"Romantic hero turns to the dark side"  by Eileen Condon.

Daily Post, 2004

THINK of Colin Firth and you automatically conjure up an image of tight breeches and a dripping wet shirt.

Ever since his unforgettably dashing portrayal of Mr Darcy in the TV adaptation of the Jane Austen classic, Pride And Prejudice - including that lakeside scene - Firth has become synonymous with "brooding, romantic hero".

But according to the star, his real character couldn't be more different. He admits he's dark, but not in the brooding sense.

"I'm fascinated by dark dreams, by the gloomy side of life," he says with an uneasy smile. "When it comes to music or literature, I'm definitely drawn to the dark stuff."

In fact the star says he'd much rather ditch the romantic leads for a bit of horror, and reckons his new film, a Hitchcockian thriller called Trauma is closer to the real Colin Firth than any of his previous roles.

"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." "Yet, somehow you get the feeling this might not happen."

After all this is the man who single handedly made Jane Austen sexy and defined romance in hit films such as Love Actually, Girl With A Pearl Earring and Bridget Jones's Diary.

Those roles have helped him, not only to become one of Britain's most successful leading men, but also one of its sexiest.

However, it's not an image that sits comfortably with the Hampshire-born star, who has just turned 44.

"It's utterly bizarre to hear people discussing me in sexual terms. It's not something I'm used to," he says looking horribly embarrassed.

"I'm just glad I didn't achieve my so-called status until I was 35. The truth is, before I met my wife, I only had two girlfriends.

"When I met her parents, who live in Italy, I jokingly mentioned that I was something of a sex god in England and they burst out laughing," he says, laughing himself.

Sex symbol or not, Firth clearly only has eyes for one woman, his stunning wife, Italian documentary-maker Livia Giuggioli.

The pair met on the set of the 1995 movie, Nostromo, and married two years later. The couple have two sons, Matteo, born in August last year, and three-year-old Luca. Firth also has another 13-year-old son, Will, who lives in America with his mother, actress Meg Tilly.

"My life revolves around my family," he says. "But, obviously you do wonder if you're giving them enough time."

It's a particular worry for the hard-working star, who says he becomes "completely absorbed" in his roles, and none more so than his latest.

In Trauma (pictured), he plays a man who enters a nightmare world after waking from a coma to discover his wife, Elisa (Naomie Harris) has been killed in a car crash. Firth's character, Ben, owns an ant farm and, though it meant sharing his scenes with dozens of creepy crawlies, the star took it in his stride.

"I'm no great lover of them, but I'm not phobic," he says of the spiders and ants. "I think I just have a fairly normal revulsion to being covered in ants. I got to quite like the spider actually," he adds with a smile.

Happily, his next bunch of co-stars are far more pleasing on the eye. Renee Zellweger, Hugh Grant and Firth are all reprising their roles in the eagerly-awaited Bridget Jones sequel, The Edge Of Reason. And though he can't say too much about the film, he does reveal that fans are in for a treat.

"The script is very, very funny," he smiles. "It's strange, but I don't actually remember even signing up for a sequel, but somehow I seemed to have ended up in it."I think myself and Hugh would have been the bad guys if we hadn't have agreed to do it.

"But though a sequel is fraught with danger and most of us were sceptical about doing another Bridget Jones, any fears we did have were allayed the minute Renee opened her mouth," he laughs. "I thought, 'She's great. This is going to be fun', and it is."

And whether he likes it or not, the next Bridget Jones instalment won't do anything to dent that sexy image he's desperately trying to shake off.

But he should count himself lucky. If the Pride And Prejudice programme-makers had had their way, we would have seen a whole lot more of Mr Darcy.

"I still find it amusing that what the public doesn't know is that the original screenplay for Pride And Prejudice called for Mr Darcy to jump into the pond nude," he reveals with a chuckle. "But of course, we couldn't do that because it was for the BBC on Sunday evening."

"Love at Firth Sight" by Jessica Shaw.

Entertainment Weekly, 26 November 2004

Channeling debauchery looks disturbingly easy for Firth, 44, here on the London set of Where the Truth Lies, a psychological thriller from director Atom Egoyan (Ararat) in which he plays a Vegas-style performer who will keep a devastating secret about this particular coed. But last October, Firth showed up to shoot Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason with a $2 million check in his pocket and not a clue how to play the character he's best known for. ''I couldn't really remember what I was supposed to do,'' he says of embodying the arrogant attorney Mark Darcy, who gets his name from Austen's hero. It didn't help matters when about 600 people turned up on the streets of London to watch. ''People recognized me from the [first] film, which I daresay they've seen more times than I have, which is exactly once.''

Rewatching his scenes in 2001's Bridget helped. But Firth is facing this dilemma a lot: Crowds are turning out for his smoldering-yet-sensitive characters, and he's not so sure he wants to turn up to play them. ''I know I've played parts that are similar to each other,'' he says. ''The withdrawn quality, the air of inaccessibility. It's one of the things they hire me for. There's a lot of money being spent in movies. You want to buy it ready-made.'' It's why the Bridget producers needed him for the sequel. Firth initially bristled at the idea (''I didn't like the inevitability factor,'' he says), and joined only after Renée Zellweger and Hugh Grant did.

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.''

The best career investment Firth ever made comes exactly three hours and 15 minutes into 1995's Pride and Prejudice when Mr. Darcy emerges from Pemberley pond like Adonis during a wet T-shirt contest. Tapes were paused. Frames were frozen. The English press dubbed Firth's newfound fame ''Darcy mania.'' Websites quickly sprouted up with names like Firthfrenzy (doesn't exist anymore), Firthessence, and aFirthionado. On one, a frenzied Firthionado can link to more than 50 sound bites recorded from Firth's films including ''You have to marry me,'' ''I'm sorry, it was all my fault,'' and, for some inexplicable reason, ''Whose pen is this?'' The fact that Firth is — insert transatlantic sigh here — married (to Italian producer Livia Giuggioli) with children (two with Giuggioli and one with Meg Tilly, whom he met on the set of 1989's Valmont) doesn't give pause to the passionate.

