in public places where passers by didn't know she was an actress in costume. It was an experience she found harrowing. "I stood in two railway stations: one in Basildon and one in Kings Cross. I was standing there with a child who was six years old, I had a big bloody lip, I had an eight-month pregnant belly on me, crying my eyes out.

"Nobody stopped. You think in your head there's no way you'd see a pregnant women with a kid and not say 'excuse me, love, are you alright' but they do," she says. "People walk past all the time.

A call for motivation
She says that reaction from the public made her feel ashamed. "They looked at me with disgust. We [actors] are usually woolly liberals. We like to think that we don't judge people, anyway, but I'm sure it's given me an insight. There's no way it couldn't. People do look at you like you're some sort of stain and you've spoiled their day. I found that really shocking."

Although unsure of the reaction Born Equal will provoke and - like the rest of the cast and the director - unhappy with it being measured against Cathy Come Home, Duff isn't completely despondent. She says there is no point in giving in.
"You just hope that a project like this will motivate somebody, somewhere, who has any kind of power to address the housing situation. It's a problem people need to know more about because if they can't see it then it doesn't affect them. The audience, because of the actors that are involved, will think 'oooh, I'll watch that because so-and-so's involved'.
"I'm hoping we'll get an audience you wouldn't expect."

Born Equal will be screened on BBC1 on December 17 at 9pm

Interview: "Colin Firth plays Mark in Born Equal" (BBC)

2006-11-15T14:13:00.000-08:00

For Firth, Mark's story really began to fall into place as the cameras rolled.

"For me, it was never simply a case of him being well-intentioned but naïve. I didn't want to see him behaving out of moral purity or idealism, I wanted it to be muddier than that," he says.

"Perhaps some of what he goes through is a product of a mid-life crisis, problems with his marriage or his wanting to run away from something he feels trapped by – perhaps any of those things might create disillusion or fear in a middle-aged man.

"But I think it's far more interesting to try to tell a story about a guy who has a multitude of motivations and conflicts and whose failings are very apparent.....more

Interview: "Colin's sleazy side" by Anita Singh (The Mercury Australia)

2006-05-11T13:57:00.000-07:00

Archived completely due to unavailability on the internet

LADIES, be prepared. Those who swooned at the sight of Colin Firth emerging from a lake dripping wet in shirt and breeches in Pride And Prejudice or wandering through the snow in Bridget Jones's Diary won't want to miss his new film, Where The Truth Lies.

The actor instantly conjures up images of a wealthy, slightly pompous, romantic comedy lead, but he's veered wildly from that for this murder mystery. The 44-year-old plays a pill-popping celebrity with an insatiable need for sex and some of the images are so raw, they troubled the North American censors and earned an R18+ rating here for the "high level sex scenes".

And Firth is right in the middle of them.

"A role like that is not usually a stretch for most actors," he jokes. "Playing a lord of the manor riding around Derbyshire required a lot more research.

"I wasn't trying to manipulate people's perceptions of me, I just go where I'm most comfortable," he adds. "Romantic comedies came relatively late in my career and took me by surprise. I'm still surprised about it. But roles like this can be found in the ancient archives of my career."

Adapted from Rupert Holmes's crime noir thriller, Where The Truth Lies has Firth and co-star Kevin Bacon playing a Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis-style double act in 1950s Hollywood.

They become celebrities and use their fame to seduce countless women - until a murder after a threesome with a hotel maid (Rachel Blanchard) brings their world crashing down.

Where The Truth Lies then jumps to the 1970s, when Firth's character is a washed-up has-been and an investigative reporter attempts to discover the impact of the murder on the pair's lives and their subsequent professional break-up.

"When I see a scenario like that, I daren't look to my future as an actor," Firth laughs.

The Egyptian-born Canadian Atom Egoyan, a director who has happily existed in the art-house world with films such as Exotica, The Sweet Hereafter and Felicia's Journey, suggested Firth aim for a mix of David Niven and Rex Harrison in his character. But Firth says he was attracted to the character's dark psyche.

"Vince is a very bleak character to portray," he says. "Playing him was a real stare into the abyss, actually. To desperately need your celebrity fix and yet have it as part of your burden must be a kind of hell.

"Rather than just playing a psychopath or mass murderer, it was interesting to play someone who is apparently what you expect me to be, and then take off the mask to reveal something darker."

The darkness is not something we'd expect of the English actor. After springing to heart-throb status in 1995 in the TV adaptation of Pride And Prejudice as Mr Darcy emerged from the lake (which he later revealed he was supposed to be naked for but the BBC would not allow it), Firth has gathered female fans all over the world with his intense stares and romantic gestures in, among others, Bridget Jones's Diary and Love Actually.

As for the latest graphic sex scenes, Egoyan says they were imperative.

"It's an essential part of the film," Egoyan says. "I always saw this as a really sensual movie. I wanted it to be unbridled - these characters could take any amount of drugs they wanted, they could have any amount of sex they wanted.

"I don't know about the censors. They probably will have issues, but we are pretty firm about what we want the film to do."

After putting his clothes back on, Firth will next star in the new film from Trainspotting author Irvine Welsh.

He will appear opposite Robert Carlyle in The Meat Trade, a contemporary reworking of the story of 19th-century bodysnatchers Burke and Hare.

Welsh has written the screenplay for the film, which is set in Edinburgh and will be directed by Antonia Bird.

Interview: Oh, Mr Darcy, by Mary Colbert (The Sydney Morning Herald)

2006-05-05T13:46:00.000-07:00

The unthinkable has happened: British actor Colin Firth is talking about "shagging". Mr Darcy, shagging?

The heart-throb of millions of female viewers of the BBC's Pride and Prejudice and the Bridget Jones's Diary movies is expounding on the explicit sex scenes in his latest movie, Where the Truth Lies.

In Atom Egoyan's film we see plenty of Firth, who first sent a wave of hysteria across the globe as he emerged from a lake in a dripping wet shirt and breeches.

In Where the Truth Lies, adapted from Rupert Holmes's noir crime thriller, Firth plays the pill-popping, sex-driven Vince Collins, one-half of America's hottest showbiz musical comedy partnership of the 1950s. In one scene, Firth has a threesome with fellow comic Lanny Morris (Kevin Bacon) and a hotel maid (Rachel Blanchard), who is later found dead in their hotel suite.

"Safety in numbers," Firth says. "Actually, I was saved by Kevin's butt." He grins across the table at Bacon, so renowned for his cinematic bed forays that detainees on a US witness-protection programme complained online "that his dangling member gets into far too many movies. Somebody should talk to him about it."

"What do you mean?" Bacon says. "You showed up late that week after I'd done most of the hard work."

Firth: "I hadn't been filming the week that some solid shagging took place between Kevin and various women, so by the time I showed up there was no interest at all. The crew were so sick of the sight of his butt and mine offered nothing new. People make a lot of the sexual thing but that's really only one more weird thing we get to do."

Egoyan's film is a far stretch from his last one, Ararat, about the genocide of Armenians. The director's mandate was that the sex be sensual and unbridled.

"A role like that usually isn't a huge stretch for most actors," Firth says, who admits it was a refreshing change from the recent spate of romantic comedies. Was it an escape from typecasting for the theatre-trained thespian?

"Not necessarily," Firth says.

"They came to me quite late in my career and are fun, but the appeal was the character's inherent darkness and, of course, the opportunity to work with Atom."

Firth and Bacon's comic duo are loosely modelled on the lives of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. Egoyan suggested Firth aim for a mix of David Niven and Rex Harrison. The story moves between the '70s, when a young investigative reporter attempts to ferret out the repercussions of the murder on the duo's private and professional lives, and the subsequent break-up of their long-standing partnership.

Where the Truth Lies focuses on a complex exploration of celebritydom's underbelly. The film also gives the actors a canvas to improvise their own comedy and verbal jousts as well as sing.

Amend that to singing for one.

Bacon claims Firth hired a singing coach, only to be told his forte lay in the verbal thrusts.

For Firth, the drawcard lay in his screen persona's dark psyche.

"Vince is a very bleak character to portray. Playing him was a real stare into the abyss, actually. To desperately need your celebrity fix and yet have it as part of your burden must be a kind of hell.

"Rather than just playing a psychopath or mass murderer, it was interesting to play someone who is apparently what you expect me to be, and then take off the mask to reveal something darker."

Firth adds that depression is one of the least socially permissible things for human beings. "It is still considered very antisocial and shameful.
It used to be sex. But that's still a very private matter. Loneliness, fear and insecurity are much more so."

Interview: "At the movies: Where The Truth Lies" (ABC Australia)

2006-05-03T13:34:00.000-07:00

It is a very interesting thing to study. What do you present on stage, what's the dream that you're peddling? What...what is it you're selling? What do you want people to accept you as? And the more divorced that is from what you are when you walk off that stage, the more fractured you become. And I think...this, I think, led to the choice of playing him as an Englishman, because in the novel he's not. In the novel he's an Italian/American. And I was tempted to do that, I wanted to show that I can do that. And it would have been great fun for me and hopefully to my advantage. But there was no getting away from the fact that making him English was...was irresistibly interesting. And, er, both from the point of view of the actor we were creating and the contrast between the characters, and from the point of the view of that paradox that we're talking about, the English gentleman who expects the English gentleman to explode so violently?....more

Interview: "A scandal myself " (Vanity Fair Italy)

2006-04-20T13:22:00.000-07:00

Archived completely due to unavailability on the internet

This Italian interview is translated to English by Margo.

He has the face and the fame of a nice guy. And in cinema this face and this fame have been following him (Remember the clumsy lover boy of Bridget Jones?) But now, prepare to see him in a bisex orgy with Kevin Bacon. Are you embarrassed? “I’ve done worst… "

Hardly ever happens to find a stranger who – about Italy- has something else to say besides “How much I love spaghetti”. On the contrary, Colin Firth is acquainted with (and fully appreciates) Giuseppe Piccioni’s movies and manages to read the daily press, sensing not only certain political irregularities of our country, but the great difference between the “oral” Italian language and that of the “press language”, as well. He has try to read the “Oceano mare” (sea ocean) by Alessandro Baricco. What caused him to do it? Love! Just like it happened in his character at the film “Love actually”- the guy that learned Portuguese because he fell in love with a girl from that country.
In real life, Colin fell in love with a brunette and very pretty Italian lady, the producer Livia Giuggioli, to whom has been married since eight years and have two sons, Luca 4 and Matteo 2 ( he has also a third son, Will 15, from an affair with the actress Meg Tilly). People around him say that he speaks Italian much better than he is willing to admit, but we’re getting the interview in English, with only some small verbal incursions like “rincoglionito” (stupid) because, as Colin says, there is no such an equivalent in his own language.

We are in Rome, at the bar of “Hotel de Russie”, Colin arrives punctually, dressed in jeans and blue jacket. In flesh and blood he’s more sexy and tall than in cinema. He has a fine sense of irony, which emerges, in surprise, during the most serious discussions. He makes me think of those unknown schoolmates who, years afterwards, reveal to be genious.
He’s starring in two movies, released right now at the theaters, very much unlike: The fairytale for children Nanny Mc Phee (already released) and the morbid, exciting nightmare for adults “Where The Truth Lies” of Atom Egoyan, to be released in theaters this weekend. For those who used to affection Bridget Jones’s Mark Darcy, sane sample of clumsy charm, “Where The Truth Lies” could be a shock. At least at the scene of bisex orgy, where Colin attacks Kevin Bacon.

In this movie, the two actors are performing two entertainers of the ‘50s , rich, famous and debonair. The leading heros personalities got inspired by those of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, while the movie is about a world where T.V. was at the very beginning, the celebrities were “divas” and Las Vegas was Las Vegas.

How difficult is making a sex scene, mostly gay, while you are not a gay?
I was not feeling very easy. But you never are during sex scenes. It’s a terrible moment, when you have to take off your clothes in front of all that people, even at 7 in the morning, right after you had had breakfast. But it’s worst in real life. The most important is the relation with the person you have to make the scene with. In that case, the fact that between me and Kevin there was neither tension, nor attraction, make things get easier. People use to imagine things about what’s behind sex scenes in cinema, but, as for myself I find much more difficult performing scenes of violence. Above all, if you’re the one who beats- it’s really embarrassing. It is better when you’re on the receiving end. You have plastic capsules in your mouth, which are making fake blood come out and you feel like a hero. In the set of the “Hostages”- a T.V. production , once, I got them really hard. At the end of the scene my “torturers, who were not professional actors, were very much in worry. Kept asking over and over: “Are you sure, you’re O.K.?”

