"The respect I get is ludicrous" by John Hiscock

Telegraph.co.uk, 29 August 2002

After roles in Pride and Prejudice and Bridget Jones's Diary, Colin Firth was transformed in a reluctant sex symbol. But, as his latest movie reaches Britain, he tells John Hiscock he is not the romantic type at all.

It was a big night in Los Angeles. Paul McCartney was in town to begin his concert tour, the new Star Wars film was being screened to a VIP audience and Tom Hanks and Martin Short were at the Geffen Theatre in a one-night-only performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream.Colin Firth's latest leading-man role is in The Importance of Being Earnest, which has been panned by US critics.

Yet the Los Angeles Times elected to focus its social diary on the phenomenon of the ardent female fans who had lined up to attend a Bafta-sponsored question-and-answer session with Colin Firth. Several women were following him, groupie-like, across America, reported the newspaper, which carried gushing quotes from them along the lines of "Colin is the man of my dreams."

The British actor became a transatlantic symbol of romance and sexuality with his portrayal of the brooding, glowering Mr Darcy in the 1995 TV adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. In reality, he is humorous, self-effacing and slightly sheepish about finding himself portrayed as the object of American women's fantasies.

"Sometimes, I get an almost ludicrous level of respect," he says ruefully. "But, if people expect me to be Mr Darcy, they are going to be disappointed." And—another blow to his fans—"I don't think I'm an excessively romantic guy. Romantic clichés don't appeal to me and I'm not a fan of Valentine's Day. I think romance can be a bit facile."

He lives in London with his wife, Livia, an Italian film-maker whom he met in 1996, while they were both working on the film Nostromo. They were married in June 1997 and have a son, Luca, who was born in Rome last year.

Firth's most serious romantic involvements—and he insists they are very few—have been with his leading ladies. He has a 12-year-old son, William, from a five-year relationship with actress Meg Tilly, whom he met on the set of Valmont, and he had a brief relationship with actress Jennifer Ehle which began while they were filming Pride and Prejudice.

He is, he believes, a better father now than he was when his first child was born. "I was 30 and I still felt far too young for anything like that," he says. "I hadn't quite got over not being 18 any more, and having a child changed my life dramatically. This time, I feel a little more equipped for it."

Professionally, he finds himself having to defend The Importance of Being Earnest in the face of harsh criticism. Exception has been taken to Oliver Parker's revisionist version of Wilde's play, which includes fantasies, flashbacks, a hot-air balloon and a tattooed Gwendolen. Daily Variety described it as "utterly miscalculated", generating the "queasy feeling of desperation". The Hollywood Reporter thought it "feeble", and said Parker's film-making choices "continually disrupt the delicate process of Wilde's comic writing".

Firth is stoutly supportive of his director, seeing in Parker's version a freshness and originality often lacking in the more traditional stage productions.

"The play has been done endlessly," he says, "and for someone to take it and be impertinent with it is not only an interesting experiment but entirely consistent with the spirit of the original. Oscar Wilde was in the business of disturbing complacencies and creating upsets and upheavals."

"Somebody once said to Wilde that this play should be like a wonderful mosaic, and he said no, it should go off like a pistol shot. I have seen probably 30 productions on the stage, and I have never seen one which has done that. Obviously, I'm a bit partisan, but this was an attempt to free it from the dangers of fossilisation."

He says it is the quality of the writing that inspires him. "There is nothing more intoxicating for an actor and nothing sets you on fire more than good language. The text is where it all starts. It is our job to interpret it, so, when the language vibrates, if you get it right, you catch fire. It fires up your intellect and even your body is affected by it. It is a very visceral experience."

Firth is full of praise for Reese Witherspoon, the only American in the Earnest cast. "It may be shocking to some people, but a lot of the American actors I've worked with are far more disciplined than Judi Dench," he says with a laugh. "Judi has a terrible sense of mischief, and sometimes you're lucky to get beyond three lines of dialogue without her cracking up with laughter. Of course, she's very sure of her own discipline, which is why she's free to have fun. But I found that American actors are intensely disciplined and extremely hard-working."