Even before a big-screen adaptation was conceived, the obsessive heroine of Bridget Jones's Diary, the book, couldn't stop fantasizing about...Colin Firth. So when it came time to cast, it's no shock that ''Helen Fielding said if we didn't cast him, she would not let us have the rights,'' laughs Eric Fellner, who's produced four of Firth's flicks (both Bridgets, Love Actually, and next spring's Nanny McPhee). Ask Fellner what incites such fervor and he says: ''I truly don't know. I'm not a girl.'' Reason director Beeban Kidron takes a stab: ''He embodies a particular kind of Englishman — chivalrous, polite, articulate, clever — that is a fantasy. One night he came [to the set] as himself, Mr. Relaxed. I withered all over again. People think directors don't have those feelings, but I'm a girl.''

Before cult Colin kicked in, Firth was keeping busy in local stage productions, having horrified his professor parents by bailing on university for drama school. Milos Forman cast him as Valmont's lothario in 1988, but the film was eclipsed by the similar Dangerous Liaisons. ''People love it when they see it now,'' he says. ''At the time, it felt like walking into a room where someone had just told a joke and the laughter was dying down and you go in and tell the same joke.''

Even after Pride and Prejudice, only supporting roles in films like The English Patient and Shakespeare in Love came his way. But when Bridget made $71.5 million, he was christened the go-to guy for the hottie, haughty hero. Sometimes that worked out well (Girl With a Pearl Earring, Love Actually); sometimes it didn't (What a Girl Wants, Hope Springs). But with this year's Sundance entry Trauma, Firth ditched his comfort zone. ''Marc [Evans, the director] used that principle of putting Jimmy Stewart in Vertigo,'' Firth says. ''Take someone [the audience] is comfortable with and make them uncomfortable.''

Not that Firth is finished with good-guy gigs. It took several tries, but Emma Thompson persuaded him to play the aloof father in Nanny McPhee, a fairy tale she'd written about seven difficult kids and their caretaker. ''He kept saying 'I don't want to do any more nice people,''' recalls Thompson. Firth gave in, but only after ''lots of begging, lots of money, lots of favors,'' she says.

With Nanny and Truth both wrapped, Firth is officially unemployed. No concrete plans, other than picking at the guitar and revisiting unfinished short stories he's been writing (his debut, ''The Department of Nothing,'' is included in the Nick Hornby-edited collection Speaking With the Angel). He's still getting offered ''lots of bumbling romantic-comedy figures,'' and his name perennially pops up as a potential James Bond (''No one has approached me, but I would not be averse to it''). For sure, we won't be seeing Mark and Bridget: Smug Marrieds. ''At the moment, I can't think of anything I would be less attracted to.'' The one project tempting him is Brian De Palma's thriller Toyer, about a womanizer who also happens to be a lobotomizer. ''It's about as dark as it gets,'' he says. ''I met with [De Palma] and we both said, Let's do it when we are both ready.''

Whether he'll be tearing out hearts while tearing out brains remains to be seen. Firth, for one, is more than ready to put the swooning masses to the test. ''The idea of who I might be may always be skewed, but I'm just a guy,'' he says, exasperated. ''Mr. Darcy would never have become an actor.''

"Colin Firth: Acting like a man, fighting like a girl" by Nicki Gostin

Newsweek Entertainment,  November 22 issue

Q&A: Colin Firth

He's got the girl, but can he keep her? Does he want to? Colin Firth is back as the surly but smoldering Mark Darcy in "Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason." He spoke with NEWSWEEK's Nicki Gostin about the perils of being dreamy.

Can you believe you're in a sequel?

We're denying that. There was already a second book, so we're calling it a literary adaptation. We don't know what you're talking about.

You have a few scenes with Hugh Grant where you both sort of fight like girls.

Very disappointing to hear you say that. Years of military training went into what you see there. The truth is, we decided there was more comedy in being utterly real about how two middle-aged men in suits would fight. Very high in hormones, very low in ability.

I thought you were going to say you were accustomed to fighting like a girl.

That is what I'm saying. The last time I actually had a fight, I was 7 years old—and I did fight exactly like that.

What was the fight about?

I believe somebody pulled my ears because I kicked his ball away.

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.

Hugh Grant seems like he takes the p--s out of everyone. You included?

Relentlessly. It's an occupational hazard of working with him. I gave back a bit, though.

Did you pull his ears? 

There was some of that. If you get physical with him, his proclivity for whining is as present as his razor wit.

"Colin Firth’s Edge of Reason" by Louis B. Hobson.

Calgary Sun, 11 November 2004

You just gotta love those he said/she said Hollywood interviews. When Helen Fielding was writing Bridget Jones’s Diary, the most popular show on British TV was a miniseries based on Jane Austin’s classic Pride and Prejudice.

Colin Firth was playing the dashing Mark Darcy and it turned him into a sex symbol.

Fielding couldn’t resist naming the suave lawyer who becomes smitten with Bridget Mark Darcy.

Fast-forward to the casting of the Bridget Jones’s Diary film and the producers knew Firth needed to play Darcy.

By this time, the sequel Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason was in print. It contained a scene in which Bridget, now a TV personality, interviews Colin Firth about being one of Britain’s favourite actors.

”When the producers of Bridget Jones’s Diary called my agent to offer me the role of Mark Darcy he asked who would play Colin Firth if they ever made the sequel,“ recalls Firth. ”This whole Mark Darcy thing, in one form or another, has been going on for me since 1994. It’s definitely had its bizarre and surreal moments.“

One of those moments occurred when the sequel became a reality.

”There was never any question of Colin Firth appearing as a character in The Edge of Reason. Never. Not even for a moment,“ insisted Firth during a press conference.