In the homonyms book of “Where the Truth Lies” (by Rupert Holmes) there is a certain phrase: “You never bite the hand that applauses you” . It defines the ambiguous of fame: You desire it, but there are consequences following. What’s your own relation with celebrity?
It is quite tranquil, cause my career went ahead step by step, with moments of happiness and others of disillusion. In general, I believe there is hardly an actor in the whole world, who can not walk out there in Via del Corso without being disturbed.
Depend on the way you treat it. Of course, if someone walks around accompanied with body guards, wearing a pair of sunglasses, ready to be photographed…….

Don’t your ever been recognized?
Yes, indeed. In the supermarket, actually. Well, there is always someone who’s spying on you, and grabs the mobile phone to tell friends what’s in my handcart. I swear it has happened!

And what was in there?
I don’t remember. Probably toilet tissue! Great scoop, indeed!

The movie (WTTL) is also about Telethon and actors making beneficences. In real life, you’re involved in various initiatives about Africa, about fair and stable trade, about civil rights. There are so many of you, the actors, doing that. Why?
It’s true, from an external point of view, it looks like a fashion. And it is also true that there is an element of hypocrisy in the fact that privileged people like we are, getting on the tribune to say what one should or should not do. I got involved because I had enough of reading the newspapers and do nothing but shaking my head. Then, if you really believe in this, there is no way back. Humanitarian associations that are acquainted to you are calling or help and you certainly can’t say “I’m sorry, this week I don’t feel like helping with global famine, I have some other things to do.”

Bob Gedolf has actually stop performing as a musician in order to dedicate himself in humanitarian affairs. Could you do something like that?
No, I’m too egoist. Though, I believe that this kind of activity brings more critics than advantages. Plenty of them: The most cynics are thinking that you do it out of vanity and exhibitionism. Certainly it’s a paradox to have a nice house, living a good life as I do, and then go to find the cultivators of coffee in Ethiopia. But you can’t use the celebrity only for having the best place at a restaurant or travel first class.

What happens, in particular, when a person like you goes to Africa?
It happens that the people of the country are happy to see me and to know that I’m interested about them. Even if they know pretty well that none of my initiatives can radically change their situation, or even more free the world out of its tragedies. The solidarity though, it’s not something you can measure up in style: “Today I saved one refugee”, “On the contrary, me,I have saved two.” Otherwise, it doesn’t really serves.

Excuse me for saying that, but you seem to me too articulate to be an actor.
Thank you for the praise! Though you would be amazed to find out just how many intelligent actors are there.

And how come people think it’s the other way ‘round?
Cause, if we attend a pianist playing Rachmaninov, we stay charmed by his ability. We think: “I could not do that myself.” On the other hand, acting looks like something anyone can do. But it’s not like that.

Could you explain it to me?

It doesn’t matter. There is nothing more boring than an actor talking about his job.

Interview: "Becoming a dad made a man of me" by Gabrielle Donelly (Reveal UK)

2006-03-04T13:16:00.000-08:00

On the screen, he's every woman's romantic fantasy - the tall, handsome hero who makes everything all right in the end.
But, in real life, Colin Firth admits that it has taken him a considerable part of his 45 years to even become a proper adult.

"A lot of us actors grow up in a bit of a fantasy world, which can stunt our emotional growth," he confessess cheerfully.

"We all have imaginative worlds while we're children, and most people grow up and find their fantasy life dims a little bit als they have to deal with the realities of the world. But not us actors - we have to continue the fantasy in order to do our job."I know I grew up painfully slowly."

"I wasn't practical in any way and used to be untidy - really, I used to be quite chaotic. I just couldn't be bothered with what I saw as the boring realities of day-to-day life. In fact, I was quite proud of this because I felt it was a sign of loftier thoughts!"

What made Colin finally join the real world, he says, was becoming a father. "I can say definitely that no single event has changed me more than having a child," he admits. "It's the first thing to happen to me that I realised I couldn't go back on."

"Before I was a father, I alwasy had the rather juvenile attitude that everything I did was somehow undoable - that I didn't have to be absolutely, 100 percent committed to any of the things I said or did. I think that was an illusion because you are always committed to what you do - but nevertheless, it was what I believed."

"But when you have a child, it becomes very clear that this is a part of you that will be with you for a lifetime - no matter what. You can't walk away from it. Or, if you do,, then you do so at great cost."

Colin has three sons from two different relationships. Canadian actress Meg Tilly is the mother of htis eldest son, William, now 15. William divides his time between British Columbia, where Meg lives, and Britain, where he frequently visits Colin.

Then years ago, while making Nostromo - a BBC production of the epic Joseph Conrad novel - Colin met beatiful Italian documentary-maker Livia Giuggioli.

They married a year later and now have two sons, Luca, four, and Mateo, two. Being the father of three boys of varying ages means Colin has had to step into the real world with both feet.

He says:"I have had to learn to care about the real, practical world because it's the one I share with my children.
Much as I'd like to, I just can't take them into my imaginative world with me. They don't belong there, and it doesn't help them."

"As I can't just sit around and wish them the life I want for them - I have to work to make it happen. If that is what growing up is, then that's what's been going on."

The Firths must juggle their lives skilfully to keep a balance of living together in London, visiting Livia's family in Italy whenever they are able to, and travelling wherever Colin happens to be making a film. The family has just returned from Slovakia, where Colin was filming his role as Aurelius in The Last Legion.
It's an adventure story set at the demise of the Roman Empire. Colin approvingly describes it as "a time of sex and violence from the beginning to the end!".

And, he says, while Mateo is too young to realise what Dad does for a living, Luca is now just about old enough to visit him on movie sets.

"He came to see me while I was making the film Nanny McPhee, but he didn't really have any concept of what we were doing there," Colin says.

"He seemed most interested in all the cameras and cables, so we have developed the idea with him that I work with cranes and heavy machinery. He did seem to like that thought, and I don't want to crush his idea that I do something manly with my life, instead of what I really do - putting on costumes and make-up, and flouncing around in front of the camera!"

Interview thanks to Creamie

Interview: "Seriously Sexy" by Gini Brenner (Kurier Austria)

2006-02-15T12:55:00.000-08:00

Archived completely due to unavailability on the internet

Interview thanks to Christina.
Translation German to English thanks to Anja

At the latest since Bridget Jones Colin Firth is the screen dreamguy at second glance. In Nanny McPhee he shows his fatherly side – a magical enjoyment for small and big girls.

"The worst guys get the best women“ – one of the eternally valid movie laws. Always but then when Colin Firth takes part in the movie. No other is so seductively reliable: In the face of his sensational sex appeal in both Bridget Jones movies even a experienced misbehaved charm-terrorist like Hugh Grant had to surrender.
But also during the exclusive interview in the luxurious Soho Hotel in London the 45 year old Brit proves that reservation is the absolute opposite to boring.
Being an hour alone with Colin Firth in a hotel suite might not be dangerous – but it is quite exciting indeed.

Nanny McPhee is your first family movie. How did you get your part of the father?
"Emma Thomson and I know each other for a long time. She asked me whether I would like to participate. She thought the character of Mr. Brown was made for me. I read the script and was really enthusiastic about it – but "my“ character I didn’t like at all in the beginning."

Why was that?
"Well, he is such a terrible coward. He loves his children before all but he cannot show it. He escapes in loads of work and expects someone else to take over his parental duties. Over this he ignores that the kiddies suffer a lot more over the sudden death of their mum than he does. But I have come to understand him: The movie takes place in a "Once-upon-a-time-"idyll and back then for men it was even harder to show their feelings than today."

You have three sons [the 15 year old Will with Meg Tilly as well as Luca, 4, and Mateo, 2, with his wife Livia Giuggioli]. Have they ever thought of such wild pranks like the Brown kids?
"No, thank God" (grins). "Will lacked the partners-in-crime and the other two are still too small. We will see what awaits me here"....(laughs).

And how about you? Were you a bad child?
I have never wantonly played tricks on someone to be able to laugh about him – I have rather tried forbidden things out of curiosity. But basically I was very good.

Many actors fear the filming with kids. In your case it even were seven of them....
"It were even eight! The baby was played by twins. And we even had a donkey in an important character on the set. It is said you have to beware of kids and animals at the business (laughs). It needed getting used to it but it was wonderful."

In which way was it wonderful?
"Well, firstly the laws are rather strict for kids on the set. Which is quite right by the way. Actually in my opinion the things permitted for small kids are even too many. In any case a child is only allowed to work a few days per week and just for some small hours with long breaks in between. And that with such a big bunch of children is terrible of course. Often it took days until one scene could be halfway completed according to plan. Director Kirk Jones was on the edge of reason on many occasions. Real kids have other priorities but costs of the set or a filming timetable and quite rightly so – but for successoriented adults it’s rather hard to understand that (laughs). Children always want to know everything exactly. One day when Kirk was rather worn out by the continuous questions he placed a new rule: “From now on you are only allowed to ask really, really important questions. Ok.?” All kids nodded keenly. And at once the first small hand shot up. “I do have a really important question!” Kirk sighed: ”Spit it out.” And small Raphael said with completely serious expression: “Which kind of sausage will be on the sandwich that I will have to eat in the next scene?” We all burst out laughing but for Raphael it was a real problem!"

You often play reserved characters with whom it sizzles beyond the surface. Why?
"This I’ve been asking myself quite often (laughs). For one part I have a rather average face/Visage that is more suitable for not so shining heartbreakers. On the other hand my big idols were actors who could express a lot with little means – like Paul Scofield for instance or Alec Guinness .... and funny enough I’ve came to understand that a lot of women regard just this reserved acting very appealing. Probably they think that behind this quiet facade unbelievably much is going on."

And is that so?
"Sometimes – but surely not always what you expect."

Your character in the BBC miniseries Pride and Prejudice made you a heartthrob in the U.K., since the Bridget Jones movies you are that internationally...I’m surprised myself. I would never have dreamed of becoming a sex symbol. Fame has caught up with me late – when I was offered the part in Pride and Prejudice I was 35. I remember well what my little brother Jonathan commented: “They want you as Mr. Darcy? Shouldn’t he be ----cough-, sexy and attractive?”

Bridget Jones 3?
“I am often asked whether there will be a third part of Bridget Jones. But I can hardly believe that. How should the story continue? Maybe Mark Darcy will develop into a heavy drunk and Daniel Cleaver will become sensible....”

Interview: "Nobody at home calls me Mr. Darcy" (Metro NL)

2006-02-09T11:20:00.000-08:00

Archived completely due to unavailability on the internet
This Dutch interview is translated to English by Debby.

Colin Firth, the actor who got his real break by playing the charming and tender, but very stiff Mr Darcy in Bridget Jones Diary, plays at the moment a desperate father of seven very naughty children in the film Nanny McPhee.
Metro talked with the Englishman about the film, his image and paparazzi. He doesn't like to talk about his private life, but he tells us a little bit about his relation with Sylvia Millecam.

It's very cold in Amsterdam, the city which Colin visits with fellow actor Emma Thompson for the Dutch premiere of Nanny McPhee
(1 February 2006). But Colin is sick and suffers from bronchitis. Still he makes time for interviews in a hotel room at the Keizersgracht.

Did a lot of photographers follow you around Amsterdam this time?No, this time it's a bit disappointing (smiles). Last year that was different. Someone with a camera followed me all afternoon. Eventually I went back to my hotel, because I didn't feel at ease.

Do the paparazzi follow you around?
They are not interested in me. They were for a while, when I got married. It's hard to tell what it does to you, but it is exceptional offensive to have pictures made you didn't ask for. I don't care if they place a picture of me with a vacuum cleaner. But if they make pictures of my children, I can't control myself.

About Nanny McPhee. I think it was hard to play with 7 children at the time.
It wasn't that difficult. In the film they play a bunch of horrendous children, but they are not related. They're actors. Whatever you say, the 14 year old doesn't spend time with the baby off set. And besides that, we worked with one or two children while the others were in school.

In the film there's a great scene where you throw with cakes. Emma Thompson (Nanny McPhee) was in David Letterman's show and she threw a cake in his face. Is she a tough woman?
Emma is really great. She's a very clever and honest woman. I took the role of Mr Brown mainly because of her. She wrote the script and wanted to put in some of her idea's about a family. By the way, this scene looks more spectaculair than it was to shoot. It took us three hours to tape one scene in which one person threw a cake. Trying to stay spontaneous is not easy then.

In Nanny McPhee you play, like in Bridget Jones Dary, a charming shy person. Rumors go that you are going to play a serial killer in the new Brian de Palma film. Are you happy that you can get rid of this charming though reliable image?
No, I killed so many people in so many films. In Trauma I killed a woman by putting a spider in her mouth. In Master of the Moor I killed lots of women with blonde hair, and so on. It doesn't give me a feeling of relief to play a bad guy. Maybe it is for you to see me as killer, but that doesn't work for me. The audience created that image around me, not me. And by the way it is not sure yet if I do the new Brian de Palma film.

