"Interviews with Colin Firth 2006 archive"

"Colin comes home"

Total TV Guide, 16-22 December 2006

Click image to enlarge

With thanks to an English Fan

When fictional drama Cathy Come Home was first shown on British TV in 1966, it was such a realistic look at the issue of homelessness that many viewers mistook it for a documentary. Forty years on, a new one-off drama about social exclusion, Born Equal, hits our screens.

And while it’s unlikely to have the same shock value as Ken Loach’s original film—viewers are used to seeing gritty social dramas— it promises to be just as bleak and thought-provoking.

Boasting an all-star cast, Born Equal interweaves the stories of several characters whose paths collide in and around a London B&B that houses the homeless and dispossessed. The story was given an even rougher edge by writer and director Dominic Savage’s style of letting his cast improvise much of the story themselves at the start.

”I’d never done anything like this before, where there’s absolutely no dialogue to begin with,“ says Colin Firth, 46, who plays Mark, a wealthy but disillusioned City worker. ”You just jump in cold, which is a bizarre feeling. You’re flying by the seat of your pants all the time.“

Despite money, status and beautiful, pregnant wife Laura (Emilia Fox), Mark is dissatisfied with his life and finds himself moved to do something more, with devastating consequences.

”Mark works in a world of big business, a world of self-interest, and it bothers him, and for one reason or another he ends up working with homeless people,“ says Colin, who made his name as the moody Mr Darcy in the 1995 TV version of Pride And Prejudice and whose recent work has been on the big screen in films such as Bridget Jones’s Diary, Love Actually and Girl With A Pearl Earring.

”Perhaps some of what he goes through is a product of a mid-life crisis, problems with his marriage or his wanting to run away from feeling trapped.“

But things spiral out of control when he becomes involved with a teenage runaway, Zoë (Nichola Burley), who begins to rely on him.

”Mark is a sympathetic character at times, but there are other times when his behaviour makes it impossible to feel that about him. In trying to assuage his guilt, he ends of hurting a lot of people,“ explains Colin, who lives in London with his Italian TV producer wife Livia and their two sons Luca, five and Mateo, three.

The actor feels that his character is not so far removed from those he helps.

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

"Nowhere Like Home"

Radio Times UK, 16-22 December 2006

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Born Equal offered Firth the further challenge of shooting on the streets of London. At one point this involved a fuIl scale row with Nichola Burley's character.

"There was no closed set," he explains. "It was just off Marylebone High Street. We just had to do it and b****r off before the neighbours got cross."

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

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

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

Anne_Marie Duff

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dominic Savage

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Born Equal?" by Peter John Meiklem

Big Issue Scotland, 30 November 2006

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

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

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

Firth, Carlyle and Duff will be staring in Born Equal, a one-off television drama about the occupants of a homeless hostel. Directed by the acclaimed Dominic Savage (Love and Hate, Out of Control) the film has been commissioned to mark the 40th anniversary of ground-breaking docudrama Cathy Come Home, the film that shocked 1960s Britain into confronting the grim reality of homelessness and led to the formation of housing and homelessness charity Shelter.

Firth is looking forward to raising some eyebrows. "If the audience tuning in to see me are expecting a romantic comedy then that would be great," he says. "I think all the cast would be thrilled by that kind of surprise. Personally, I don't want to be condemned to romantic comedies for the rest of my career. I like participating in something that goes into different territory."

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

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

When it comes to people living on the streets, part of the problem is that it's generalised in people's minds. The suspicion and fear and hatred can only be preserved if they don't know any individuals in that position.

"People stop hating a social group when they make contact."

Public outcry

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

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

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

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

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

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

Falling from grace

Born Equal's plot - weaving in asylum seekers, battered mothers and recently released prisoners, all sectors of the population routinely in danger of becoming homeless - shows there are as many ways to "fall from grace" as there are people in the world. Homelessness has never been simply about bricks and mortar, as the old soundbite goes. Savage hopes his work will encourage his audience to think a little bit harder about their own lives.

"Anyone with any sense realises that all our lives are fragile and it doesn't take much for us to upset that balance and for us to be left in a desperate situation," Savage says. "That's what stirred me to make it.