That was hardly what the film’s director Beeban Kidron told the same journalists 15 minutes later. ”When we announced that we were doing Edge of Reason we were bombarded with letters and e-mails from fans wanting to know how we planned to cast the Colin Firth character.“

”We knew we couldn’t use Colin in the film playing both Darcy and himself. It would have stopped the emotional flow of the movie,“

”We considered other British celebrities … but none seemed to have the same kind of fan cache as Colin for Pride and Prejudice.“

The scene kept being rewritten until it cut.

That didn’t mean it was never filmed.

”We did film Bridget interviewing Colin as Colin Firth. We did it one night after everyone, but a skeleton film crew had left the set,“ explains Beeban. ”Colin went into his trailer, took off his make-up and changed into his street clothes. He came out and Renee, who remained in costume and character, interviewed him. It was never intended for use in the film, but it will appear on the DVD.“

Chalk up the little discrepancy to semantics and Firth’s misguided reliance on his director to keep their little secret until interviews for the DVD release next year.

One of the funnier scenes in Bridget Jones’s Diary saw Firth and Hugh Grant, whose womanizer Daniel Cleaver is also wooing Bridget, fight in the rain outside a pub.

Edge of Reason has a similar scene.

”I think the reason people like Hugh and my fights is that we look like a couple of yuppies going at each other and not a pair or Jackie Chan kung fu fighters.“

Firth confesses he’d be ”quite content to never do another Bridget Jones movie again. I’ve enjoyed myself, but I want Darcy to get out of my life.“

Still Firth is a realist: ”I could find myself in a third one just as I found myself in this sequel. I don’t think Renee, Hugh or I ever said yes to The Edge of Reason. It was more like getting your draft papers. This Bridget Jones thing is a phenomenon.“

 "Keeping up with the Joneses" by Thomas Leupp.

JoBlo.com, 10 November 2004

Everyone’s favorite neurotic British chick returns to theaters this Friday with BRIDGET JONES: THE EDGE OF REASON, the sequel to the highly successful 2001 film BRIDGET JONES' DIARY.

Reprising his role in the first film, Colin Firth stars as Bridget’s main love interest, the successful human rights lawyer Mark Darcy. Essentially, Darcy is every delusional woman’s wet dream. Not only is the guy handsome, wealthy and sophisticated, he’s completely devoted to Bridget. He doesn’t merely accept of all her flaws – her obsessions, her paranoia, her plus-size booty – he’s actually turned on by them. He’s the equivalent of the models in Maxim magazine who sing the praises of bald guys with beer guts. They’re not real, of course, but it’s nice to imagine that they might be.

Colin stopped by the Four Seasons in Beverly Hills a few weeks ago to talk about his experience playing Bridget Jones’s boyfriend.  Check it out.

Does Mark Darcy have a character arc? If not, what was the challenge of bringing something unique to this role?

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 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.

Were you ready to do this again?

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.

Did you rehearse the fight scene with Hugh Grant? How did you get it to look so realistic?

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.

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 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.

Would you be willing to alter your physical appearance/weight like Renee did for a role? Your reaction to her?

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 highwire 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.

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.

Any odd encounters with fans after doing the first Bridget Jones?

My life has been largely taken up with weird encounters. They're not particularly anecdote-worthy. They're just people very often who…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.

In the book, Bridget Jones actually interviews Colin Firth. Was this scene considered for the film? Would you play a dual role like that?

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." 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.

What was the experience of working on set with Renee?

She makes it terribly easy for everybody basically. 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 gave as much off camera as…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, after three weeks of night shoots, about five o'clock in the morning when she could have gone home, for a shot of 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.

Can you discuss what you and Kevin Bacon were doing?

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.

And how do you find Atom Egoyan, the director?

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. There's no -- 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. Adam 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.

The Cast & Crew of Bridget Jones (TEOR) by Chris Baldwin.

Comingsoon.net, 8 November 2004

Universal Pictures will release the anticipated sequel Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason, starring Renée Zellweger (Bridget Jones), Hugh Grant (Daniel Cleaver) and Colin Firth (Mark Darcy), in approximately 500 theaters on Friday, November 12. Based on Helen Fielding's bestseller that continues the trials and tribulations of the symbolic heroine of 'singletons' everywhere, the film will expand to 2500 theaters on November 19.

ComingSoon.net talked to the three stars, director Beeban Kidron, and producer Eric Fellner about the film and other projects.

Renée Zellweger on her reluctance to regain the weight for Bridget Jones:

I don't know where the thought came from that I had negative feelings about putting the weight back on…or that that was a negative experience the first time around. I knew it (the weight) was essential to taking the journey. I wanted to revisit this character in every respect. If you're not going to be her, then what's the point?

On Zellweger's hesitance to commit to the project:

It took a while to commit because the first film was something I enjoyed so greatly…I wanted to make sure this was a necessary film, not a followup film just because we could. I wanted to be certain that the motivation for the film came from a creative place. I wanted to be certain that the film would stand alone, regardless of the first picture. It had to be a necessary film, that this character had more stories to tell.

How does Zellweger view Bridget as a character? She's not the strong woman as is portrayed in contemporary programming like Sex and the City:

Bridget is so honest about how she feels. I don't think she's needy or desperate. In the film, we are privy to her inner thoughts, her deepest fears, her insecurities…she never fails to trudge forward to believe that she is gonna be fine. She always succeeds. In the first film we see a woman who is trying to find out who she ought to be and what she ought to have. And by the end of that film she finds out what she wants, and she finds love. In this film it's more specific. It's about not ruining the good parts of your life because of your fears.

Zellweger on doing her own stunts:

I did the slalom with two members of the Austrian ski team. The guy who filmed it was skiing backwards down a slope with a camera tied around his torso, looking down into the camera at me, depending on me to tell him when he was about to be killed! It was very exciting…it's amazing the insane things you'll do because you're running out of light.

Why has Zellweger decided to take a year off from acting?

I haven't committed to another film and I'm not aggressively seeking one. I need to take some time to be a girl. I want some experiences as a person not just a person emulating other people. I think it's essential when telling life's stories to have a little life to draw from in that department. I need to go and just be a girl for a while.