Does it bother you that the image of Mr Darcy is still around you?
I don't try to escape from it nor to confirm it. I take what I can get. And as long as no one tells me: we don't want you to play that part because we think you can only play a shy character in a romantic comedy, I don't feel restricted. I can keep my image at a distance. I mean, nobody at home calls me Mr Darcy. And if I read something about myself I have the feeling that I read about someone else. I know that my work is in front of the camera and I love to tell stories , I like getting good critics, I want the film to be a succes and I want the applause, but then I want to go home.

You were on the big screen a lot, don't you feel like directing a film yourself?
You know, the problem with actors is that they are a bit spoiled by short term contracts. If you take a part you go for it, nothing is more important than the film you are working on. The people you work with are all great and the moment the shooting is over it is heartbreaking. But two weeks later you forgot all about that. Probably because something else comes along .A director works on a film two or three years at least. After twenty years of acting I am used to short term contracts.

To finish this interview, recently the book "Sylvia Millecam op gevoel" came out in which was said that you had a relationship. Did you really had one?
I met Sylvia while we were shooting the film Dutch Girls in 1985. During that period we were very close and I adored her. We kept in touch for a while but not the last 10 to 15 years. When I heard, two years ago, that she had passed away I was very shocked. Sylvia was a delighted person,a walking theatre performance, great.

*********

Nanny McPhee.
In the film Nanny McPhee Firth plays a father of seven naughty children who are desperate in need of a nanny. this is easier said then done as the children got rid of all their nannies. But then Nanny McPhee with her magic stick arrives.

Firth facts:
Firth is born on 10 September 1960 in Hampshire, England.

Had his first son Willy with actress Meg Tilly in 1990.

Married documentary film producer Livia Guiggioli in 1997 and has 2 more sons with her: Luca and Matteo.

Interview: "Nobody throws knickers at me" by Michaela Mottinger. (Kurier Austria)

2006-01-31T12:41:00.000-08:00

Archived completely due to unavailability on the internet

Interview thanks to Christina.Translation German to English thanks to ColinFever

“I’m flying to London and will interview Colin Firth”, I said and grinned happily like Bridget Jones. “Who?” my colleague asked. I showed him a photograph. “You like him? I thought you women all go for Brad Pitt.”

Men, I thought, will never understand us…

Film and theatre actor Colin Firth is Great Britain’s sex symbol N°1.
And not only since he made Hugh Grant lose the favour of the chubby Renée Zellweger. Since Mr. Darcy emerged from a lake "naked" in the 1995 BBC mini-series of “Pride & Prejudice”, every child-bearing woman in the UK wants his child.
In real-life Firth has got three, on screen seven children: in the movie “Nanny McPhee” he plays the widowed father of a mischievous bunch which is brought under control by the magic arts of Nanny Emma Thompson.

Very british
“I first had my doubts to take this part. I thought after all this Bridget-Jones-madness, people need to recover from my face”, said Firth during the KURIER-interview in the chic Soho Hotel. Sure, that the press awarded Mr. Stiff Upper Lip a title for perfect "Englishness". Everything on this man is very British.

Firth is involved in eight (!) film projects at present. Apart from “Nanny” there is the period film “The Last Legion” planned for 2006.
“To be an actor was the only career aspiration I have ever fostered. I’ve had an unpleasant time at school and have always thought: life can’t be this way. Today I wake up and I’m excited every day about the new things I do”, says Firth. That his parents predicted him a career as a dishwasher in the back room of a dive is old hat. “They had never get to know an actor.”
“I’m coming from a family of butchers, teachers and weavers”, Firth is joking against every Upper-class claim. Born on September 10th 1960 in the county Hampshire, he spent his childhood in Nigeria where three quarters of his grandparents worked as methodistic missionaries and his parents as teachers. When sister Kate and brother Jonathan were born their parents took employment in England. The father as a lecturer in history at Winchester University College, the mother as a lecturer in comparative religion at Open University London.
The son and heir was provided with academical blessings too “but thank goodness I screw up a chemistry test and quickly escaped to the National Youth Theatre. Since that time things were getting better". According to Hollywood scales, Firth has kicked himself out of his filming career by his own hand. To perfect his trade or sometimes even only to be human is much more important to him than any offer from the dream factory. “I have to be careful when such things are written about me. I love money and I’ve got a family which is depending on my financial situation after all”, he laughs.

In fact he retired for two and a half years in the Canadian wilderness after the burn-out of Meg Tilly (with who he had a relationship - 1989). As the work on the thriller “Agnes of God” was burning in the soul of the actress, Firth dabbled in being a carpenter in a wooden house in British Columbia.
The relationship failed. 15-year-old son William lives for the most part of the year with Tilly in Los Angeles. In 1997 Firth married the Italian documentary filmer Livia Giuggioli: their sons Luca and Mateo are four and two years old.
“I have to disappoint you”, he anticipates the next question regarding the “Nanny” movie. “My children have never seen me on the screen. I don’t even like to see myself on screen. Nobody wants to see his face in a movie or on photographs. It's annoying when I’m stuck in a traffic jam and on the bus beside me there is a huge poster of myself.”

Fair play
“I am not hunted by paparazzi and nobody has ever thrown their knickers at me”, Firth quickly puts his star-image in perspective. He only makes use of it on two occasions: to get hold of a table in trendy restaurants and for fair trade. He’s supposed to have 300.000 pound invested in the London coffee-shop chain “Progreso” where African coffee farmers have a share in the profits.
“I was feeling more and more uncomfortable about being a part of the problem, not of the solution”, Firth, who has been in Africa to get an idea of the coffee cooperatives, explains his engagement.
Why he only recently brought it to light? “I’ve met people in Ethopia who can talk about the world market and WTO much more well-founded than I can. But they are not heard, they are not being interviewed. So I decided to speak up for them.”

Firth on…

…being a celebrity
This is when the woman standing behind me at the desk in the supermarket calls her friends to tell them what’s in my basket.

…God
I collect from every religion that permits tolerance, laughter and a little bit of irony.

… ignoring criticism
You also meet enough people who will inform you: “I don’t think, like the Telegraph did, that you are a bit of miscasted.”

… being romantic
I’ve learned a foreign language to impress the woman who became mine later on. Now that was a gesture, wasn’t it?

Interview: "Firth loves to kid around" by Bruce Kirkland (Toronto Sun)

2006-01-31T11:16:00.000-08:00

The fun was mostly non-stop except, of course, for dealing with that damned donkey, a stubborn ass of an animal who refused to do director Kirk Jones' bidding when the humans dressed up a barnyard of animals in people's clothes for a climactic scene of hijinks. "I'm sure Kirk is still having nightmares about the donkey," Firth says with a chuckle.

That Firth is laughing at all today is refreshing. The last time we sat down for an interview -- at the Toronto filmfest in September when Where The Truth Lies made its North American debut -- Firth was staggered with fatigue.

He had flown in from Morocco, where he had been shooting an action-adventure movie. The media that day, including your Sun representative, were all fest-tired, too.

"It makes you realize," Firth says, recalling the Toronto experience, "that almost everything you read about movies is written by strung-out people about strung-out people. Everybody's jetlagged and wired and over caffeinated." He finds that odd and amusing.....more

Interview: "Colin Firth caught in a trio" (Metro Belgium)

2006-01-30T11:41:00.000-08:00

Archived completely due to unavailability on the internet.

This Dutch interview is translated to English by Debby.

Colin Firth will always be remembered for his Mr Darcy role in the tv series "Pride and Prejudice" and the Bridget Jones' movies. But this 45 year old Brit played more firmly roles. Like the football player in "Fever Pitch", the immoral womanizer in "Valmont" and Gwyneth Paltrow's arrogant fiancee in "Shakespeare in Love". Firth playes the most fierce character in "Where the truth lies", a drama from cult-director Atom Egoyan, in cinema's from this week on.

In "Where The Truth lies" Colin Firth and Kevin Bacon play Vince and Lanny, two variety artists (slightly inspired by Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin) who have a hedonistic lifestyle. When a journalist investigates a murder they were involved in, we see a darker part of their past coming up. The scene in which Vince and Lanny are involved with a young woman in a trio was a big issue for the American censors. The film received a NC-17 rating, despite Egoyan's try to change the scene.

What is your reaction on the controverse around "Where The Truth Lies"?
"I don't know what to think. I have never seen a naked body before (laughs).
I suspect that a lot of people in America don't like naked bodies and sex. One man can't change that. I have to say that these nude scene's are not that explicit.
The definition of pornography, according to the MPAA (the organization that started the rating system in 1968), is something like "Every production without artistic value that arrouses erotic longings". That sounds like 70 percent of the commercials on the American cable channels. It is all right when a sexbomb rubs oneself with lemonade. Children can see that.
You can't say that "Where The Truth Lies" has no artistic value. The scene they make a fuss about was created specially not to prickle".

It doesn't.....
"You have to feel sorry for the person who gets prickled by it. I think this scene makes people think, it was made well-considered. The MPAA made it very clear that they had no problem with the homosexual aspect, but they never made clear what the real problem was. We had to adapt it all the time. But the MPAA people were very strict about it. It did a lot of damage to the film".

You will be in the family comedy Nanny McPhee and now in this sinister drama "Where The Truth Lies." Do you choose such variety of roles on purpose?
"No. I don't take part as a reaction on parts I've just played. I take it when I like a role. That can be whatever role. My next project (Firth is talking about Toyer from Brian De Palma, in which he playes a weird serial killer) I chose because of a very different reason. It will be a very dark and complex film".

Is money a reason?
"I love money (laughs). When the role is bad and the money is good, I will go for the good role with little money. It depends on the circumstances or the amount of people that depend on me. Of course I love to get a big cheque. If I have an interesting part and good money I will be very happy".

What do you think when you look at your own performances?
"Mostly I feel the urge to vomit. It is a disturbing experience over and over again. It is unnatural if you ask me. When you listen to yor own voice on the tape you also think "is this my voice? How strange." No one likes to look at himself. Seeing yourself on screen can cause a trauma. I prefer other people to watch me".

Will you be in a third Bridget Jones movie?
Sure, but only if they stick neeldles in my eyes.

Interview: "Firth things first" by Fred Topel (The Wave Magazine)

2006-01-26T11:09:00.000-08:00

TW: You take a pie to the face like the best of them.
CF: That was fun, but what wasn’t fun was the extraordinary popularity of the job of throwing the pie at the leading actor. I’ve noticed, not just on this film, but on almost every job I’ve ever done, if something humiliating has to happen to me and any assistance is needed, the line of volunteers is huge. Very often, because rank is pulled, it’s the director who actually is the one to throw the porridge, stand next to the camera and make sure that the pie/cake hit.

TW: What does that tell you?
CF: Exactly. You can draw your own conclusions.
I don’t dwell on it......more

Interview: Colin Firth Talks About His Starring Role in the Family Movie, "Nanny McPhee" by Rebecca Murray (About.com)

2006-01-21T11:01:00.000-08:00

I mean, I think this is one thing that actually is quite truthful about the film. I think that if you’re ruled by fears, it means you don’t judge clearly the way you handle those fears. Kids don’t just need financial protection, which is what he’s obsessing over. He hasn’t sung for them. He hasn’t read them stories. He hasn’t held them. He hasn’t done all those things that they’re actually coming to believe he doesn’t care for them. It blinded him to that so I think that’s the furthest horizon he can see.

…He’s not only blind to what his children need, he’s got this girl who works for him who clearly adores him and he can’t even see that either. He’s never registered that feeling. Although he does say something which is slightly paradoxical, which means that on some subconscious level he has. It’s when they say, ‘Evangeline doesn’t look anything like her,’ or whatever it is. And he goes, ‘Nonsense, she’s always looked like that.’ It’s as if he’s only just realized he’s always seen her that way. So he’s obviously functioning on some different levels, but I think that in a situation like that, romance is the last thing on his mind....more

Interview: "Nanny McPhee" premieres at L.A. (EiTB - Euskadi)

2006-01-15T07:57:00.000-08:00

Archived completely due to unavailability on the internet

Following "Love Actually," "McPhee" marks Firth's second time working with Thompson, who also has an Oscar for her screenwriting ("Sense and Sensibility").

Nanny McPhee premiere stars Emma Thompson, Colin Firth and Angela Lansbury got up early Saturday morning to walk the red carpet at the Los Angeles premiere of the children's film "Nanny McPhee."

Like Thompson, co-star Colin Firth is best known for arty, adult fare.

"I thought it was time I did something for children," he noted. "I have children. I delight in telling them stories at home. I can see how spellbound children get. I mean, in some ways, they're the audience we most crave. They're the most honest audience you could imagine. A delighted child is going to be so vocal and so open in their response, and it seemed absurd to me that I'd spent almost my entire career working for almost everybody except children. So, it just seemed to be something that needed to be done. I'd do it every time now."