"We live in our own bubbles. We just think everything's alright and we get locked into our own world. Lets break out of those bubbles and see what happens when people do. But, of course, there are no easy answers." Encouraging an audience to break out of their bubble is no mean feat, and Savage says he is glad to have his "extremely gifted" big name cast. He's hoping the draw of celebrity will bring an unexpected audience to his film where, the "Trojan horse" will both shock, surprise and fascinate.

"When you make something as dark as this then it's a difficult, emotional and harrowing journey. If you want to get an audience for this sort of thing you want to make it as attractive as possible to people. Those actors are very fine and talented and that was the reason for choosing them. But they are also the actors that people want to see.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A call for motivation

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

Although unsure of the reaction Born Equal will provoke and - like the rest of the cast and the director - unhappy with it being measured against Cathy Come Home, Duff isn't completely despondent. She says there is no point in giving in.

"You just hope that a project like this will motivate somebody, somewhere, who has any kind of power to address the housing situation. It's a problem people need to know more about because if they can't see it then it doesn't affect them. The audience, because of the actors that are involved, will think 'oooh, I'll watch that because so-and-so's involved'.

"I'm hoping we'll get an audience you wouldn't expect."

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

"Colin Firth plays Mark in Born Equal"

BBC, 15 November 2006

"The premise was that here is a man who goes through some change of outlook. He works in the world of big business, a world of self-interest, and it bothers him and for one reason or another he gets involved in working with homeless people.

"But it gets a bit too much for him – things happen to him that make it difficult for him to be too idealistic about it," explains the actor.

"I would hesitate to be simple about what's driving Mark because the way we worked on this film threw so many contradictory things at you about motives.

"My feeling was that I love seeing grey areas. I think most actors like to inhabit the grey areas because they're what we inhabit anyway, really – where the writer leaves off, we supply the rest."

Firth, who lives in London with his Italian wife, TV producer Livia Giuggiolo, and their two young sons, describes the process of making Born Equal as "extraordinary".

"I'd never done anything like this before, where there's absolutely no dialogue to begin with. You just jump in cold, which is a bizarre feeling, and you're flying by the seat of your pants all the time. You don't know how a scene is going to work out until it ends.

"What really sets it apart is the use of complete and utter randomness. One minute your attempt is catastrophic, the next something really illuminating comes out.

"You're discovering and creating as you go along and you often surprise yourself – and so do the other actors."

Though the temptation was great, he made a decision early on not to turn up for work with reams of notes about his character and deliberately shied away from coming up with lines unless a camera was rolling nearby.

"I decided that if it's going to be random, then I'd take it all the way and let it be really precarious. I really enjoyed allowing it to be absolutely unpredictable and I think I'd have compromised that if I'd done my homework.

"I was much more interested in what came out of my mouth in front of a camera than if I'd thought it up the night before in my bedroom.

"I'm someone who has a terrible habit of being punctilious in the way I speak and I think, if the

"Colin Firth as Mark in Born Equal"

Colin Firth was constantly caught on the hop when he played City worker Mark in Dominic Savage's powerful new drama, Born Equal. With no lines, no rehearsals and sometimes no idea of quite where he'd be filming each day, the experience proved to be an utterly exhilarating ride for this Hollywood star.

A multi-stranded film, Born Equal weaves together the stories of several disparate characters living in and around a B&B providing temporary housing for the homeless in London.

Firth plays a wealthy, forty-something hedge fund manager, whose conscience and guilt about his luxurious lifestyle prompt him to try to help those less fortunate.

Mark has money, status and a beautiful home, and his wife (played by Emilia Fox) is pregnant with their first child. But all he sees around him are people who have none of those things.

He is moved to do something and volunteers to work on the streets with homeless people, alongside a charity outreach worker (played by Julia Davis).

But Mark's actions ultimately have devastating consequences for both himself and others.

Firth (46), who became an instant household name a decade ago when he smouldered on screen as Mr Darcy in the BBC's Pride And Prejudice, jumped at the chance to play such a complex character – not least because director ominic Savage offered him the opportunity to create the role from scratch for the fully improvised drama.

camera's rolling and you've got a lot more pressure, a more truthful version will come."

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

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

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

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

Indeed, things begin to spiral out of Mark's control when he tries to help Zoë (played by Nichola Burley), a desperate, teenage runaway who has chosen to sleep on the streets rather than return home to her violent and abusive stepfather.