Hugh Grant on making the fight between him and Colin Firth's character look so realistic:

We wanted to it to be as cracked as possible. The key was to keep the stunt coordinator away. We wanted it to be two pathetic Englishmen, scared of each other throwing their handbags at each other, basically.

Grant seems to excell at playing these jerks. Does he enjoy playing them? And will he ever go back to the good guys he used to portray in earlier years?

It's sweet of you to say that. I quite like it. For years, everyone said you're Mr. Nice Guy, why don't you ever play someone nasty. So in fact, it's been a real trip for the real me to come out more (laughs). I don't have any particular burning desire to go back to being cuddly.

Grant on working with Renée:

First of all, I'd like to say that film acting is miserable. The most anyone needs is incredible willpower and strength of mind. She's definitely got it.

In the past Hugh has spoken about giving up acting, why does he continue to act if its something you call a "miserable experience?"

Well, first of all I haven't really done very much in the past three years. I've done a smallish part in Love, Actually and a smallish part in this film. That's just about it. I'm sure I've said it a thousand times, but I keep thinking I'm about to write this brilliant script…it never happens.

Why not go back to the stage?

While I do think that the act of being on stage is fun, I think for the audience, 9 times out of 10 it's absolutely purgatory watching a play. People keep going more I think out of duty than of pleasure.

Colin Firth on whether or not there really is an arc to Mark's character:

I don't know if there's an arc. The Darcy thing has been going on for so long for me, it feels like it started back in 1994 and this felt like another episode in the ongoing story of some guy's life. I suppose there's a shape to what he goes through…what happens after happily ever after? You see the bliss of their relationship, their irritations, and the patterns that repeat themselves from the first film"

So did Colin have any problem doing the character again?

I don't like saying again. The way we like to characterize is as an adaptation of a literary work. So it did have a right to exist, it wasn't just conjured up after the success of the first film. Having said that, yes we were all extremely cautious because we didn't want this to seem like an homage to something else and there are great dangers when the first film is very much loved…and I don't think anyone recoils every having said "Yes" to this job.

Firth on working with Renée:

Simply amazing. To work with someone so devoted to her craft is a rarity in this business. Renee works so hard that it brings the rest of us up too…it raises our game. What was most amazing to me was her off camera acting. Renée insisted upon being in costume, in character, and doing her best work off camera as well as on. In a late scene where we were doing pickups on my feet, Renée was there, acting along with me, and it was just my feet on screen.

What is Colin Firth working on now?

At the moment, I'm shooting a film called Where the Truth Lies, a film by Atom Egoyan, an extraordinary director. I play one half of a fictional legendary 50s variety show duo with Kevin Bacon. The film is a period piece, half shot in 1959 and half in 1974. Once this is finished, I'm not sure what I'll do next, I'll probably take some time to myself.

The fact is, after talking to her for 20 minutes, there was no need for me to argue for her to do anything. From day one she never had any problem putting on that weight, the only problems that we ever had were her being able to keep it on!

Kidron on Renée doing her own stunts:

I was all ready to shoot with two stunt doubles that we had cast to be Bridget in our skiing sequence. I got to the point of lighting them when I realized that it just wasn't going to work out. Renee has such a comic feel from her head to her toe that I knew that could never been recreated with another human being, so I asked her if she'd do one tiny stunt for me, and after that ended splendidly, it fell together right quick.

Kidron on whether or not there were any talks of shooting the sequence from the book where Bridget Jones interviews Colin Firth:

It was always a concern for us from day one, as the fans were very interested in it. We got bombarded with e-mails from Bridget fans asking us what we were going to do about it? We considered having Colin appear in dual roles, but we decided that would be a bit too postmodern for the picture. However, one night I decided to shoot an off the cuff interview of Colin Firth by Renée in character. While it never really fit into the film, I did save the footage and it will be on the DVD with a load of other fun stuff.

Producer Eric Fellner on what we can expect from the Special Edition release of the Bridget Jones' Diary DVD:

Well, it will be packed full of extras that's for sure. The original rough cut of the first film was over 3 and a half hours, so there's plenty of material for us to put on there.

Fellner on how Pride and Prejudice is coming together:

Well for starters, a film version of Pride and Prejudice hasn't been made since 1948. It seems sooner than that, but it hasn't been. There have been the television miniseries, but as far as feature films go, it's been a long time. We feel despite the affinity for the miniseries, our director (Joe Wright) has put a visual stamp on the film that will separate it from any other adaptation before it…it should be out in early spring.

There have been rumors about the Shaun of the Dead team reuniting for a sequel, can Fellner tell us anything about it?

Not much except it won't be a true sequel in the sense of the word. Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright are currently researching it…it'll be a police genre film with zombies. Other than that, there's not much I can say.

Colin Firth Talks About: Sequels, Playing Mark Darcy, and Working With Renee Zellweger by Rebecca Murray.

About.com, 16 October 2004

Renee Zellweger, Colin Firth and Hugh Grant return for "Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason," the sequel to the successful 2001 romantic comedy, "Bridget Jones's Diary." "The Edge of Reason" picks up six weeks after "Bridget Jones's Diary" ends, with Bridget (Zellweger) and Mark (Firth) in love and looking forward to a future together. But with Bridget's track record, this relationship can't just flow along smoothly.

Immediately after I put up an interview with Hugh Grant for "Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason," I received an angry email from a female who claimed Colin Firth is the reason to see "Bridget Jones." While I don't agree with Firth being the only reason to revisit "Bridget," I definitely agree Firth is a major selling point in getting females over the age of 18 to fill theater seats.

Does Darcy have a character arc? What was the challenge of bringing something unique to Darcy?

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 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.

Were you ready to do this again?

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.

Did you rehearse the fight scene? How did you get it to look so realistic?

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.

In the book, Bridget Jones interviews Colin Firth. Was this scene considered for the film? Would you play a dual role like that?

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 [back] 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 [me], 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, but…

Do you share any characteristics with Mark Darcy?

No. I can assure you I've never folded a pair of underpants in my life.