Following "Love Actually," "McPhee" marks Firth's second time working with Thompson, who also has an Oscar for her screenwriting ("Sense and Sensibility").

Firth; "It made me wish I had that list of talents and abilities, really. I have to say that one of her many attributes is that she doesn't wear it that heavy - of a person that is so multi-talented. She's even a musician, for heaven's sake. It gets ridiculous. And that could be very oppressive and very irritating. But what she seems most concerned with is looking after people who are working with her, knowing if there are any problems, and she's an overwhelmingly generous spirit. It sounds like one of those actor gushes, but it happens to be true."

"Nanny McPhee" arrives stateside following substantial box-office success in the U.K., where it's grossed #16 million since its release last October.

As for the U.S. premiere? "I really am excited," Thompson said. "I'm absolutely thrilled because I'm really proud of the film, and it's wonderful to come and have something to talk about that you love and that you're devoted to. But, also, I'm really looking forward to seeing how American kids react."

Interview: "World's sexiest dad?" by Fiona Hudson (Brisbane Courier - Mail)

2005-12-31T07:39:00.000-08:00

Archived completely due to unavailability on the internet

Colin Firth is the quintessential romantic lead so why, asks Fiona Hudson, is he appearing in a movie with children.

Staring at an empty seat waiting for Colin Firth, I wonder if this is his idea of a gag, for his latest film, Nanny Mcphee, features a vacant chair that at times threatens to overshadow the talented actor. Am I meant, like in the movie, to converse with the striped upholstery instead of the handsome star?

Before I can pop a question to the plump cushions, heart-throb Firth arrives. Things don’t start well as I recount a colleague’s tale of her recent trip to a London members-only bar where the toilets are marked with “Milk” and “Honey” instead of symbols. Uncertain which to choose, she entered “Honey”, and found Firth behind the door. To her dismay, he apparently made a hasty exit-which seems to be exactly what he’d like to do now.

I had hoped the story might lead to a playful game of words, with Firth choosing between options such as film or stage, love or fight, an pride or prejudice. My reasoning was that Firth-aka Mr Darcy-is probably sick to death of the standard promotional trail questions about that scene a decade ago when he emerged from a lake in those britches. Except, he doesn’t seem too keen.

Business, I ask, or pleasure?
“Pleasure,” he says, showing none.

Crosswords or sudoku?
“I loathe both,” he almost snarls.

Parliament or pressure group?
“Pressure group, definitely,” he says, warming to the task.

Hugh Grant or Kevin Bacon?
“Depends on what we’re talking about,” he says.

Given he recently filmed sex scenes with Bacon in the edgy film WTTL, there’s plenty I would like to talk about but this is a family newspaper and he’s here to talk about a family movie, so we move on to Nanny Mcphee.

In it, Firth plays the widowed father of seven wild children who finds a women on his doorstep, and she soon gets them all into shape. The actor says he liked working on the film, though he initially doubted he was right for the role. “I’d never done a film for children of this age and I wasn’t sure about it,” he says. “I usually play the fairly complicated characters and I wasn’t sure if I was cut out for the innocence of it. Once I got over myself a bit, and it took a couple of days, I had a great time doing it. I like characters whose good side doesn’t come easily; who resist doing whatever it is they are being called upon to do or to be.”

Perhaps, something akin to his attitude to the promotion treadmill…. Firth was especially attracted to the idea of working with Emma Thompson, who wrote the script as well as playing the title role. “I thought, this is an opportunity to have a very enjoyable time,” he says.

He couldn’t resist creeping on set wearing Nanny Mcphee’s full garb-including a hideously bulbous nose, snaggle tooth and warts. Widely regarded as a dreamboat, Firth says given the chance to erase an unwanted facial feature, as happens in the movie, he wouldn’t bother. “I’m quite happy to let the face go where it goes, really. We can, if we want, evaporate our facial features. Members of my profession go rushing to the surgeon all the time.”

Other actors in the film, including Angela Lansbury and Kelly Macdonald, don’t need surgery-their faces are hidden under colored pies, cakes and other foods during a mass foodfight. “What looks a rollicking good time is a painstaking and drawn-out process. Those things weren’t edible. My children came to the set and saw all these pink and purple buns - I had to tell them not only would you break your teeth if you tried to eat one, you’d be hospitalised if you succeeded.”

Given Nanny Mcphee is a children’s film, will he take the young ones to see it? “I don’t push myself at them, the little ones are very little. It’s weird to see a parent on the screen and I don’t think I’m going to hasten towards that moment. They’ve seen me in magazines and on buses, but they probably think everyone’s dads are on buses.”

Firth says he was thrilled by the reaction to Nanny Mcphee in Britain, where it doubled expectation at the box office. “Really, the film is just trying to delight all kids,” he explains. “there is something quite uplifting about that. We are actually trying to please children. It’s that simple.”

Thanks to Gumby, Australia

Interview: "Don't photograph me from the waist down!" by John-Paul Flintoff (The Sunday Times...2 pages)

2005-12-04T07:18:00.000-08:00

But just as Martin starts to take some pictures, the publicist says we can only photograph Firth from the waist up. Otherwise, Sunday Times readers would see his Roman trousers and Timberland boots, also customised to look Roman. And we can't have that.

It's at this point that the artist loses his cool. He throws up his hands and says: "I can't do this. I can't make a hundred compromises in one day!" The artist in question is Martin.

Firth steps down off the crate. "I'm sorry about your compromises." He looks sincere, but it is impossible to rule out the possibility that he's also a little amused. Martin is already regretting his outburst. It's not Firth's fault, he says, and apologises effusively. Firth steps back up and Martin places me behind him, holding a screen of black felt. Look closely at the picture and you can see my fingertips.
It's not that Firth asks much, he says jovially. He doesn't demand outfits by Armani, for instance, or Hugo Boss. He's willing to be photographed with his hair and face smeared in glycerine - lending him a sweaty appearance appropriate to a legionnaire but less so to a movie star. He'd just prefer not to be pictured in trousers with a leather gusset, if that's possible. "You try to be a good bloke," he says, "and to make yourself available. But I don't want to open a magazine and think, 'Why on earth did I let them do that?.....more

Interview: "Don't call me Darcy, says Colin" (The Ilford Recorder)

2005-12-01T07:12:00.000-08:00

Firth: I've been hearing year after year after year, "well this is a departure for you, isn't it?" I don't know how many departures I have to make. I think if someone hadn't seen Bridget Jones, or Pride and Prejudice, and had only seen Trauma or, going back further, seen Tumbledown or Master of the Moor, they'd probably wonder why I always killed people.
I don't do things in order to change the pattern really, I just do it because I like a script and think it might be interesting.....more

Interview: "Colin Firth chats about "Where The Truth Lies" (Close-Up Film)

2005-11-30T14:16:00.000-08:00

How did you deal with the sexually frank scene at the heart of the story?
Firth: We have to do so much weird stuff as actors anyway. I know this crosses a threshold which I think most non-actors find the least comprehensible and the most difficult to get their heads around, because most people wouldn't want to take their clothes off in front of their colleagues. But by the time you've been through drama school you've had to go through a bit of that anyway, and by the time you're in your mid 40s you've been round the houses a few times. That doesn't mean you think nothing of it. There's always a slightly tricky moment when you go from being dressed to undressed and yet you've got a scene to play. In the case of this film it was quite a tricky scene, emotionally. We had to get that right while also framing out peoples' private parts. A lot of the time you're wrestling with the technical requirements, as you are on any film. Even if you're not naked you're having to hit a mark and hit your light and move in accordance with the camera movement, while looking as if on take 15 you've said it for the first time and it's spontaneous.....more

Interview: "Mr Darcy dares to bare everything" by Caroline Briggs (BBC News)

2005-11-28T07:06:00.000-08:00

The film explores the dark side of fame, fortune, and celebrity, something Firth says he was immediately attracted to.
"I liked all the dark stuff, the unpredictability of the character, and I thought it had a lot of possibilities," he told the BBC News website.
"[Darker roles] are not entirely new to me. In Trauma, which I did about three years ago, and throughout the 1980s, I was playing characters who were less than pleasant."It's not a reaction to typecasting - I just tend to like that territory. "I have reaped enormous benefits from doing rom coms... but I tend to be more comfortable in drama than in comedy."

Tortured is always good for an actor. I don't know anyone who doesn't want to do a bit of torturing," he added.
"It is hard to imagine any central character in any film that is happy at the beginning, happy in the middle, then happy at the end. What story has there been?....more

Interview: "Without prejudice" by Peter Ross (Sunday Herald)

2005-11-27T14:56:00.000-08:00

If he will allow it, though, I'd like to clear something up. One of the great Firth myths is that he is modest and self-effacing, and he nods when I mention this, dismissing it as "a load of British shtick". It is essentially the Colin Firth act that he slips into in public. But the truth is that acting requires enormous amounts of self-belief, even arrogance, and he certainly has those personality traits.

"Yeah, it requires huge ego," he says. "I remember one of my grandfathers, who was a minister in the church, said that he had to have quite a considerable ego to get up in front of people, tell stories and preach to them. He said that's what got him up there, and over his nerves about being the centre of attention."

This is typical Firth, making a point about himself by referring to his family background. He does it a number of times during our relatively short time together; he clearly believes in the importance of bloodlines and a certain level of genetic predestination.

Anyway, he is not finished talking about ego.....more

Interview: "Is that Mr Darcy taking part in an orgy?" by Sheila Johnston (The Telegraph)

2005-11-26T14:26:00.000-08:00

Aside from its more lubricious elements, one of its presiding themes is the shifting sands of showbusiness and, in particular, the seismic shift between the star-struck 1950s and the ruthless 1970s when celebrities' secret lives became fair game for the media.
It's something that both Firth and Bacon - though both men's lives are mercifully scandal-free - are well-placed to comment on.
"My parents get weird phone calls and people showing up at their house," Firth says. "They're innocent about it - they want to be nice to absolutely everybody because that's the kind of people they are, and they answer questions politely. Then they'll get me on the phone saying, 'How could you tell them about the Batman outfit I had when I was 19?' The press are pretty determined and they'll do anything. It doesn't matter to them what the wreckage is in someone's life after the one-day story....more

Interview: "Director's edgy moment of 'Truth" by Roger Moore (Orlando Sentinel)

2005-11-12T14:10:00.000-08:00

Archived completely due to unavailability on the internet

It's been a rough few weeks," says director Atom Egoyan.

The Canadian maverick had received an estimated $25 million to make his "most commercial" film, with a "name" cast that includes Kevin Bacon, Allison Lohman and Colin Firth.

It was in the can, ready to hit a few film festivals and then head into North America's movie theaters this fall.

Then he ran into a little thing called the MPAA -- the studio-run Motion Picture Association of America, whose ratings board decides what to label movies: G, PG, PG-13, R -- or the dreaded adults-only NC-17.

Egoyan, director of The Sweet Hereafter and Exotica, earned commercial cinema's equivalent of the death penalty. As reported in Variety, the MPAA identified four scenes in the sexually explicit murder mystery, including a menage a trois that Egoyan could not cut to its satisfaction. His studio appealed, but no dice.

ThinkFilm decided to release Where the Truth Lies without a rating. To no avail, as it turns out.
Truth won't be coming to a theater near you.
The studio gave up on rolling it into new cities, including Orlando, as of Friday.

"I was happy, at least, to see the film in its uncut state," Egoyan says. "The last time I saw it was at the MPAA's screening room in Los Angeles in our 'final cut' version, and I was really unhappy.

"It was a very confusing moment for me, because one side of me really wanted to get the R, and the other side didn't want the movie to go out that way. I guess I'm just relieved that the film won't be tampered with."

Movies with NC-17 have a hard time advertising on mainstream outlets. The rating also restricts the audience, ruling out those 17 and younger. Releasing a film unrated skirts that stigma, though studios prefer to have films rated, widely advertised and able to reach the largest audience.

Truth is based on a lurid serio-comic novel by Rupert Holmes, the singer-songwriter of "Escape (The Pina Colada Song)." The film is about a reporter (Lohman) who investigates a long-covered-up scandal, a murder mystery overshadowing the breakup of a beloved comic team (Firth and Bacon). Her research uncovers the kinky sexual overtones of the mystery and how they relate to the long-estranged comics.

The MPAA doesn't make public statements about its edicts, but filmmakers are certain that the movie's suggestions of gay sex earned it that NC-17 stamp.

"I think they offered the information early on that this is 'not, repeat not, about the homosexuality,' " says Bacon. "And that's a pretty good indication to me that it is about the homosexuality."

Firth seconds that.
"We're being penalized for the nature of the sexuality," Firth says. "I've seen many movies with more nudity. The sex here is not pornographic or titillating. It's this business of them telling us, 'Well, there's one thrust too many' that is so maddening about this. It's hypocrisy at its worst."