At first glance, Mark and Zoë seem worlds apart but, says Firth, take a closer look and it becomes clear that they do have something in common.

"I don't think it's just about middle-class versus sleeping rough. Mark is just as alienated from his life in his own bedroom as he is from life in some underpass," he points out.

"However polarised Mark and Zoë's lives are, however different their experiences are, one thing they've both got in common is that they're both fugitives from something they find unbearable.

"In Zoë's case, it's far more immediate and understandable in that it's an abusive family, alcoholism and all the things that are easy to understand are a problem. In Mark's case, it's much less defined – but he doesn't want to go home either."

Firth, who was born in Hampshire but grew up in Winchester and Nigeria, where his father worked as a teacher, caught the acting bug as a teenager.

After training at the Drama Centre in London, he made his stage debut in 1981 in the lead role of the award-winning West End production of Another Country – a role he reprised for his first film appearance three years later.

In 1989 he won acclaim for his roles in Milos Forman's film Valmont and the gripping Falklands War TV drama Tumbledown, before Pride And Prejudice shot him to stardom and international heart-throb status in 1995.

He has since starred in big-screen hits including The English Patient, Fever Pitch, Shakespeare In Love, Bridget Jones's Diary and its sequel, The Edge Of Reason, Love Actually and Nanny McPhee, and will be seen next year in the Roman epic The Last Legion, alongside Sir Ben Kingsley.

But Born Equal has perhaps posed the most challenges for the versatile actor. He remains non-committal, for example, on the question of whether viewers will feel sympathy for Mark.

"He is sympathetic at moments but there are other times in the film when his behaviour is such that it's impossible to feel that.

"In trying to heal the wound or assuage his guilt or whatever, he ends up hurting a lot of people, almost everybody around him, in fact.

"In the context of a film that portrays problems like homelessness – things everyone agrees are real problems – it is hard to show someone struggling with things that many people would not consider problems.

"Now that will never change; you'll never convince some people that there can be problems if you're well-fed and wealthy.

"So in some ways I think it might be inappropriate to try to draw sympathy for Mark. But, whether you sympathise with him or not, it is how it is. People in comfort suffer, too – they just do. It's a plain fact. They can suffer very badly and they can suffer to the point that they destroy themselves.

"Choosing to suffer is a very complicated, weird thing. I think it's fantastic that Dominic's carved out a space for a glimpse of that in a story that is inherently about a much more palpable kind of misery."

Despite the film's clear social messages, Firth claims that he had no agenda when he embarked upon the project.

"I had absolutely none whatsoever," he says simply.

"I just found it a fascinating way of working and thought all sorts of things might get thrown up, and it was exactly what I hoped it would be.

"I wouldn't have risked doing this sort of stuff if I didn't know that Dominic could pull it off. This convention is a very dangerous one to work in and I think things could fall apart very easily. But I think he pulls it off with spectacular success."

"Colin's sleazy side" by Anita Singh

The Mercury Australia, 11 May 2006

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

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

And Firth is right in the middle of them.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oh, Mr Darcy, by Mary Colbert

The Sydney Morning Herald, 5 May 2006

Colin Firth gets rumpy pumpy with Kevin Bacon and a maid.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Not necessarily," Firth says.

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

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

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

Amend that to singing for one.

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

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

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

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

Firth adds that depression is one of the least socially permissible things for human beings. "It is still considered very antisocial and shameful.

It used to be sex. But that's still a very private matter. Loneliness, fear and insecurity are much more so."

"At the movies: Where The Truth Lies"

ABC Australia, 3 May 2006

David Stratton speaks with Director, Atom Egoyan and Actors, Colin Firth, Kevin Bacon and Rachel Blanchard.

ATOM EGOYAN: I think that there's this running theme in the film - it's almost a Freudian concept of ego and id. In a way the partnership is based around this idea that one of the...as many comedic duos were and probably still are - that somebody is very impulsive, um, erratic, uncontrollable and the other side would be this person who will civilise them, will be like the superego. So Colin plays this civilising sort of figure who tries to keep Kevin tame - Kevin, who's like a wild card. But in real life it's the other way round. Kevin's character is super controlling, and as we find out, Colin has this very dark side which has to be very managed. And so all the characters flip in the film at some point. None of them are what they seem to be.