He claims his greatest handicap as an actor has always been his name. "Names are important; it's a huge part of who you are. Colin is the sort of name you give your goldfish for a joke. I was watching an episode of Blackadder, and there was a dachshund called Colin, and just his name was supposed to reduce you to fits of laughter. It has the double disadvantage of being considered commonplace, dreary and banal and, at the same time, not common at all. So I have this commonplace, dreary, banal name, but there is nobody else to share my fate. There are very few Colins around."

Oddly enough, he plays a character named Colin in his next film, Hope Springs, in which he stars with Minnie Driver and Heather Graham. But this Colin is a romantic figure. Quite unlike the actor playing him.

"The Importance of Being Earnest" is released on Sept 6.

Interview of the week: Firth and Everett, by Karen Butler

The Life & Mind Desk, 30 May 2002

After meeting actors Colin Firth ("Bridget Jones's Diary") and Rupert Everett ("My Best Friend's Wedding") recently, journalists in New York understood why the dashing Brits were cast as friends who behave more like bickering brothers in the new comedy based on Oscar Wilde's "The Importance of Being Earnest."

Polite and funny, in a quiet, guarded way, Firth seemed comfortable discussing the appalling literacy rate in England, the decline of high culture and the performance of Prime Minister Tony Blair, while his more flamboyant co-star kept reporters in stitches, chatting about drag queens, Victorian rave parties and the performance of Madonna. (Don't even get him started on why there won't be a gay James Bond in his

lifetime!)

Everett insisted that he and Firth are great friends now, but recalled a time when the differences in their personalities created tension on

previous film projects.

"He was very serious in the old days," Everett told United Press International of his "Shakespeare in Love" co-star. "He was always

strumming on a guitar and he was very left wing and he was going to give the first money he had to charity." Everett also acted opposite Firth in

the 1984 film, "Another Country," which marked both actors' film debut.

Serious in the old days, huh?

"Oh, was he serious today?" Everett feigned surprise. "Well, see, no,

you have to wind him up, the point being, he's a really good person to

wind up. As soon as you've wound him up, he's really funny."

Everett went on to say that he and Firth hadn't interacted much over the years, mainly because "we didn't really get along very well during

'Another Country.'"

"Well, it was my gig, I must say. I had done the play originally," he argued. 

Reminded that Firth had also appeared in the stage version, Everett sniffed: "Yeah. But, I discovered it."

"I had flogged it around the provinces and then brought it into the West End and my best friend was the guy who brought it into the West End and

it was also my best friend who produced the movie and we were looking for a new guy to play the other part and so he was... he wasn't number

two, but it was my gig and we didn't really get along," the actor explained.

He then added, "We had such a laugh doing this film, I must say... I love him now."

Firth's serious demeanor has served him well over the years. He became an unlikely sex symbol as Mr. Darcy in the smash BBC version of "Pride and Prejudice," then starred as haughty, unscrupulous men in "Circle of Friends" and "Shakespeare in Love" before landing the role of an austere, yet appealing barrister in "Bridget Jones's Diary."

Everett followed up his scene-stealing turn in the Julia Roberts blockbuster, "My Best Friend's Wedding," with a critically acclaimed

performance in another Wilde play-turned-movie, "An Ideal Husband."

In "The Importance of Being Earnest," Firth plays Jack, a responsible bachelor who adopts a roguish alter-ego (Ernest) in an effort to chase

away the doldrums of country life. Everett plays his trouble-making friend, Algy.

Despite their differences, both Firth and Everett professed a deep appreciation for Wilde's timeless wit and wisdom.

"I think its frothiness is extremely deceptive," warned Firth.

"I think that its triviality is very defiant... This was his last play. It's generally considered his greatest and there is a paradox about him

being his deepest when he is at his most trivial and I think that's the case with this. I think that it is so witty it can only come from a mind

with a great deal of aggression... It's perverse and it's self-contradictory and I think that Oscar Wilde's point of view on

things would still be considered extremely upsetting to people now.