Egoyan says that the very fact that his film has a name cast "and all this Hollywood studio machinery behind it is what is transgressive about it. If this had been an indie film with lesser-known actors, there wouldn't have been any fuss whatsoever."

In any event, it's the uncut Truth that took its shot in theaters, and failed. But look for it on DVD.

Interview: "We find Where The Truth Lies" by Sam Toy (Empire Online)

2005-11-01T14:41:00.000-08:00

Looking at the stuff that you have coming up on IMDB-
I'd take it with a pinch of salt, IMDB. I find that I'm involved in things I've barely heard of. They're things people try and set up, the order of things have been changed. So none of those are certainties.

Would you still consider rom-com roles in the future?
I consider anything that’s good, really. The criteria is quite broad for why I would take on something. As I said in the case of Atom Egoyan, a director could be the first hook. I’ve done jobs because there’s a group of people I want to work with. But a good comedy is hard to come by and I’ll definitely do it if I feel it’s worthwhile. One of the things on that list is called Gambit, which is written by the Coen brothers. Having said that I’m not really up for comedy at the moment, this came along which is so brilliantly written - it’d be stupid not to jump at it, if it happens.....more

Interview: "Sex on legs! Me?" by John Millar (The Daily Record)

2005-10-21T14:04:00.000-07:00

While you can imagine the Firth children one day getting a lot of fun from seeing dad making a fool of himself in the pie fight, Colin is quite content to keep his children distanced from his career.
He said: "I'm not particularly anxious for my youngsters to see my work early on. Until they start to get really curious about it all I will leave it. It's a bit odd watching dad running around in a film....more

Interview: "My Firth, my last, my everything" (Colin on The Last Legion) (Empire Online)

2005-10-10T13:55:00.000-07:00

"We’re in a bit of a father and son role there as well really," says Firth. "It’s Ancient Rome you see, so I’m appointed to guard this last, child emperor at the moment where the whole thing collapses. Apparently this is true, that the Goths, when they finally did sack Rome, spared the life of the Emperor because he was so young. We don’t know any more, but the writer just supposed, 'Well, what about the guy who was sworn to protect him? Is he going to carry on protecting him even though he’s not the Emperor any more?' It’s about that kind of relationship.....more

Interview: "Film stars leave crowds spellbound" (The Press Association)

2005-10-09T13:45:00.000-07:00

Archived completely due to unavailability on the internet

British film stars Emma Thompson and Colin Firth left crowds spellbound at the premiere of their magical new movie Nanny McPhee.

The actors wowed fans that gathered in Leicester Square in London's West End, performing the now-obligatory walkabout to greet the hundreds outside the cinema.

In the family movie Thompson, 45, plays a warty, severe, black-gowned nanny with magical powers who joins the family of recently widowed Firth and attempts to tame his unruly kids.

The actress who looked stunning in a blue dress by designer Tashia and Jimmy Choo shoes said: "It was liberating having moles for this part. I always find it more strange being glammed up."

Commenting on starring in a movie with a large cast of children and some animals, the actress, who also wrote the screenplay for the movie, joked: "It was really good but working with the donkey was tricky. But the most difficult thing of all was blancmange and porridge - trying to get them to do what you want."

Her co-star Firth famed for his TV role playing Jane Austen's Mr Darcy and parts in the Bridget Jones films described his experience of working with the young cast.
He said: "They do warn you not to work with children. There are risks about it however delightful they are that they're not going to be working along the same wavelength as you," he joked.
Asked how he felt about another actor playing the Mr Darcy in the new movie of Austen's book Pride and Prejudice movie he replied: "I don't own that role. I enjoyed it once in 1995 but if somebody can take it and run off with it, good luck to them."

The movie contains a host of British stars, from veteran actor Derek Jacobi, stars from Gosford Park and Gladiator to character actresses Celia Imrie and Imelda Staunton, who played the lead character in Mike Leigh's film Vera Drake.

Firth was well liked by his co-stars with Staunton making the wry comment: "I've known Colin a long time, we have a lot of fun. But he's got too much talent for my liking."

Interview: "Colin Firth: the charmed life of a late-blooming heartthrob" by Liam Lacey (Globe and Mail)

2005-10-04T13:38:00.000-07:00

"I've always been taught that without resistance, you can't develop -- whether it's your muscles or your voice or your acting ability. It's a tragedy really when creative people get so rich and famous that people open doors and smile all the time and give them everything you want. Now I've worked in America a lot of times and by far the majority of actors [there] are very well-grounded, [with] enormous senses of humour and very professional. But I've seen star behaviour. It's not even the star's behaviour, but watching it being connived at by people around them: not rolling their eyes, not questioning, not laughing when they hear something particularly pompous, all of which is destructive to the person who's being fawned on.....more

Interview: "Bacon and Firth consider comedy dates" (Contactmusic)

2005-09-16T11:43:00.000-07:00

Firth wishes he and Bacon could find the nerve to visit select comedy clubs with their act.
He tells Canada's Toronto Star newspaper, "It would have been fun to have the time and the guts to do that sort of thing.
"We fantasised about getting an act together. We had a pretty easy crowd (on set) paid a lot of money to laugh at us very loudly. I don't know how we'd go down with a hostile crowd. But they had us convinced that we had something going.....more

Interview: "Firth and Bacon upset about NC-17 rating" (Contactmusic)

2005-09-15T11:37:00.000-07:00

"The actual sex is not explicit. I've seen much, much, much more explicit sex on the shelves of Blockbuster (video/DVD store). I think there's a discomfort in the drama, which shows that the drama has been successful. And that's exactly what we were looking for.....more

Interview: "Why Colin Firth is full of beans for the latest fair-trade coffee venture" by Julia Fields (Sunday Herald)

2005-06-19T11:24:00.000-07:00

Firth, however, has also been part of the venture since its conception two and half years ago and contributed a five- figure sum to the £300,000 used to set up Progreso, along with Matthew Algie and Oxfam.

Why become involved? “I’m increasingly uncomfortable about being part of a problem, which is just gross unfairness. We are complicit.”

Until now, Firth has kept his involvement quiet. This is his first interview on the subject, and the brown-eyed charmer almost appears embarrassed about using his celebrity.....more (to be published)

Interview: with the cast of "Where The Truth Lies" (at Cannes) by Berge Garabedian (Joblo.com)

2005-05-18T11:12:00.000-07:00

I think we'd be foolish to be surprised by the reaction, since it really does happen every time, it's extraordinary what it stirs up. And over the years, particularly where actresses are concerned, that one movie that they did where they took their clothes, has haunted them, it's been mentioned in every article somebody has written about them subsequently.....more

Interview: "Romantic hero turns to the dark side" by Eileen Condon (Daily Post UK)

2004-12-01T11:01:00.000-08:00

"It sounds a bit cheesy, but making Trauma did feel like a homecoming to me," he reveals. "I've really enjoyed stuff that's happened over the last few years but it was hard to find anyone who would put me in anything like Trauma and I had a real hankering for that sort of material.

"When I was on the set, I thought I could really spend my life doing this sort of stuff. And when I saw it too, I felt I just wanted to do films like this.....more

Interview: "Love at Firth Sight" by Jessica Shaw (Entertainment Weekly)

2004-11-26T10:55:00.000-08:00

Days after finishing Bridget press in the States, Firth is back on the Truth set, purging himself of Mark Darcy and reveling in his new persona. ''I'm attracted to dark stuff, and I'm in that mode right now,'' he says. But the darkness could come only after the dawn. ''The things that have limited me have also been currency for me....more

Interview: "Colin Firth: Acting like a man, fighting like a girl" by Nicki Gostin (Newsweek Entertainment)

2004-11-22T10:42:00.000-08:00

Does the whole cult of Darcy embarrass you? Do girls send you their undies?
No, I'm afraid the feedback I get is depressingly proper. And I've lived with it too long for it to be embarrassing.

How does your wife deal with it?
It hit within weeks of us being together, so I think she felt she got a slightly fraudulent package.

But by then you'd locked her up.
Quite, and made sure bridges were burned.....more

Interview: "Keeping up with the Joneses" by Thomas Leupp (Joblo.com)

2004-11-10T10:31:00.000-08:00

No, it starts to get confusing. No, there was never any talk of Colin Firth appearing as a character. That wasn't contemplated for even a second. In fact, when the contract was being negotiated for Bridget Jones's Diary four years ago, I remember when they were discussing the option for the sequel, which was part of the contract, I think my agent said to whoever was at the other end of this, "If there is a sequel, who will play Colin Firth?" And there was a long pause at the other end of the phone, and the woman said, "We'll call you back." They called Kit about a half an hour later, saying, "There are currently no plans to feature a character named Colin Firth.....more

Interview: Colin Firth Talks About: Sequels, Playing Mark Darcy, and Working With Renee Zellweger by Rebecca Murray (about.com...3 pages)

2004-10-16T10:12:00.000-07:00

Would you do a "Bridget Jones 3"?
In the abstract, it's unthinkable. I don't really plan in the long term about anything. I can't think where a sequel could go. I think this time one would have to think of it as a sequel, unless Helen wrote another book. The only way which I could possibly imagine it being interesting is that if it showed us in a state of advanced decrepitude really - a heavily deteriorated Mark Darcy. I think we're on the way. And Daniel Cleaver and Bridget really puncturing the fairy tale completely might be a way to take it. But I've been ready to move on to other things for quite a while now, actually. I'll be quite content to live my life without another one.....more

Interview: "Oh Mr. Darcy" by Anwar Brett. (BBC Movies)

2004-09-15T09:45:00.000-07:00

Talking of Hugh, you're on screen together again in Bridget Jones: Edge Of Reason - was that an easy film to commit to?

I don't remember making the decision. It somehow felt like a bit of an inevitability. I said to Hugh "Do you remember saying yes to this film", and he couldn't remember either. The only time one could have said no was ages ago, before there was really a script and before anybody had that much invested. But the script kept getting better, and at a certain point it would have become a very big deal not to do it.....more

Interview: Trauma London press conference (Q&A) by Jonathan Harvey (Phase 9)

2004-08-24T09:58:00.000-07:00

It was fun, but there wasn’t much downtime. We were filming very long days, six days a week and we were basically all living on the set. To walk away afterwards when there’s been nothing in your life except dark corridors, insects and ghosts, it takes a bit of time to tune back. But I didn’t go into a Ben world of psychosis! And it was fun to play around in the dark – I missed it. In some ways I was attracted to it. I don’t know what that’s about.....more

Interview: "Colin Firth" (Cinemas Online)

2004-04-01T06:09:00.000-08:00

Not at all. And most guys I know wouldn't find that look attractive. I don't know whether it's because they're so worried about their body image, and how they photograph, or whether it's because of the huge bombardment of advertising with these really skinny models. Whatever the reason, it cannot be a good thing. It's not attractive, it's not healthy, and it's not sexy (Colin on "the lollipop look")....more

Interview: "Colin Firth" by Fred Topel (CHUD.com)

2004-03-11T05:59:00.000-08:00

Archived completely due to unavailability on the internet

I was all set to interview Colin Farrell and hear all his swearing and drunken sex stories, so imagine my disappointment when it was prim and proper Colin Firth. Oh well, I guess it’s still better than Colin Hanks.

Firth rounds out our trilogy of Bridget Jones interviews. Reprising his role as Mark Darcy, the dry British gentleman, Firth is a little bit nicer in this film. He’s not harassing Bridget, waiting for the last scene to redeem himself. In fact, he’s really the good guy in this as he tries to be patient through Bridget’s all new relationship neurosis.
In person, Firth is very much the dry British guy. He’s perfectly cordial and thoughtful answering questions, but he’s very straight and deadpan. Deadpan isn’t even right, because he’s not joking much. Hugh Grant was deadpan. Colin Firth is just straightforward.

Q: Does Darcy have a character arc? If not, what was the challenge of bringing something unique to Darcy?
Colin: I don't know if there's an arc. The Darcy thing's been going on for so long for me. It's beginning to feel like an arc that dates back to 1994. This felt like another episode in this ongoing story of some guy's life in one version or another. I suppose that if there's a shape to what he goes through, in some ways it would be the path from the film three years ago. What happens when they walk off into the sunset? What happens to happily ever after? You see something of their -- the bliss of their relationship, which I think is one of the hardest things that you can seek to portray in any sort of genre or comedy. You see the irritations and you see the patterns repeat themselves. You see the things that annoyed each of them about each other when they first met actually come to haunt them. You see them separate, and then, you actually see a pattern that's actually one we've seen before. She suspects him of being, well, she finds him standoffish. She finds him arrogant, rigid and all the things that she didn't like when she first met him all come back. And all the good deeds he's doing are hidden away. He doesn't demonstrate any of them. Daniel Cleaver comes back on the scene. So you've basically got it very familiar.