"At The Movies" interviews Atom Egoyan, Kevin Bacon and Colin Firth about "Where The Truth Lies" High

"At The Movies" interviews Atom Egoyan, Kevin Bacon and Colin Firth about "Where The Truth Lies" Low

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

DAVID: She was a fascinating character because when you meet her mother especially you can see the background she's come from, which is not what you might expect.

RACHEL BLANCHARD: No, but I think that's true in a lot of cases. I think in movies in general, or a lot of movies, especially Hollywood movies, girls who come from that background are nice girls and they're sweet, innocent, the girls you marry. But people are never that simple. I think everybody...most people have a secret or something they're ashamed of or behave in a way that would surprise themselves. I think that's just human, so that's what I found interesting.

KEVIN BACON: The last two characters that I had done in MYSTIC RIVER and THE WOODSMAN were very internalised, kind of men of few words, you know? And Lanny is kind of the opposite, you know? He's a showman. He's got a lot of razzamatazz in the way that he speaks in his voiceover, you know? That whole entertainer kind of thing to me was an interesting thing to try to tap into. The jumping back and forth between the '50s and the '70s was something that took a certain amount of attention, because we didn't shoot all the '50s stuff first and then all the '70s - you had to go back and forth. And you have to really make sure that you've figured out who the guy is when he's in his 20s and then who he is 15 years later in life, and that they really do make sense together, that they really, that it really is believable.

"A scandal myself "

Vanity Fair Italy, 20 April 2006

This Italian interview is translated to English by Margo.

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

Hardly ever happens to find a stranger who – about Italy- has something else to say besides ”How much I love spaghetti“. On the contrary, Colin Firth is acquainted with (and fully appreciates) Giuseppe Piccioni’s movies and manages to read the daily press, sensing not only certain political irregularities of our country, but the great difference between the ”oral“ Italian language and that of the ”press language“, as well. He has try to read the ”Oceano mare“ (sea ocean) by Alessandro Baricco. What caused him to do it? Love! Just like it happened in his character at the film ”Love actually“- the guy that learned Portuguese because he fell in love with a girl from that country.

In real life, Colin fell in love with a brunette and very pretty Italian lady, the producer Livia Giuggioli, to whom has been married since eight years and have two sons, Luca 4 and Matteo 2 ( he has also a third son, Will 15, from an affair with the actress Meg Tilly). People around him say that he speaks Italian much better than he is willing to admit, but we’re getting the interview in English, with only some small verbal incursions like ”rincoglionito“ (stupid) because, as Colin says, there is no such an equivalent in his own language.

We are in Rome, at the bar of ”Hotel de Russie“, Colin arrives punctually, dressed in jeans and blue jacket. In flesh and blood he’s more sexy and tall than in cinema. He has a fine sense of irony, which emerges, in surprise, during the most serious discussions. He makes me think of those unknown schoolmates who, years afterwards, reveal to be genious.

He’s starring in two movies, released right now at the theaters, very much unlike: The fairytale for children Nanny Mc Phee (already released) and the morbid, exciting nightmare for adults ”Where The Truth Lies“ of Atom Egoyan, to be released in theaters this weekend. For those who used to affection Bridget Jones’s Mark Darcy, sane sample of clumsy charm, ”Where The Truth Lies“ could be a shock. At least at the scene of bisex orgy, where Colin attacks Kevin Bacon.

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

How difficult is making a sex scene, mostly gay, while you are not a gay?

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

In the homonymous book of ”Where the Truth Lies“ (by Rupert Holmes) there is a certain phrase: ”You never bite the hand that applauses you“ . It defines the ambiguous of fame: You desire it, but there are consequences following. What’s your own relation with celebrity?

It is quite tranquil, cause my career went ahead step by step, with moments of happiness and others of disillusion. In general, I believe there is hardly an actor in the whole world, who can not walk out there in Via del Corso without being disturbed.

Depend on the way you treat it. Of course, if someone walks around accompanied with body guards, wearing a pair of sunglasses, ready to be photographed…….

Don’t your ever been recognized?

Yes, indeed. In the supermarket, actually. Well, there is always someone who’s spying on you, and grabs the mobile phone to tell friends what’s in my handcart. I swear it has happened!

And what was in there?

I don’t remember. Probably toilet tissue! Great scoop, indeed!