"If you let this guy loose on your kids, he'd be teaching them stuff... You think school prayer causes problems. He'd be kicked out of schools

right across this country and in England, too. He'd be telling kids that having a color sense is better than having a sense of right and wrong...

He preached against family, marriage and private property. He was full of self-contradictions and stuff that would certainly upset the

conservatives in any country, so he loved stuff that pulled the rug from under [people,]" he concluded.

"I think it does have contemporary resonance," Everett agreed. "I think the whole Wildean thing has contemporary resonance, the Wildean thing

being his obsession with, you know, what's on the surface and what's underneath the surface. You know, this was before (Sigmund]) Freud and

(Carl) Jung really had even made us aware that there was something beneath the surface because when he was writing -- and this is one of

the extraordinary things about him -- there was no such thing as sub-conscious, really...

"He was obsessed by the front of these English upper-class people and how rotten to the core really they were inside and the funny way of

explaining it. And he came into England when England was at the center of this empire, at the high point of this empire and the English thought

they were the fairest, most lenient ... They're very proud of their law, the way they behaved, they thought they were the most fantastic people,

but actually they were hideous monsters! They ruled the world with a will of iron. They didn't let anyone do anything.

"They had this front, you know? Very high moral codes, ethical codes, but underneath that... and provided you kept that front, you could do

anything you wanted underneath it. You just have to look at the ledgers of Queen Victoria's pharmacists' bills... She used to have laudanum and

cocaine and heroine, major doses of them. So, underneath this Victorian austerity were kind of chill-out rave parties, so it was a world of real

double standards and probably because Wilde was one thing and pretending to be another, it was the thing he immediately clocked into with the

English upper classes.

"So, you have 'The Importance of Being Earnest,' which is the kind of comedic resolution of it and then you have 'The Picture of Dorian Gray,'

which is the subtly more macabre version that society is represented as this beautiful young man who has got everything ahead of him, but

actually inside he is rotten to the core and I think these two ideas are still really resonant now because, actually, in the Calvin Klein structure that we have today, anything is possible, provided you have the right outward signs of being behind the country, behind doing the right thing, having the right ideas, but inside, society is in the same position, just as shady, so I think there still interesting ideas," he explained.

Everett can next be seen in the P.J. Hogan's ("Muriel's Wedding") bizarre comedy, "Unconditional Love" (also known as "Who Shot Victor Fox,") co-starring Kathy Bates, Julie Andrews, ("Oh, I'm getting Alzheimer's!" Everett exclaimed,) Jonathan Pryce, Peter Saarskard, ("Who is the singer who sang 'Mandy'?") Barry Manilow and Sally Jesse Raphael.

Asked to describe the plot, Everett takes a breath and stated dramatically: "There is no other film like this film. It's a thriller. It's a musical. It's a comedy. It's a love story. It's got all these different things in it."

Okay, but what's it about?

"Kathy Bates, who is this agrophobic house-wife... is married to Dan Aykroyd. The morning the film starts, this famous, famous singer, played by Jonathan Pryce, who is a kind of crooner, who has a huge, huge fan base of over-weightish, middle-aged women, who just love him. He always

sings with a glass of champagne in one hand and he always dances with one woman from the audience and Kathy, he is her life. And the morning

that he's coming to Chicago to play a concert, the radio offers six free tickets if you ring in, she's about to ring in and as she's ringing in,

her husband comes in and he's decided to leave her and as he says that, as she's holding on for the concert... He leaves her and she gets

tickets to the concert. Anyway, the point is, what happens is that the singer, who is loved by all these women is killed by this serial killer

who is loose in Chicago and she goes to the concert and she finds out he's been killed, her husband left her and she has nothing left. She, also, her son is married to a dwarf," he said.

... played by Sally Jesse Raphael?

"No, she plays herself... Anyway, she decides, this agrophobic woman, decides to go to her favorite singer's funeral, which is in Wales, in

England, because she's got nothing left... She goes to his funeral, she's never been anywhere, the whole family and the dwarf are running

after her, saying, 'You're crazy.' Even the husband comes back because he's so worried. She's never, ever left the house in 30 years. She's

been ironing and doing cooking. And she goes to Wales and she goes to the house where the singer lived and she keeps hearing about this

singer's valet and she discovers that not only was this singer not a heartthrob to women, but he was a drag queen," he said.