Q: Were you ready to do this again?
Colin: I didn't want to think of it as “again.” You see, I think it certainly wouldn't have been something I wanted to do if it felt like doing it again. The way we like to characterize this is that it is an adaptation of a novel, which was finished, done, dusted and an entity in its own right, I think already on the shelves by the time we made the first film. So, it did have a right to exist. It wasn't just conjured up to try to cash in on an earlier film. Having said that, yes, we were extremely cautious all of us I think. We didn't want it just to seem like an homage to something else. There are great dangers when the first film is very much loved. But we didn't want to mess with that really. And I don't think anyone recalls ever having said "Yes" to this job. It was something that, you know, there was a momentum that happened and it seemed inevitable. Not unlike getting your draft papers really.

Q: Did you rehearse the fight scene? How did you get it to look so realistic?
Colin: We didn't rehearse it very much. I'm ashamed to say the reason it looked real is because we were two normal fellows who don't know how to fight. My experience of violent confrontation dates back to the playground age, about six or seven years old. So that's what I drew from, and I think Hugh would say the same. If you get two very angry yuppies and then put them together, I think you will get a fight that looks much more like that than Jackie Chan.

Q: Would you do a Bridget Jones 3?
Colin: In the abstract, it's unthinkable. I don't really plan in the long term about anything. I can't think where a sequel could go. I think this time one would have to think of it as a sequel, unless Helen wrote another book. The only which I could possibly imagine it being interesting is that if it showed us in a state of advanced decrepitude really, a heavily deteriorated Mark Darcy. I think we're on the way. And Daniel Cleaver and Bridget, really puncturing the fairy tale completely might be a way to take it. But I've been ready to move on to other things for quite a while now actually. I'll be quite content to live my life without another one.

Q: Would you be willing to alter your physical appearance/weight like Renee did for a role? What was your reaction to her doing that?
Colin: I didn't give it as much thought as many people do. The degree to which I'm asked questions about it and the sheer level of fascination on the subject is I think really a symptom of how this issue affects people, particularly women. The fact that women are in utter disbelief that anyone would consciously go the other way -- to actually try to do that -- is mind blowing. And I think they look at Renee with the same kind of awe that people watch someone on a high wire or something. Are they going to fall? How could anyone jump across the Grand Canyon on a motorcycle? Put on weight on purpose? What's that like? Tell us about it. She did it. It's not that unusual for actors to alter their appearance to play a part. Put on a bit of weight, lose a bit of weight. I mean I have done that before, advertently and otherwise. Not to perhaps quite that extent, but I think if I did it, it wouldn't get anywhere near the amount of attention.

Q: Wouldn't it depend on how many pounds?
Colin: Yes, it would. I think that the most spectacular is the example that I think that I can remember, the first example that I know of, is what DeNiro did in Raging Bull. And I think that did get a lot of attention from people astonished, partly because of the extent to which he did it. It was a sacrifice made. I think he talked afterwards about having damaged his health to some extent.

Q: Or Tom Hanks going the opposite way.
Colin: And then getting skinny. These are dangerous things to do. I think that's probably the thing that occurred to me most. I just hoped Renee was under the proper supervision, and I think she was. I think you are taking your health in your hands. I think it's a very courageous thing to do. But the reason why people are really interested isn't because of that. I just think it's absolutely fascinating to think that a woman would dare to do that on purpose, particularly someone who's very attractive and has a Hollywood-based career. It just seems almost reckless. So I think that's been admired and I think that, to be honest, Bridget doesn't have to be particularly overweight. I mean this is about women think they are whether they are or not. But on the other hand I think if she'd been, if she'd had the kind of leanness that only Hollywood actresses have, I think it would have been quite hard to accept her as representing that kind of neurosis. So it was important that she did it.

Q: What about the two of you working together this time?
Colin: Well, the second time you have a shorthand and everything's much easier. You cut to the chase much quicker and I found it delightful to watch a character that was now familiar to me. It gave me a lot for nothing really.

Q: Do you share any characteristics with Darcy? Who would win in a fight between you and Hugh Grant?
Colin: The second one, obviously it would depend on who you ask. We haven't put it to the test. I would say judging by Hugh's apparent level of physical strength while we were engaged in the fight and the number of times he asked for the nurse, I think there’s no doubt in my mind really. No, I can assure you I've never folded a pair of underpants in my life.

Q: Have you had any odd encounters with fans from doing Bridget Jones?
Colin: My life has been largely taken up with weird encounters. They're not particularly anecdote-worthy. They're just people very often, and they're polite usually. These don't take the form of propositions or psychotic belief that you really are the character that you're playing. They're people who obviously identify very heavily with a female character and we are devices seen through her eyes. It's quite interesting to be in that position because very often it's not that way. the sexual roles are reversed in cinema conventions. It's much more often the male protagonist and the women the device. And we are I suppose somewhat archetypal. In that way it's resulted in the fact that we remain the archetype, we remain something that was deliberately created in the eyes of a woman who wrote a book, gained through the adaptation and through the eyes of a central character. All of them are female, directed by a female.

Q: In the book, Bridget Jones interviews Colin Firth. Was this scene considered for the film? Would you play a dual role like that?
Colin: No, it starts to get confusing. No, there was never any talk of Colin Firth appearing as a character. That wasn't contemplated for even a second. In fact, when the contract was being negotiated for Bridget Jones's Diary four years ago, I remember when they were discussing the option for the sequel, which was part of the contract, I think my agent said to whoever was at the other end of this, who, "If there is a sequel, who will play Colin Firth?" And there was a long pause at the other end of the phone, and the woman said, "We'll call you back." They called Kit about a half an hour later, saying, "There are currently no plans to feature a character named Colin Firth." There were discussions of creating a version of that interview using some other figure. It didn't have to be, it could be anybody really. Bridget Jones interviews someone, a celebrity. And they toyed with versions of it. It eventually went by the wayside. It was a nice conceit.

Q: So she lands in the pigsty instead?
Colin: That was the replacement. I became a pigsty, yes.

Q: What was the experience of working on set with Renee?
Colin: She makes it terribly easy for everybody basically. On two fronts, is on a personal level, if you're a leading actor, you are enormously responsible for the tone on a shoot in terms of the level of peace and happiness and harmony. And the leading actor can make literally all the difference. It doesn't matter what anyone else is like. If that person's a shit, then the whole thing's just a struggle. She was actually ridiculously generous. I've never seen anything like it. I've never seen punctuality like it. I've never seen devotion to off-camera performance, which is essential. To have someone who's that talented is obviously useful to us all. It reflects well on you. It makes you raise your game. But if that very, very talented person is not giving you very much once they're off camera, their use becomes limited. She gives as much off camera as [on]. If she was crying in a scene on camera, she'd do it again off camera. She would do it for the cutaway to Uncle Bob. She'd be there no matter what, no matter how jetlagged from her trips around the world. She's incredibly busy. This sounds like a gush, but it was so astonishing to all of us that we were gobsmacked by it really. She was even off camera -- this is going back four years now -- but she was even off camera, after three weeks of night shoots, about five o'clock in the morning when she could have gone home, for a shot on my feet. "My feet don't need you. This is fine." "No, no, no. I'll be here. It makes a difference. It makes it real." And so that's what we're talking about. It was good-natured, involved with everybody on the unit no matter what their role was. Film is a very hierarchical environment. The pecking order is very strong. People can profit from that. In all sorts of negative ways. She made it very egalitarian. It was wonderful.

Q: Can you discuss what you and Kevin Bacon were doing?
Colin: This is a film Where the Truth Lies. It's from a novel of that name by Rupert Holmes. It's a little hard to pitch. It's set in the U.S. and it goes from 1959 to 1974. It cuts between those two eras. It's about an entertainment duo in the '50s. We're a fictional, legendary entertainment duo and their peccadilloes and their involvement with sex, drugs, the Mafia, and how it all gets out of hand. Eventually, it leads to the death of a woman in a hotel room. And it's never resolved. It's a big mystery, and then cut to 1974 where this investigative journalist on the case trying to find out why the actors broke up and who killed this woman and were they involved. That's basically the mystery of it.

Q: Are you the journalist?
Colin: The journalist is a woman. And I'm one of the two. Kevin Bacon and I play the act.

Q: And how do you find Atom Egoyan?
Colin: I find him absolutely fantastic. A lot of freedom. He has a very, very strong idea of how much he wants. He doesn't over-cover things. He knows exactly how he wants to shoot it. He doesn't protect himself with endless coverage. He just knows how he wants the scene to be revealed, depends on his actors and works with them very specifically. Sometimes you have a slightly adversarial relationship with your director. And that can be a good thing. I mean, it can be a stimulating, slightly contentious relationship. Atom doesn't work like that. He does it very gently. You have enormous regard always for his intelligence. So there's always a big listening relationship. He tends to work by watching what you do, finding something that interests him, even if it's just a speck of what you've shown him, and then expanding that.

Q: And you're working with Emma Thompson now?
Colin: Yes. It's something she wrote for children. It's called Nanny McPhee. She's the nanny. She's in it as well.

Q: So you're the father of the kids the nanny is taking care of?
Colin: That's right.

Q: Do you take part in the special effects or are you out of that?
Colin: No, I'm sort of out of that. I'm a makeup artist in a funeral parlor. I make up corpses.

Q: Are you taking a break after that?
Colin: After the film? I don't know yet. It depends on how long the break will be. I might.

Q: Will you work with Richard Curtis again?
Colin: I like Richard and I think Richard wants to strike out to new territory. So if he did call again, I'd think it'd be something different, interesting.

Q: No more comedies?
Colin: It might end up something comical. I don't know. I little bit of a dramatist.

Interview: Renaissance man by Tom Ryan (The Age Australia)

2004-03-06T05:43:00.000-08:00

So who is Colin Firth when he's not busy being Colin Firth? He says he is certainly not, in real life, anything like the put-upon men he's presented to the world in films such as The English Patient, Shakespeare in Love, Londinium (screened here on cable TV as Four Play), Love Actually, Girl with a Pearl Earring, not to mention Pride and Prejudice.
"None of them are me as I see myself," he declares, "although they probably all are representative of me to some extent. I think they have to be for any actor playing any role. For it to be convincing, it's got to come from somewhere that's you. The question is about realigning the relevant parts of yourself.
"You always have to find something about a character that you like. You can be playing the most despicable human being, but if you pronounce them despicable then you won't be able to make it real.".....more

Interview:"Colin Firth" by Carlo Cavagna (Aboutfilm.com)

2004-02-01T05:29:00.000-08:00

And then I tend to pick [something] a little too close to the top of the pile and go for it. Sometimes it's about a relationship. You can think, “Nah, it's not really what I want to do next,” and then you find you're working with the producer of that thing, and he's a wonderful guy, and the director's irresistible, and it's going to be great, and your friends are all in it, and it shoots down the road, and why not, and it's over by April, you know? Sometimes it's apparently frivolous as that, to get you involved. Sometimes you're in before you realize it, with these things. They tend to have a life of their own....more

Interview: Celebrity Interview: "Colin Firth" by Barnard Bale (E-Motion issue 2)

2004-02-01T05:19:00.000-08:00

Archived completely due to unavailability on the internet

Colin Firth is a very busy man. With four films in the pipeline, including Richard Curtis' smash hit Love Actually, this modern, English heart-throb found time to tell us why the country of Hampshire has a special place in his heart

It's a busy time for Hampshire-born actor Colin Firth. It seems that hardly a week goes by without the release of a new film in which he stars. Love Actually set the ball rolling in November. In January, Girl with a Pearl Earring makes its long-awaited appearance, and Trauma is expected to follow in February, with the sequel to Bridget Jones's Diary currently in production and due out later this year.

Despite international success and a globetrotting life, which sees him dividing his time between America, London and Italy, he has not forgotten his Hampshire roots.

"I was born in Grayshott on 10 September 1960 although I was only there for two weeks before my parents left for Nigeria, where we lived for four years," he recalls. "We then spent about a year in the US before returning to England when I was five."

The son of academics, Firth travelled extensively in his childhood as his parents took up various teaching posts, including stints in Essex and St Louis, Missouri. When his father accepted a teaching post in Winchester, Firth went to a local school. "I don't think I've contributed anything to the city's history and certainly very little to its scroll of academic achievement!"

Firth attended Montgomery of Alamein comprehensive school. "It was a very good school, although I was not a very good student! I should have tried harder at school. I didn't hate school, although I didn't particularly like it either. I went on to Barton Peveril sixth form college in Eastleigh, where I mostly went through the motions, because by that stage I had just about decided that I wanted to be an actor."