The movie (WTTL) is also about Telethon and actors making beneficences. In real life, you’re involved in various initiatives about Africa, about fair and stable trade, about civil rights. There are so many of you, the actors, doing that. Why?

It’s true, from an external point of view, it looks like a fashion. And it is also true that there is an element of hypocrisy in the fact that privileged people like we are, getting on the tribune to say what one should or should not do. I got involved because I had enough of reading the newspapers and do nothing but shaking my head. Then, if you really believe in this, there is no way back. Humanitarian associations that are acquainted to you are calling or help and you certainly can’t say ”I’m sorry, this week I don’t feel like helping with global famine, I have some other things to do.“

Bob Gedolf has actually stop performing as a musician in order to dedicate himself in humanitarian affairs. Could you do something like that?

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

What happens, in particular, when a person like you goes to Africa?

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

Excuse me for saying that, but you seem to me too articulate to be an actor.

Thank you for the praise! Though you would be amazed to find out just how many intelligent actors are there.

And how come people think it’s the other way ‘round?

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

Could you explain it to me?

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

"Becoming a dad made a man of me" by Gabrielle Donelly.

The heart-throb star of Bridget Jones's Diary reveals how fatherhood forced him to grow up.

Reveal UK, 4-10 March 2006

On the screen, he's every woman's romantic fantasy - the tall, handsome hero who makes everything all right in the end.

But, in real life, Colin Firth admits that it has taken him a considerable part of his 45 years to even become a proper adult.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He says:"I have had to learn to care about the real, practical world because it's the one I share with my children.

Much as I'd like to, I just can't take them into my imaginative world with me. They don't belong there, and it doesn't help them."

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

The Firths must juggle their lives skilfully to keep a balance of living together in London, visiting Livia's family in Italy whenever they are able to, and travelling wherever Colin happens to be making a film. The family has just returned from Slovakia, where Colin was filming his role as Aurelius in The Last Legion.

It's an adventure story set at the demise of the Roman Empire. Colin approvingly describes it as "a time of sex and violence from the beginning to the end!".

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

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

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

Interview thanks to Creamie

"Seriously Sexy" by Gini Brenner.

SKIP Magazine Austria, February edition

Interview thanks to Christina

Translation German to English thanks to Anja

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

"The worst guys get the best women” – one of the eternally valid movie laws. Always but then when Colin Firth takes part in the movie. No other is so seductively reliable: In the face of his sensational sex appeal in both Bridget Jones movies even a experienced misbehaved charm-terrorist like Hugh Grant had to surrender.

But also during the exclusive interview in the luxurious Soho Hotel in London the 45 year old Brit proves that reservation is the absolute opposite to boring.

Being an hour alone with Colin Firth in a hotel suite might not be dangerous – but it is quite exciting indeed.

Nanny McPhee is your first family movie. How did you get your part of the father?

"Emma Thomson and I know each other for a long time. She asked me whether I would like to participate. She thought the character of Mr. Brown was made for me. I read the script and was really enthusiastic about it – but "my” character I didn’t like at all in the beginning."

Why was that?

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

You have three sons [the 15 year old Will with Meg Tilly as well as Luca, 4, and Mateo, 2, with his wife Livia Giuggioli]. Have they ever thought of such wild pranks like the Brown kids?

"No, thank God" (grins). "Will lacked the partners-in-crime and the other two are still too small. We will see what awaits me here"....(laughs).

And how about you? Were you a bad child?

I have never wantonly played tricks on someone to be able to laugh about him – I have rather tried forbidden things out of curiosity. But basically I was very good.

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

Many actors fear the filming with kids. In your case it even were seven of them....

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

In which way was it wonderful?

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

Many actors fear the filming with kids. In your case it even were seven of them....

In which way was it wonderful?

You often play reserved characters with whom it sizzles beyond the surface. Why?

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

And is that so?

"Sometimes – but surely not always what you expect."

Your character in the BBC miniseries Pride and Prejudice made you a heartthrob in the U.K., since the Bridget Jones movies you are that internationally...

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

"Nobody throws knickers at me" by Michaela Mottinger.

Colin Firth about celebrity hypes, fair coffee and the movie ”Nanny McPhee“

KURIER Austria, January / February 2006

Interview thanks to Christina

Translation German to English thanks to ColinFever

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

Men, I thought, will never understand us…

Film and theatre actor Colin Firth is Great Britain’s sex symbol N°1.