Would you be willing to alter your physical appearance/weight like Renee did for a role?

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 mindblowing. 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.

Wouldn't it depend on how many pounds you’re asked to gain?

Yes, it would. I think that the most spectacular 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. [They were] 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.

Or Tom Hanks going the opposite way...

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 that 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.

What was the experience like reuniting with Renee Zellweger?

She makes it terribly easy for everybody, basically, on two fronts. 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 sh*t, 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 [onscreen]. 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.

She] 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.

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.

Can you discuss the movie you and Kevin Bacon are doing?

This is a film [called] "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 is 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.

Are you the journalist?

The journalist is a woman. And I'm one of the two. Kevin Bacon and I play the act.

How did you like working with director Atom Egoyan?

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. Adam 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.

And you're also working with Emma Thompson on another movie?

Yes. It's something she wrote for children. It's called "Nanny McPhee." She's the nanny. She's in it as well.

So you're the father of the kids the nanny is taking care of?

That's right.

Is it a romance, even though it's for children?

It's [is],yeah. It's romantic [and] it's partly comedy.

Do you take part in the special effects?

No, I'm sort of out of that. I'm a makeup artist in a funeral parlor. I make up corpses.

Are you taking a break after that?

After the film? I don't know yet. It depends on how long the break will be. I might.

Would you work with Richard Curtis again?

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.

Trauma London press conference (Q&A) by Jonathan Harvey.

Phase 9 Movies, 24 August 2004

You have quite an interesting take on how it’s almost 180 degrees different from MY LITTLE EYE.

MARC EVANS: Yeah, as a director you think ‘what can I do that I haven’t done before?’ With My Little Eye, the whole basis of the experiment was to try to shoot the film as if from the point of view of all the webcams, to get a very objective view of the action. But TRAUMA in a sense was the opposite, looking at the world inside-out from the main character Ben’s point of view, which required a different approach in terms of camera, and was exciting for me.

Colin, was this a throw-back to the sort of films you were doing earlier in your career? Was it a nice surprise to find this script offered to you?

COLIN FIRTH: It was fantastic, really. And the fact that it was with Marc. We did something in not entirely different territory a few years ago. I felt very much at home with this sort of film – it was like coming in after a very long time out in territory which I wasn’t particularly comfortable in. It’s probably a terrible misfit with what people perceive, and what they’re comfortable with me doing, but those things don’t always go together. I felt this was very much where I belong.

What was the attraction of working with Marc?

COLIN FIRTH: It’s not that often that someone whose work you respond to is also a mate. We’ve talked a lot about the sort of films we’d like to see and make, and we were even in the process of developing an idea together when this came up. It’s a massive advantage, in a process as collaborative as this has to be, to be working with like-minded people or at least with people with whom there’s a mutual stimulation. I think many of the great directors have proved over decades that creating a family of people whose work they know and trust is productive. You can fire off each other’s ideas more easily. So we had all that. I knew it’d be a lot of fun.

MARC EVANS: Yeah, it was a lot of fun!

COLIN FIRTH: And I thought he could do things to make me look more interesting than I really am! So a lot to be gained, really.

Was the role all you expected?

COLIN FIRTH: That’s a hard question. There’s so much that happened along the way that I’ve probably forgotten what I expected. I didn’t have a very clear of who Ben was, and had to find it out along the way – I think it was a process of putting together pieces of myself and impressions I have of people who’ve been in situations like this. But it wasn’t really like what I expected.

MARC EVANS: It was quite an organic way of working. We were working with John Mathieson, who’s a fantastic cinematographer, and we were all free enough to generate ideas and see them through. It was very collaborative, and that’s why it was fun. If you’ve got an actor you get on with, you can get a fluidity going that you can’t get if you’re doing a scene with five-thousand orcs in it. That’s the joy of this kind of filmmaking, and the shoot was a very happy experience. Sometimes the films with heavy subjects can be more fun on set than the comedies. Comedy is quite a serious business, isn’t it?

COLIN FIRTH: Comedy’s really depressing, actually! I think it causes a huge amount of anxiety. It’s gone into popular mythology how miserable comedians so often are. I can’t explain it all, except it’s extremely difficult and getting it wrong is horrendous. You very rarely miss by a bit with comedy. If you miss you’ve fallen off the high-wire and you’re left looking like an idiot. Somehow you’ve got a lot more play with drama. All your angst can go into your work, and you go home with a smile on your face!

MARC EVANS: And the odd ant in your hair…

COLIN FIRTH: For weeks afterwards.

Speaking of insects, did the film address any of your phobias?

MARC EVANS: What struck more with me was the loneliness and grief, rather than the ants and the spiders. I don’t really want to put a spider in my mouth, but what I identified with most was the idea of how daunting coming to a big city like London is when you’re young and you come here for the first time, and how threatening it can feel.

COLIN FIRTH: I’ll take the ants and the spiders over the stalkers! But I have the usual healthy preference not to be covered in ants. What would frighten me most about the themes in this film, though, is the loneliness. That’s what I found horrific.

Haven’t you developed quite a good professional relationship with the spider, subsequently?

COLIN FIRTH: Yes! She and I got on very well, really. It’s a funny thing actually, as I met her again a year later on another film, called Nanny McPhee, where the spider makes an appearance for very different reasons. But she’s not in it actually – her sister is. But she was there in the same box. And we had to start all over again really. She didn’t remember who I was, and although I’m not arachnophobic, I’m not in a great hurry to pick them up. So while I’d got over it that one day, we weren’t able to pick up where we left off.

MARC EVANS: Yeah, there’s no special effects in this film. If you want ants, you’ve got to have ants. We had an ant specialist from Scotland who looked after our ants, and hoovered them up after every scene. He didn’t kill them, obviously!

COLIN FIRTH: I don’t know much about ants, but I know that however uncomfortable it was for me, it was worse for them.

Did you relate to the themes of obsession in the film?