He knew from a young age that he would not follow his parents' footsteps into the world of academia: "I was a born performer - or at least a show-off. I remember, as a five-year-old, dancing around a bit and making people laugh in a school play. It was fun and I enjoyed the praise I received afterwards. There was no holding me back after that and I liked to entertain at home, telling jokes to my sister Kate and my brother Jonathan. I used to do impersonations of Batman - I was a great fan of his - and I tried to play the piano."

His musical ambitions developed when his family moved to St Louis, Missouri. "I was about 11 at the time and I formed a band. I was lead singer and I played the guitar. I don't think we were a threat to anyone, but I thoroughly enjoyed myself. The music became a form of escape. I was not really a rebellious person but as I entered the second half of my teens I did play truant a bit and immersed myself more and more in music. I looked the part too. I had long hair, pierced ears and tended to dress rather badly."

After leaving school in Winchester, and determined on a career in acting, Firth took part-time work as a dustman and paperboy to earn some money.

"I knew what I wanted but I didn't really know how to achieve it. Eventually, I tried for a place at drama school and, after spending a summer with the National Youth Theatre, I was finally accepted into the Drama Centre in London in 1980. Firth lived the lifestyle of a typical student, trying to make ends meet. "I lived in a bedsit in North London. I used to walk everywhere to save money. That would have been all right if I had not had holes in my shoes for much of the time!"

Life changed dramatically though when Firth's obvious talent led to him starring in a production of Hamlet at the Shaftesbury Theatre in the West End during his final term.

"I couldn't believe how it all changed. At the start of the year I didn't even know I was going to be in Hamlet, but by the end of the year I had seen my picture outside a big West End theatre, had an agent and a real career."

He made his film debut in 1984, playing opposite Rupert Everett in an adaptation of Julian Mitchell's play Another Country. A string of television roles followed until, in 1988, Hollywood beckoned in a costume drama called Valmont. It was not a huge success but he met actress Meg Tilly and they lived together for several years, sharing a log cabin near Vancouver, where they had their son, William.

"My career did not matter too much at the time. I was creating a homely family atmosphere and I was certainly not in love with Hollywood or the American movie scene. The money was good but the productions were not. I preferred theatre, but the pay was poor so I think I became generally uninterested."

His relationship with Meg Tilly broke up and Firth's career took off again.

"The idyllic world of the log cabin proved not to be enough. I began missing acting and we just grew apart. I still regularly fly to America to spend time with Will."

In 1995, Firth met Italian film producer Livia Guiggioli while working on a television dramatisation of Joseph Conrad's Nostromo. They were married in Italy in 1997 and have two sons, Luca and Mateo.

"Livia is a very special person, perfect in my eyes. She is not only beautiful but very clever and has a great sense of humour. She is the smartest woman on this planet and my chief adviser. Her family are great, too. When they met me and heard that I was supposed to be some sort of a heart-throb in England, they couldn't stop laughing. That was great and I love being in Italy because I can just be myself the whole time. I am very happily married."

That's bad news, of course, for his countless female fans, who swooned when he wore the most famous wet shirt in television history as Mr Darcy in Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. It was this role, almost 10 years ago, that really turned him into a major star and an overnight pin-up. And it was the inspiration for author Helen Fielding's Mark Darcy in Bridget Jones's Diary, the part Firth played in the film adaptation of the book.

To many, Firth will always be Mr Darcy. "A lot of people still refer to Mr Darcy and many people expect me to be just like him. They must be very disappointed to discover I am not at all like him. I'm not as well-spoken, I'm gentler, not nearly so uptight and I only dress up when I have to."

The comment is confirmed by his casual, relaxed dress and manner when we meet at a hotel for the interview. He has a reputation for a wicked sense of humour, but on this day, at least, he is quiet. "I can be loud, very loud, but most of the time I am fairly quietly spoken.

"I left the role of Darcy on the last day of filming but, having said that, Pride and Prejudice was a superb production and a lot of trouble was taken over getting it right. The famous scene of me swimming the lake was originally written as a nude scene but it did not seem to fit in with the rest of the production, so I remained clothed. We had no idea of the impact it would have, and it does still embarrass me a little.

"Interestingly, although Pride and Prejudice is principally set in Hertfordshire, Jane Austen did apparently gain much influence from her time in Hampshire and many of her descriptions fit in with the life and times of the county."

Firth was cast in another romantic role for the recent hit movie Love Actually. He has said that he found it difficult to relate to the bumbling romantic he plays, "because I don't feel like him at all or think I'm as nice as that guy. I wouldn't be as patient and self-deprecating", adding that he doesn't have a permanent romantic view of life. "I'm interested in emotion, its complications. I'm not necessarily an optimist in terms of romantic love."

In a departure from romantic leads, Firth's latest roles include the enigmatic Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer in the dark, period piece, Girl with a Pearl Earring, and a man who wakes from a coma to discover his wife has been killed in a car accident in Trauma. "It's a good film and don't let the storyline put you off. But it seems like an age ago that it was shot as there has been so much else going on."

Despite his hectic schedule, Firth always tries to return to his roots. "I am looking forward to some time off and, hopefully, some of it will mean visiting family back in Hampshire."

Interview: "Colin Firth: The Q Interview" by Hermione Eyre (The Independent Online)

2004-01-11T04:44:00.000-08:00

What music are you listening to at the moment?
Um, it's very haphazard, always. There's an American singer called Kelly Joe Phelps, who I've got quite a passion for. I like the new Blur album, actually. And the Flaming Lips. Do you know them? I like Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots....more

Interview: "Colin Firth: Time Traveler" by Michele Hatty (USA Weekend)

2004-01-04T05:05:00.000-08:00

"Children make you feel mortal," Firth says. "Before you have kids, there's an invisible thread that's attached to your youth and your birth in some way. Once you've got them, that thread is now attached to the other end of your life somehow. It's their turn to be beginners. You have to move over." And although he's embraced his role as a parent, he says matter-of-factly, "I'm absolutely certain that it's not for everyone."

It's with a similar frankness that Firth muses about the relationship between England and the United States. "English popular culture has absorbed a great deal of American popular culture, and vice versa. Music has been very much the catalyst for that. We've regurgitated and re-regurgitated each other's influences. There would have been no Beatles without American rock 'n' roll, and there would have been no Hendrix without the [Rolling] Stones," he says....more

Interview: "Firth Love" by Andrew Goldman (Elle)

2004-01-01T04:56:00.000-08:00

Do British women still do it for you?
CF: They really do. And I'm married to an Italian. My head turns in the streets of London all the time—or pretty much anywhere. When you're married, your window-shopping instincts are heightened. You're rooted, so you browse.

What's the biggest lie you ever told to pick up a woman?
CF: I've never said that I was the president of a South American country, but I'm sure I've claimed to be interested in her mind or that I'm the committing type. I have actually pretended I'm not who I am.

Wait—you would actually pretend to not be a famous actor in an effort to pick up women?CF: Yeah. It would be kind of nice to get the eye from someone who has no idea who I am

....more

Interview: "Colin Firth" by Laura Metzger (BBC World)

2003-12-23T04:35:00.000-08:00

Archived completely due to unavailability on the internet

Currently Colin Firth can be seen in two quite different films - the romantic comedy Love Actually' and as the broody Dutch painter Vermeer in 'Girl With A Pearl Earring'. Firth really doesn't have that much to complain about but he isn't an A list star. Does that worry him, or rather should it worry him? Laura Metzger sat down with Firth to find out if he craves the Hollywood spotlight.

It's been almost a decade since the buzz first began to build around Colin Firth when he starred as the brooding Darcy in a TV production of Jane Austen's 'Pride and Prejudice'. Now he's perhaps best known for playing a different Darcy in 'Bridget Jones's Diary'. Although recently there's been a spate of romantic comedies sent his way, Firth is back in dramatic form as the 17th century Dutch painter in 'Girl With A Pearl Earring'.

Colin Firth: "Romantic comedies didn't really arrive on the scene for me until four or five years ago. I remember craving to do something lighter because I just never felt I'd had light material before. And it was a case of be careful what you wish for because then I got bombarded with that and people have started to have the perception that I'd done nothing but. So 'Pearl Earring' felt a little like coming home in a way, and I took great satisfaction in something that didn't have a twinkle in its eye."

There's not much eye twinkling in 'Girl With A Pearl Earring', but there's still quite a lot going on behind Firth's gaze. His smoldering performance as the troubled artist helped earn the film a reputation of being one of the sexiest movies of the year where no one takes their clothes off.

Laura Metzger: "It felt like a lot was happening, was bubbling under the surface between your character, Vermeer, and Scarlett Johansson's character, Griet. What kind of challenges did that create for you as an actor because there's not a lot of physical action in this story?"
Colin Firth: " I'm glad it was bubbling under the surface because not a lot was happening on the surface. I think, in some ways, it's a great joy for actors to be released from dialogue and specific directed gestures that it makes it very much our own territory. The written word is the one thing we do not do as actors so we make gestures, we apply tones, we interpret the words, and when the words are taken away then we become the authors of our own interior dialogue, if you like, and I found that very liberating and I think we all enjoyed that responsibility."

Laura Metzger: "Could you identify with this character and what motivates him, because his art is the most important thing in his life, perhaps at the expense of others?"
Colin Firth: "Well, possibly, and I think he is someone who's capable of sacrificing people. He simply has the kind of ego that is driven by the creative process, I think a lot of creative people have an enormous self-centeredness. The pursuit almost requires it, perhaps, and it's often used as an excuse for the most appalling behavior. He leads two lives, really, and I think a lot of us probably do. I think that most of us in a family situation have some kind of secret world that we're in."

Laura Metzger: "You are getting recognition for your work in this film. Do you aspire for more of a profile in Hollywood in any way?"
Colin Firth: "No, not really. The trappings that it brings, it would be foolish not to look for or enjoy. Recognition, employability, money - I'm not lofty about that. But I also have my eye on durability. Even if Hollywood was begging me to come into its bosom, which it isn't, I think there are times you've just got to return to what you know and to keep it simple. I don't want to blow it, basically."

Interview: "Colin Firth: Still sitting pretty" by Fiona Morrow (Independent UK)

2003-12-19T04:17:00.000-08:00

"My father was worried when I decided not to go to university," he recalls, "but only because he wanted me to be able to find something that was stimulating from which I could make a living. I lit on acting because there really wasn't anything else that seemed feasible."

Though he loved what he was doing, the decision preyed on his mind for many years: "I did say to my dad later that I felt like I hadn't fulfilled the family tradition and that I had missed something by not going to university, by not following that path." His father, however, sees it differently: "He told me that, considering all the things I've learnt for various roles, I haven't missed out on much."

It soon becomes clear that for Firth, it's the research that really gives him a kick: "I enjoy the homework very much," he says with a slightly embarrassed guffaw.....more

Interview: "Colin Firth taking the lead" by Ruthe Stein (San Francisco Chronicle

2003-12-14T04:04:00.001-08:00

"This was a man who painted seemingly serene pictures repeatedly, capturing the calm of the moment in a house that is incredibly chaotic,'' said Firth, who studied Vermeer's work in museums. "Everybody knows what it's like in a noisy house. Everybody knows what it is to need to work, to close yourself off in a room and have the sounds going on. Everybody knows what it is like to have a bit of a secret life, a secret passion or a dream. Looking from my own vantage point, I think one of the most interesting things is that kind of creative intensity within a very earthbound domestic environment.''