And not only since he made Hugh Grant lose the favour of the chubby Renée Zellweger. Since Mr. Darcy emerged from a lake "naked" in the 1995 BBC mini-series of ”Pride & Prejudice“, every child-bearing woman in the UK wants his child.

In real-life Firth has got three, on screen seven children: in the movie ”Nanny McPhee“ he plays the widowed father of a mischievous bunch which is brought under control by the magic arts of Nanny Emma Thompson.

Very british

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

Firth is involved in eight (!) film projects at present. Apart from ”Nanny“ there is the period film ”The Last Legion“ planned for 2006.

”To be an actor was the only career aspiration I have ever fostered. I’ve had an unpleasant time at school and have always thought: life can’t be this way. Today I wake up and I’m excited every day about the new things I do“, says Firth. That his parents predicted him a career as a dishwasher in the back room of a dive is old hat. ”They had never get to know an actor.“

”I’m coming from a family of butchers, teachers and weavers“, Firth is joking against every Upper-class claim. Born on September 10th 1960 in the county Hampshire, he spent his childhood in Nigeria where three quarters of his grandparents worked as methodistic missionaries and his parents as teachers. When sister Kate and brother Jonathan were born their parents took employment in England. The father as a lecturer in history at Winchester University College, the mother as a lecturer in comparative religion at Open University London.

The son and heir was provided with academical blessings too ”but thank goodness I screw up a chemistry test and quickly escaped to the National Youth Theatre. Since that time things were getting better". According to Hollywood scales, Firth has kicked himself out of his filming career by his own hand. To perfect his trade or sometimes even only to be human is much more important to him than any offer from the dream factory. ”I have to be careful when such things are written about me. I love money and I’ve got a family which is depending on my financial situation after all“, he laughs.

In fact he retired for two and a half years in the Canadian wilderness after the burn-out of Meg Tilly (with who he had a relationship - 1989). As the work on the thriller ”Agnes of God“ was burning in the soul of the actress, Firth dabbled in being a carpenter in a wooden house in British Columbia.

The relationship failed. 15-year-old son William lives for the most part of the year with Tilly in Los Angeles. In 1997 Firth married the Italian documentary filmer Livia Giuggioli: their sons Luca and Mateo are four and two years old.

”I have to disappoint you“, he anticipates the next question regarding the ”Nanny“ movie. ”My children have never seen me on the screen. I don’t even like to see myself on screen. Nobody wants to see his face in a movie or on photographs. It's annoying when I’m stuck in a traffic jam and on the bus beside me there is a huge poster of myself.“

Fair play

”I am not hunted by paparazzi and nobody has ever thrown their knickers at me“, Firth quickly puts his star-image in perspective. He only makes use of it on two occasions: to get hold of a table in trendy restaurants and for fair trade. He’s supposed to have 300.000 pound invested in the London coffee-shop chain ”Progreso“ where African coffee farmers have a share in the profits.

”I was feeling more and more uncomfortable about being a part of the problem, not of the solution“, Firth, who has been in Africa to get an idea of the coffee cooperatives, explains his engagement.

Why he only recently brought it to light? ”I’ve met people in Ethopia who can talk about the world market and WTO much more well-founded than I can. But they are not heard, they are not being interviewed. So I decided to speak up for them.“

Firth on…

…being a celebrity

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

…God

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

… ignoring criticism

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

… being romantic

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

"Colin Firth caught in a trio"

Metrotime Belgium, January / February 2006

This Dutch interview is translated to English by Debby.

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

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

What is your reaction on the controverse around "Where The Truth Lies"?

"I don't know what to think. I have never seen a naked body before (laughs).

I suspect that a lot of people in America don't like naked bodies and sex. One man can't change that. I have to say that these nude scene's are not that explicit.

The definition of pornography, according to the MPAA (the organization that started the rating system in 1968), is something like "Every production without artistic value that arrouses erotic longings". That sounds like 70 percent of the commercials on the American cable channels. It is all right when a sexbomb rubs oneself with lemonade. Children can see that.

You can't say that "Where The Truth Lies" has no artistic value. The scene they make a fuss about was created specially not to prickle".

It doesn't.....