COLIN FIRTH: Playing someone who’s the obsessor made me think about it differently. I think one of the things I found interesting was to understand that with a character as lonely as Ben – and it’s not unusual to be this lonely, particularly in a big city – he doesn’t have any intimacy in his life, which again isn’t that unusual. We’ve got a completely comprehensive media now, and if you’re very lonely you’re going to be vulnerable to that and the possibility of it being the only intimacy you’d ever get. There’s a bit of an irony that on the one side there’s the artist trying to purvey this to the camera, and some needy, unstable people on the receiving end. You want to reach people, and in some ways actors can be intimate in front of a camera in a way they never are at home, but it’s a bizarre relationship – a complete stranger can come up to you and feel as if you’ve promised them something, so there’s a danger of confusion. You come into people’s living rooms on the screen with very personal stuff, so in a way you can’t be surprised if people in the living rooms take it personally.

How intense was the experience?

COLIN FIRTH: 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.

MARC EVANS: Ben’s not unromantic, is he? He’s kind of like an artist with no art. A sensitive person who’s left alone.

COLIN FIRTH: Yeah, he’s a well-meaning guy. He wants to be sane, happy, and normal. But none of these things happen to him because he is a fantasist, and he’s failed to grow up, basically. It feels like the whole art school pilgrimage that so many people from the provinces (I think I’m loosely speaking one of them) experienced. My entire generation of friends went to art or drama school, wanting to be one of those interesting people who live an alternative life and break the rules, and not one of those boring run of the mill people. And either you’re creative and productive and become successful, or you grow up and get a proper job, or you just don’t and carry on in that student mentality. I think one of Ben’s problems, and why he’s left alone, is that all his friends have grown up, got married, or become famous artists or whatever, while he just didn’t. He’s the lonely soul living in a big city in a pigsty, which is almost becoming to a 19 year-old student, but it’s just really worrying when he’s 40-something. So I think all the elements are in the right place, but he’s lost his grip because there’s no one there anymore.

Why was Mena Suvari cast as Charlotte?

MARC EVANS: Just her quality, her otherness. We wanted this character to be a potential angel in Ben’s life and she’s a well-meaning neighbour, beautiful and different. Mena has all those things in spades, but she also has a dark streak and is interested in this kind of material. She’s great to work with. And as for the American thing, the part wasn’t written as an American, but when she said she was interested I saw no reason to make her English and in some ways it was an advantage, as she has to talk about crystals and alternative medicine, and in a funny sort of way that seems to come more easily from an American character than perhaps an English one. It seemed to sit very easily with her.

Colin just a quick question about BRIDGET JONES 2, was it more fun than the original?

COLIN Firth: Well I haven’t seen it! It was probably a bit more fun than the first one. This time we knew each other, and it was great to see everyone again and see them doing their thing again. And in fact it was seeing them do it that convinced me that it was ok to be doing this, as I was as sceptical as anyone else. It’s a very funny thing about doing something that’s perceived as a sequel – while it wasn’t happening, all of us were badgered endlessly, ‘What about Bridget Jones 2?’ And as soon as we announced we were doing it, it was ‘Are you sure that’s wise? I’m not sure anyone wants to see a sequel, you know?’ Then there’s a slight concern that everyone will hate you if you just give them the same film again, but they’ll also hate you if you don’t. So you’ve got to tread a line, and I really wasn’t sure until I saw them do it, and now I think it’ll be really great.

Finally, Marc, can you tell us a bit about your influences behind making this film?

MARC EVANS: The work of John Mathieson was one thing, especially on a film called LOVE AND THE DEVIL, a film about Francis Bacon, in which I loved the camera work, so a big influence was what John brought to the table. He’s agile with a camera and knows that you can create simple things well with a lens. We also tried to find locations for an alternative, gothic London, not ‘Swinging’ London or red buses going past Buckingham Palace, but rather the London people sometimes first encounter, when they’re living in a dodgy flat and trying to make it in the world. And we also had an idea of trying to make Ben’s world quite institutionalised, so we don’t show much of the outside world. And other influences were films like that, so things like DON’T LOOK NOW, the Japanese film DARK WATER, and Polanski’s REPULSION. I really like films which manage to make the familiar seem sinister.

"Success creates a current and you can get swept along with it" 

by Anwar Brett.

BBC Movies

Since emerging, dripping wet, as Mr Darcy in the 1995 BBC adaptation of Pride And Prejudice, Colin Firth has been much in demand for romantic dramas and comedies. His role in Bridget Jones's Diary was the ultimate in-joke, as his character was inspired by his earlier Austen role. But now the 44-year-old Englishman shows signs of breaking free from the limitations of such unimaginative casting, with recent roles in Girl With A Pearl Earring, award-winning TV drama Conspiracy, and Brit psychological thriller Trauma.

What we should do is shut up about that and try and play to our strengths. It's not perceived as a shabby industry outside the UK at all. People very often approach you and say they wish they were British because we make such good stuff.

Is the old adage about comedy being harder than drama true?

Light stuff is definitely harder. That's why people need to give someone like Hugh Grant a few more points for his acting skills, because, of my generation, I think he is the master of something that very few people can do at all. Certainly all that heavy stuff is much easier for an actor.

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.

The difficulty for an actor is that success can begin to limit the range of things you're offered. Would you say that was true?

Success creates a current and you can get swept along with it, certainly. At the same time, if you do want to take control over your career you have to resist certain things that are offered. I've never been that staunch in refusing to do something because it has a similarity to what I did before. I wanted to do the work on its own merits, but making Trauma has intoxicated me enough to want to go down a different route now.

"Mr. Darcy trades in horse for a motorcycle" by Bonnie Churchill.

csmonitor.com, 4 April 2004

British actor Colin Firth is perhaps best loved for his roles as Mr. Darcy - in "Bridget Jones's Diary" and the BBC adaptation of Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice."

He loses the name (and the period clothes) in "What a Girl Wants" and trades in his horse for a motorcycle.

"I had one lesson on the motorbike, and thought that was good enough," Firth says of the scene where he whisks his daughter (played by Amanda Bynes) away on a bike.