So, what does Everett play?

"I'm his boyfriend of 20 years, who is being shut out of the house because no one ever knew this guy was gay... The family wanted to [keep

it secret] because they wanted to make more money. They didn't want anyone to ever know the singer was gay. They want me out of the house, so they can open it and make it a tribute museum," Everett went on.

Firth, on the other hand, is busy fielding questions from fans about the possibility of another Bridget Jones movie. Helen Fielding, the author

of the book that the immensely successful film was based on has written a follow-up, which, interestingly (not Sally Jesse Raphael and a dwarf

interesting, but interesting enough,) features Colin Firth, the actor, as a character.

Asked the status of the next Bridget Jones movie, Firth cautiously hedged: "I can't really answer that question informatively. I don't know. As far as I'm concerned it's all rumor... They have [spoken to me about it,] but then it's sort of gone quiet again. I just think it's probably a very difficult thing to mount--three actors [Firth, Hugh Grant and Renee Zellweger] who have to be available at the same time and a script that would have to be good enough."

Firth said that if he did agree to appear in a film sequel, he would reprise his role as Mark Darcy, not play himself. "(Colin Firth) won't be a character,)" he deadpanned. "He'll become George Clooney or something."

"Hidden star - Brit actor content with anonymous success" by Liz Braun

Canoe.ca, 23 May 2002

Brit actor content with anonymous success

NEW YORK -- Few adult women were surprised when Helen Fielding based the hero of her book, Bridget Jones' Diary, on British actor Colin Firth. If we have to explain the actor's appeal, then you must be a guy. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

ENSEMBLE OUTING

Firth, who went on to play Mark Darcy when the book became a very successful film, is currently starring in The Importance Of Being Earnest, an ensemble outing courtesy of Oscar Wilde with a cast that includes Dame Judi Dench, Rupert Everett, Reese Witherspoon and Frances O'Connor.

He says of Earnest, "I do find light comedy is the hardest thing to do. There's nothing to fall back on. And the whole identity thing ..."

Well, yes, the identity thing. In Earnest, Firth plays Jack Worthing, a man who pretends to be one person when he's in the country and quite another person when he's in the city. In the country, what's more, he watches over his ward (Reese Witherspoon) and in the city he courts a woman (Frances O'Connor) whose mother forbids a marriage. The film is very funny and very much about language.

At 42, the actor and author ("It's a rare occurrence I get anything into print. I need a deadline and a threat") says he first became an actor at the age of 14. "Because everything else didn't seem to be going anywhere." His choice was moved along by a complete academic inability at math, chemistry or physics. On one chemistry test, he scored 3%.

"And the teacher did mention giving me two points for writing my name correctly. It was a dead end. My physics was 1%. I just wasn't getting off the ground in that area." As English and music were going well, however, a career in the arts was born.

"It wasn't a choice, really."

From the get-go -- his first West End stage role in Another Country -- Firth found success. He picked up his Another Country role when the play became a movie, and went from there to such films as Apartment Zero, Valmont, A Circle Of Friends, Pride And Prejudice, The English Patient, Shakespeare In Love and of course, Bridget Jones' Diary. (After Valmont, Firth lived for a time with co-star Meg Tilly. They have an adolescent son together; currently, he is married to Livia Giuggioli, and they have one infant.)

Success seems surprising to him still. That's because, says Firth, he's never had any expectations.

'BRILLIANT ACTORS'

The grandchild of missionaries and the son of a history teacher and religion professor, Firth says, "I didn't expect to be in a movie, I didn't expect to be in the West End, either. I didn't expect to be in movies because that was another profession completely, for movie stars."

In England, his movie star thoughts are not unusual. "Look at Stratford -- all those brilliant actors. Not a film role among them."

Firth points out that he's been almost 20 years in the business without any sort of real presence, thus far, in the American movie-goers consciousness. "So, if it does not embrace me -- I can keep working and it's fine."