Firth wouldn't reveal much about his own secret life, except to say that "you can share these things with your partner.'' He's become guarded since his first brush with fame, when paparazzi followed him home after he had purchased a vacuum cleaner. A headline in the tabs screamed, "Mr. Darcy does the household chores.....more

Interview: "An Interview with the Director and Stars of "Girl with a Pearl Earring" by Jeff Otto (IGN Filmforce)

2003-12-11T03:58:00.000-08:00

Although it may be less apparent in the film, Firth believes that Vermeer did have a strong and loving relationship with his wife: "I think if we're commenting on the relationship with his wife in our story, I think that it's sexually alive. I think that he is devoted to his family. I think that he's very, very rooted in the social order of his day. I think there must have been very strong reasons for him wanting to marry her. He changed his religion, he converted, from Protestantism to Catholicism and even though Holland was relatively tolerant in those days, it wouldn't have been an entirely easy thing to do at all...more

Interview: "Colin Firth: this complex actor studies the quirks of life" by Graham Fuller (Looksmart Highschool))

2003-12-01T04:25:00.000-08:00

Well, he does in a way. Whereas Van Ruijven [Vermeer's patron, played by Tom Wilkinson] would've violated her physically and traumatized her that way, Vermeer goes much deeper and has a much more lasting effect on her. There is a cruelty in his relationship with her. It was more noticeable in scenes where I was less patient with her, and more unpredictable and capricious, but those had to be cut. I had to take a breath after the scene where I pierce Griet's ear and walk away from her. Without needing to go into the symbolism of what the piercing means, it's clear he's finally got what he wants. She's made a sacrifice, he's drawn blood, she's become the painting he wants--and she's gone through God knows how many barriers to achieve that for him--and he's given her nothing. She thinks he might kiss her, but he just goes back to the easel. Instead of breaking down in tears as a lesser actress would've done in a bid for an award nomination, Scarlett struggled with her emotions, swallowed them, and came back again to her dignity. It was fantastic to watch.....more

Interview: "An interview with Colin Firth, star of Love Actually" by Jan Janssen (Handbag.com)

2003-11-12T03:03:00.000-08:00

Everyone likes to be flattered but it is weird because there is no one way that you feel about that. You do wonder, I suppose, especially as your career has to continue, what it is going to mean and yet I don't think it has meant that much except that I have talked about it in most interviews.
It's utterly bizarre to hear people discussing me in sexual terms. It's not something I'm used to. As an actor, I'm far more used to experiencing failure, rejection and failed expectations. I'm just glad that I didn't achieve my so-called hunk status until I was 35. I know it would have been very difficult to deal with if it had happened in my first film.....more

Interview: "I don't think films are less substantial because they're more popular or because they're lighter" by Alana Lee (BBC UK)

2003-11-02T03:17:00.000-08:00

I think it's great. I'm quite happy for those things to co-exist. This film wouldn't be possible without Bridget Jones for me. I enjoy doing Bridget Jones. I don't think films are less substantial because they're more popular or because they're lighter. I certainly know that if you're any more bankable because of the success of one film, then one of the privileges it buys you is to make you credible for a film like this. They then consider me as part of what helps to get the film made. It's a combination of elements that I'm prepared to make use of as long as I can.....more

Interview: "Colin Firth...about Love Actually and Girl With A Pearl Earring" (This Is Lancaster)

2003-11-01T13:20:00.000-08:00

Archived completely due to unavailability on the internet
Actor Colin Firth shot to fame playing the suave, debonair and ice cool Mr Darcy in the smash hit TV adaptation of Pride And Prejudice.

But he admits he was far from cool about his latest role. In fact the star says he suffered full blown panic attacks as he was about to start filming the eagerly awaited new movie Love Actually.

The 43-year-old actor admits he was terrified Richard Curtis wouldn't be able to pull off his daunting task as a first-time director.

"I actually had a panic attack on his behalf and woke up in the middle of the night," he says smiling at the thought now. "I thought, How is he going to do this? How will he cope? He's got 10 or 15 stories, some very famous actors and he is going to jump in for the first time in his life and orchestrate all that'.
"It seemed to be an absolutely overwhelming task and the read through seemed like a premiere or a night at the Groucho Club. I was expecting bodyguards, with ear pierces," he adds laughing.

Firth is only half joking because Love Actually boasts a jaw-dropping line up of A-list, British and Hollywood talent, including Hugh Grant, Emma Thompson, Billy Bob Thornton, Alan Rickman, Rowan Atkinson, Laura Linney, Keira Knightly, Liam Neeson, Bill Nighy and Martine McCutcheon in a part specially written for her.

Not surprisingly expectations surrounding the movie are riding high but early reviews have been glowing and Firth now says he needn't have spent sleepless nights worrying about his director.

"I think the film works fantastically well," he smiles.

`Richard has something like a 100% strike rate with everything he has done and you just can't believe he has pulled it off again with such an ambitious project."

It's not the first time the pair have worked together. Curtis wrote the screenplay for the Oscar nominated Bridget Jones, which starred Firth as Mark Darcy, suitor to the eternally single Bridget.

His role was another in a long line of tongue-tied, romantic leads in films such as Hope Springs, Fever Pitch and The Importance Of Being Earnest and one which continues with Love Actually.

In the star-studded movie, which interweaves 15 stories of love and heartbreak, Firth plays Jamie, a lovelorn writer who flees to France after being dumped and ends up falling for his young Portuguese housekeeper.

Although his winning portrayal will do no harm to his reputation as a romantic hero, Firth insists in real life he's much more cynical.

"I'm not nearly as nice as that guy," he says of his endearing on-screen character, "I don't feel like him at all. I wouldn't be as patient and I'm only sporadically romantic. I don't have a permanent romantic view of life. I'm not necessarily an optimist in terms of romantic love."

Even so, he'll still be remembered for creating one of the sexiest moments in TV history when, as Mr Darcy, he emerged complete with wet shirt and clinging jodhpurs from a lake. It wasn't just Miss Elizabeth Bennet who swooned, overnight that scene turned Firth into a major heartthrob.

Eight years on, he admits he's baffled by the continuing interest in his Pride And Prejudice success.

"I'm very surprised it's still so present and I'm surprised it was a success at all at the beginning," he shrugs. "It doesn't go away.''

Firth is also clearly uncomfortable at his sex symbol image saying. "It's just weird because there is no one way you can feel about that and you do wonder what it is going to mean as your career has to continue."

It doesn't seem to have done him any harm so far. As well as Love Actually, he's also starring in two of the other biggest movies of 2004 - Girl With A Pearl Earring and the Bridget Jones sequel.

Girl With A Pearl Earring, a sombre period drama in which he plays renowned Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer, marks a change of pace for Firth and it's clear he couldn't wait to do something a little darker.

"I was just really ready to do a bit of drama, since there had been quite a lot of light stuff," he smiles.

Not that filming the Bridget Jones sequel was a barrel of laughs, either as Firth reveals an on-screen brawl with Hugh Grant's character left him lost for words, literally.

"I ended up losing my voice," he says. It was because I was freezing cold -we ended up in the water during our fight. I spent a couple of days in a very, very cold pond with Hugh Grant which left me a little worse for wear."

Despite the incredible success of the last Bridget Jones movie, Firth admits he was initially reluctant to reprise his role as Mark Darcy.

"A sequel is fraught with dangers. I think most of us were sceptical about it, but my fears were allayed the minute Renee (Zellweger) opened her mouth. I thought, she's great and we're going to want to see a lot more of this'."

The path of true love might not exactly run smoothly for Darcy and Jones, but off-screen Firth is happily married to the Italian documentary maker Livia Giuggioli.

The couple have two young children and Firth has another son Will, 12, from his relationship with American actress Meg Tilly.

And despite his flourishing workload Firth admits, there's only one thing that's really important to him - love, actually.

"They're the best thing and the main thing," he says of his children.

"My life revolves around them, everything else matters less."

Interview: "Q&A With Colin Firth" by Martyn Palmer (Phase 9...3 pages)

2003-10-01T02:51:00.000-07:00

There were rumours about it before it became definite. I remember by January (2002) hearing about this thing because there was a reading of the script which I had been invited to participate in but I wasn’t able to be there. There was quite a buzz about the existence of this thing for a long time and you know a lot of talk about it, who may or may not be in it, and who may or may not play which part. I think there were quite a lot of musical chairs in casting as there often is. I knew they were umming and aahing about me and whether I was right for this or right for that. And I think it was ‘well if Hugh is going to be the prime minister then perhaps I’m not right for the Prime Minister’s brother-in-law or something. And it wasn’t until the summer sometime that they offered it to me.....more

Interview: "Colin Firth's Double Challenges" by Paul Fischer (Filmmonthly.com)

2003-09-30T02:33:00.000-07:00

Firth prefers not to give his sex symbol image much thought. He is married to the Italian documentary maker Livia Giuggioli, whom he met in 1995 in Columbia while making Nostromo. Giuggioli gave birth to the couple's second son last month. Another long-term relationship with American actress Meg Tilly produced son Will, now 12, whom he visits frequently in Los Angeles. "Hey, I have a great life. I've got a nice home, great kids and a wife I love. So I feel blessed. But I consider myself a jobbing actor. I have to pay the bills. So I choose roles that interest me and allow me to get on with it.....more

Interview: "Hope Springs" by Jen Foley (BBC UK)

2003-05-07T12:42:00.000-07:00

The romance in "Hope Springs" involves matchmaking. Has it ever played a part in your life?
Not as applied to me, but I did make the mistake of matchmaking once - a heartbroken friend of mine and a girl I thought would be right for him, and I arranged some errand they could go on together. It worked, they fell in love and it was the most disastrous relationship. So that taught me a lesson.......more

Interview: "Interview with Colin Firth" by Matthew Turner (View London UK)

2003-05-01T12:50:00.000-07:00

I'm over it now. Well, the reason we had to re-shoot that scene was because the studio thought it was too naughty. This is a scene where we'd managed to get absolutely no nudity and no sexual activity whatsoever and the studio came through and said 'No, this is too dirty - you're going to have to make a less dirty moment there'......more

Interview: "Mr. Darcy trades in horse for a motorcycle" by Bonnie Churchill (Christian Science Monitor)

2003-04-04T09:36:00.000-08:00

When Firth isn't working, one can find him reading. That is, unless he is with his Italian-born wife, vacationing in Italy.

"I love to travel to Rome. I really enjoy visiting the little villages near there," Firth says. "One of the things important to me is to try my hand at cooking their specialties. Don't ask my wife about my cooking. She'll agree the food is quite wonderful, but after I'm finished, the kitchen is far from tidy.".....more

Interview: Man of Style: Colin Firth" by Angela Matusik (InStyle USA)

2003-03-01T11:38:00.000-08:00

With thanks to colinfirth.info - aFirthionado archives

A great deal of fuss has been made over the clothes Colin Firth has worn on-screen. A wet shirt that clung to his chest in the 1995 TV version of Pride and Prejudice set women atwitter on both sides of the Atlantic. Then there was the reindeer sweater he sported in Bridget Jones’s Diary. "I actually wanted to keep that," says the 42-year-old father of two, who dons a more serious wardrobe for the new comedy What a Girl Wants. Befitting his charmingly accidental sex appeal, Firth doesn't take fashion too seriously. In fact fellow Brit Rupert Everett once kidded him that he was "far too heterosexual about these things."

[Q] You play Dad to all-American Amanda Bynes in What a Girl Wants. Was that a change of pace for you?

[A] I play a lord who has decided to renounce his title in order to stand for an election. But basically it is a fairy tale about a father and a daughter. It's loosely based on a Vincente Minelli film that was made in the fifties called The Reluctant Débutante, with Rex Harrison [and Sandra Dee]. It's not blindingly surprising territory for me - my character is one of those men who's as much defined by his reserve as anything else.

[Q] Your wife, Livia Giuggioli, is Italian and you've lived in Italy. How would you compare Italian style with British?

[A] The part of Italy that I know puts more of an emphasis on classicism, rather than on anything avant-garde. I don't know Milan. I see a lot of V-neck polo sweaters with the shirt underneath. They like stuff that fits; it's much more about that than being courageous. A lot of Italians come to London for the novelty of seeing the weirdness -the fact that people are prepared to forfeit elegance in order to make an impact.

[Q] Do you remember when you started experimenting with fashion?

[A] Oh, yes. I was constantly trying to fit in. It was always a little bit out of reach, a little bit too expensive. But I think fashion is about that. There has to be something that is a little bit inaccessible about it in order for it to remain elite. If it is for everyone, it is pointless.

[Q] How do you like to see women dress?

[A] It's so case-specific. I think the bare midriff thing can be absolutely sexy, or it can be ridiculous. I also like the sense of the unexpected, to see a woman dressed in a way that makes a mystery of what her body is like.

[Q] Did you worship any style idols growing up?
[A] Well, seeing Marc Bolan [from the band T. Rex] on TV when I was about 8 was a big moment. I had never seen glitter under the eyes before on anyone. He was androgynous, and it was interesting to me because he was pretty like a girl but he was actually extremely masculine. And I liked his music. But it was also about watching him onstage being adored by people. It prompted me to take guitar lessons, which were spectacularly unsuccessful.

[Q] What's your greatest extravagance?
[A] CDs. And I do own a lot of books, more than I can read. Books and music are the only things that I accumulate.

[Q] What CDs have you bought recently?
[A] Solomon Burke, Aqualung. Badly Drawn Boy I've got. I keep at it. It is a continual area of obsession. I go through different phases of preoccupation. It's very juvenile in a way. I'll have a Caribbean obsession, then West African, and then it'll be jazz.

[Q] Is there anyone who makes you star-struck?
[A] I think I would struggle a bit if I met Bob Dylan. Anybody who has had something to do with critical moments of your life would be tough. Dylan was probably playing somewhere the first time I fell in love or had a drink. The same with the Stones or the Beatles.

[Q] So how do you handle it when people gush over meeting you?
[A] Sometimes it's delightful and light and easy, and people are just being complimentary in a very unassuming and pleasant way. Sometimes it's spooky and they're weird, and I don't really know how to deal with it. In the end I just try to be as civilized as possible.