"When the time came, several weeks had elapsed. I rode the bike for a few minutes feeling rather brilliant. There was this rather steep hill I had to go up. I did it thinking there wasn't that much to it, and promptly ran into a ditch and fell off."

Based on the 1958 movie, "The Reluctant Debutante," with Rex Harrison and Sandra Dee, the comedy tells the story of an American teenager (Amanda Bynes) raised in New York who travels to London to find her British father.

"I enjoyed it because I play a father ... and also, I didn't have to leave England," says Mr. Firth, who plays Lord Henry Dashwood. "I was home each night with my wife and young son."

Moviegoers will be seeing a lot of Firth this year. In addition to "What a Girl Wants," he has three movies: "Hope Springs" with Minnie Driver; "Love Actually" with Hugh Grant and Emma Thompson; and "Girl With a Pearl Earring" with Tom Wilkinson and Scarlett Johansson.

For "What a Girl Wants," director Dennie Gordon was so set on Firth portraying Dashwood that she personally financed her trip to London to convince him.

"He was my first and only choice for the part," Ms. Gordon explains. "Colin has depth and restraint, yet just the right amount of sexiness that the role required."

Born in Grayshot, Hampshire, in England, Firth and his family didn't settle in one place for too long, traveling from Nigeria to St. Louis.

His professional career got kickstarted while he was still studying acting. "When I went to drama school and did 'Hamlet' [in 1982]; that started everything for me. That same year, I did 'Another Country,' first on the stage and then in the film. It was an absolutely dizzying experience," he says.

While he says that the 1995 "Pride and Prejudice" was obviously important to his career, for him, the TV role that most resonates is the British soldier he played in the 1989 drama "Tumbledown."

"I played an actual person, who was my age, and was injured in the Falkland [Islands] War," he explains. "I came to know this chap very closely. He was on the set every day, and we became twins in a way. It's probably the most lasting impression that has stayed with me."

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."

"Colin Firth Interview"

Cinemas online, spring 2004

It's a glorious Spring morning in London and all heads turn - especially those of the women - as Colin Firth walks through the lobby of a posh hotel. It's easy to see why. At 43, the 6- foot 1-inch hunky English star of 'Bridget Jones Diary' and 'Pride and Prejudice' is handsome and charismatic -and instantly recognizable, even though today he's dressed in a simple black suit instead of a wet, frilly shirt over breeches.
 
The irony is that, even though he's here to promote his new film, the romantic comedy 'What A Girl Wants,' the sexy figure of Darcy is still stalking him, for Colin stars as Lord Henry Dashwood, a somewhat stuffy aristocrat. The big difference is that Henry has a secret wild past. And a secret daughter, Daphne (Amanda Bynes), an American teenager who yearns to meet the father she's never known - a man her bohemian mother (Kelly Preston) considers to be the great love of her life.
 
Here Colin talks about his new film, what's going on with Bridget Jones, weight issues and body images, motorbikes and mid- life crises, and his Sex Symbol status.

Did they have to bend your arm a little to do this film?

A little. It's set in a world that really doesn't exist, and it's probably not the kind of film I'd ever go to, but I was completely charmed by it, and any resistance I had to playing Lord Henry quickly evaporated once I met Dennie. I've played stuffed shirts before, but she's very persuasive, and she broke through my English reserve and quieter way of doing things right away. And then it also occurred to me that I'd never made a film I could take my own kids to, so I thought, why not? I've done romantic comedy before, but not for kids. Let's face it, Bridget Jones talks about anal sex. So it just seemed like a great project and so completely harmless that I felt any resistance I had to it was probably more to do with snobbery than anything else.

Any surprises playing Lord Henry?

The biggest one was realizing I'm now old enough to play the elder statesman to this beautiful teenage girl who's my daughter. That was a bit of a shock, and I have to say I'm not that comfortable with it. I'd rather have eased into it, playing dad to a baby, and then a five year old and so on. But I did get to express my own inner teenager in the scenes where I ride a motorcycle and play air guitar in front of a mirror. This is the first film I've done where I could get on a motorbike and like every teenage boy, I had a fantasy of playing in a rock 'n' roll band, so it didn't take much to bring all that back. I spent ten years of my youth like that.

What about working with Amanda?

I was incredibly impressed with her. She's right on the cusp of a very successful adult career, and she's very talented and mature and very experienced. That was the other shock, that even though she's so young, she's probably been on as many movie sets as I have in my 20 years in the business. It suddenly made me feel quite old.

This film parallels your own life in that you also have a son who's American and lives in L.A. with his mother (actress Meg Tilly). Could you relate?

Very much so. I think any parent will identify with this story, and I definitely did. I see my son quite a lot, but he doesn't live here, so it's a bit of the same feeling.

Henry is another 'strong, silent' type. Do you worry about being typecast?

I do and now I'm very careful about playing more of the strong, silent types. For a start, they can be very tedious - both to play and watch. It's great to do it every so often, like with Henry in this film, mixed up with other roles, but I think that losers are more interesting to play. The difficulty in failure and struggle and instability - all that conflict is far more interesting to me as an actor and as a person.

What was it like working with Kelly Preston?

I wish we'd had more scenes together because she was so much fun to be around. I'm always a little cautious when I have to work with a Hollywood actor because from where I stand, Hollywood always seems like Mt. Olympus, and then she's married to John Travolta, one of the most famous people in the world. So you think, are they going to be aloof and different from me? But instead I met this stunningly beautiful, extremely warm and charming and entirely professional person. She was absolutely dazzling.

Did you get to meet John Travolta?

Sadly he didn't show up. I wanted to meet him but he was off flying jumbos at the time.

A sequel to Bridget Jones seems very much on the cards, have you seen a script yet? 

Not yet, but there's been another recent flurry of activity, and a new deadline to deliver the script but I honestly don't know what the situation is. We'll all have a look at it but they won't make me do it if the script sucks. I think I have to treat it like any other script, because there's nothing especially appealing about doing a sequel and revisitng the role.

Even though so many people loved the first one?

Yes, and that can be the reason not to do a sequel, if it's not up to scratch. So, you've had a big success, we all loved it, so leave well alone and don't try to recapture the magic. But if the new script strikes out into new territory and is really fresh, then I'm more interested.

Do you want to play Darcy again?

Again, it depends entirely on the script. So far the pitch I'm getting on the new one is very encouraging. There are new characters and new areas to explore, and obviously it'll be based on the book. So instead of an unlikely couple finding each other, it'll be about their difficult relationship which goes under and then they have to rediscover each other. 

Isn't it like a bizarre hall of mirrors, reading about yourself playing Darcy and then actually playing yourself?

That's exactly how it is. It's so much so that I can't even trace all the little kinks in it. There are so many levels of irony. It got to the point where in the second book there's this dreadful interview with Bridget Jones and me, and my poor mother thought it was a real interview. (Laughs) She even called me up to warn me.

Is Darcy a fantasy figure for women, or do men like that really exist?

He's a total fantasy. If you went to a party and met a guy who's really like Darcy, you'd think he was completely ridiculous - a poseur. No one acts like that, except maybe an extremely self- conscious high school kid coming dressed in black.

Are you like the strong silent type in real life or a bit of a nerd?

Definitely a nerd! I'm a fairly dorky sort of person, If I went around trying to smoulder at people in real life they'd just laugh at me. That sort of thing only works in a drama.

It's been said you have already persuaded Renee Zellweger to pile on the pounds for a follow up. What exactly have you said to her about it?

(Laughs) I haven't said anything because it's not even a reality yet. And I don't have to tell Renee anything about playing Bridget Jones. One of the most bizarre spectacles on the first film was watching Renee - this young, very attractive Hollywood star - downing pint after pint of Guinness. It's not something you see very often. There are certain sorts of people who either don't care, or who like Bridget Jones will be mortified the next morning, but Renee was doing it aggressively, with gusto. And then Hugh and I, rather preciously, were desperately trying to reclaim our boyish figures at the age of 40.

What do you think of Renee's newfound mega-stardom?

It didn't come as any surprise to me, to be honest. Just from the moment I saw her in 'Jerry McGuire' I thought, she's got such an ability and is so spontaneous and real. She just jumps out from all the rest. And there's nobody even remotely similar to her in what she does. She's just so versatile, from Jerry McGuire to Bridget Jones to Nurse Betty to Chicago. She's an amazing talent, the real deal.

Do you ever feel envious of her success?

God no! Some actors' success is a surprise to me, and you do feel it's a bit like they won the lottery and just got lucky, but not hers. She deserves it all.

Renee complained after doing Bridget Jones about all the pressure on her to immediately lose the weight. What do you think of the Hollywood fashion for skinny "lollipop' women?

There's definitely a double standard I think when it comes to that, although there are pressure on men too. If you're known as 'Body Beautiful' you start to get penalized if you go to seed. But I imagine the pressures on women are so much worse and you only have to look at them. There are so many women in Hollywood who are staying thinner than can possibly be healthy. So the pressure must be overwhelming. And you often don't even know how thin these girls have got when you see them on screen, because the camera doesn't really show you the reality. It does add a few pounds and you look bigger on screen. But then when you go to an awards ceremony and you see what the girls really look like in the flesh, it's quite scary. You see all these beautiful girls who must be starving themselves. They have to be.

As a man, do you find that look attractive?

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.

You've talked about how much sexier Renee was the size she was in Bridget Jones. Will you persuade her to pile on the pounds again?

I think she looks pretty amazing whatever size she is, and I don't actually know what size she is now as I haven't seen her since the film. But she didn't look fat to me as Bridget - not at all. I thought she looked lovely, and it didn't even occur to me she was in any way overweight. And I don't think Bridget Jones is supposed to be fat. Part of the point is, how many women have you met who don't think they're fat? Most women seem to feel their bums are too big or their thighs or whatever. They're very harsh on themselves in one way or another, and usually make some judgment about their bodies that is certainly lost on me. So that's one of the ironies of it all. There's all this self- torture going on when it's not necessary. People's sense of what's attractive is not really based on that.

What would it take you to move to Hollywood full-time?

Unless something radical and unforeseeable happened, I'd never move there - but not because I don't like it. Just because I thrive on London. I love the city and it gives me so much stimulation, so a great deal would have to change in my life. I do like LA and I have a lot of friends there, but I'm so rooted here in London.

Has the "luvvie" tag attached to many British stars ever held you back from getting roles in Hollywood? 

I don't think so. I think if you're right for the role, they'll cast you. Look at how many Brits are nominated at the Oscars every year. Hollywood's always been full of Brits.

How do you feel about becoming this big sex symbol? Do you still get women throwing themselves at you?

It all began with 'Pride and Prejudice,' and then went right over the top after 'Bridget Jones' came out, and it's utterly bizarre. Women shout at me on the street, and while I have no objection to it and it's not bizarre in a bad way, it is very peculiar. I think it would have misdirected me for life if it had happened on my first job when I was 23. I'd have had a very distorted image of who I was and what my power as an actor was, and have spent the rest of my life wondering why the hell it wasn't happening anymore. So luckily it came at the right point. I don't really understand it, but it's better than being ignored.

What's the one thing you have done in your life that goes against your image as the typical English gent?

Well, on this film I really got into riding the motorbike. It was my first time on a serious bike, and if you put a man my age on one, you're asking for a lot of trouble, because mid-life crisis beckons. In fact, I had serious, serious thoughts about getting bikes, and by the time we finished I was seriously thinking about buying not just one but a whole garageful of them. But the various disasters I had on the bike taught me that as the father of a young child, it'd be pretty irresponsible of me. So I sobered up. And they're not going to ever cast me in the Steve McQueen role in 'The Great Escape' or in The Jimmy Page Story, so this was probably as close as I'll ever get to those fantasies.

"Interview: Colin Firth" by Fred Topel

CHUD.com, 11 March 2004

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: 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: 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 discussin