"You have to feel sorry for the person who gets prickled by it. I think this scene makes people think, it was made well-considered. The MPAA made it very clear that they had no problem with the homosexual aspect, but they never made clear what the real problem was. We had to adapt it all the time. But the MPAA people were very strict about it. It did a lot of damage to the film".

You will be in the family comedy Nanny McPhee and now in this sinister drama "Where The Truth Lies." Do you choose such variety of roles on purpose?

"No. I don't take part as a reaction on parts I've just played. I take it when I like a role. That can be whatever role. My next project (Firth is talking about Toyer from Brian De Palma, in which he playes a weird serial killer) I chose because of a very different reason. It will be a very dark and complex film".

Is money a reason?

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

What do you think when you look at your own performances?

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

Will you be in a third Bridget Jones movie?

Sure, but only if they stick neeldles in my eyes.

"Nobody at home calls me Mr. Darcy"

Metro, 9 February 2006

This Dutch interview is translated to English by Debby.

Colin Firth, the actor who got his real break by playing the charming and tender, but very stiff Mr Darcy in Bridget Jones Diary, plays at the moment a desperate father of seven very naughty children in the film Nanny McPhee.

Metro talked with the Englishman about the film, his image and paparazzi. He doesn't like to talk about his private life, but he tells us a little bit about his relation with Sylvia Millecam.

It's very cold in Amsterdam, the city which Colin visits with fellow actor Emma Thompson for the Dutch premiere of Nanny McPhee

(1 February 2006). But Colin is sick and suffers from bronchitis. Still he makes time for interviews in a hotel room at the Keizersgracht.

Did a lot of photographers follow you around Amsterdam this time?

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

Do the paparazzi follow you around?

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

About Nanny McPhee. I think it was hard to play with 7 children at the time.

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

In the film there's a great scene where you throw with cakes. Emma Thompson (Nanny McPhee) was in David Letterman's show and she threw a cake in his face. Is she a tough woman?

Emma is really great. She's a very clever and honest woman. I took the role of Mr Brown mainly because of her. She wrote the script and wanted to put in some of her idea's about a family. By the way, this scene looks more spectaculair than it was to shoot. It took us three hours to tape one scene in which one person threw a cake. Trying to stay spontaneous is not easy then.

In Nanny McPhee you play, like in Bridget Jones Dary, a charming shy person. Rumors go that you are going to play a serial killer in the new Brian de Palma film. Are you happy that you can get rid of this charming though reliable image?

No, I killed so many people in so many films. In Trauma I killed a woman by putting a spider in her mouth. In Master of the Moor I killed lots of women with blonde hair, and so on. It doesn't give me a feeling of relief to play a bad guy. Maybe it is for you to see me as killer, but that doesn't work for me. The audience created that image around me, not me. And by the way it is not sure yet if I do the new Brian de Palma film.

Does it bother you that the image of Mr Darcy is still around you?

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

You were on the big screen a lot, don't you feel like directing a film yourself?

You know, the problem with actors is that they are a bit spoiled by short term contracts. If you take a part you go for it, nothing is more important than the film you are working on. The people you work with are all great and the moment the shooting is over it is heartbreaking. But two weeks later you forgot all about that. Probably because something else comes along .A director works on a film two or three years at least. After twenty years of acting I am used to short term contracts.

To finish this interview, recently the book "Sylvia Millecam op gevoel" came out in which was said that you had a relationship. Did you really had one?

I met Sylvia while we were shooting the film Dutch Girls in 1985. During that period we were very close and I adored her. We kept in touch for a while but not the last 10 to 15 years. When I heard, two years ago, that she had passed away I was very shocked. Sylvia was a delighted person,

a walking theatre performance, great.

*********

Nanny McPhee.

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

Firth facts:

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

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

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

"Firth loves to kid around" by Bruce Kirkland

Toronto Sun, 31 January 2006

Colin Firth loves to kid around, but he has grown up since Mr. Darcy.

If Colin Firth genuinely had tried to exploit his 1995 rocket to fame as Mr. Darcy, he would not have spent the past decade being eccentric in his roles.

Such as co-starring, opposite Kevin Bacon, as the smoldering, sexually conflicted singer-comedian in Toronto filmmaker Atom Egoyan's controversial Where The Truth Lies.

Or following that adult film noir thriller with the current children's comedy, Nanny McPhee. In this whimsical delight, Firth does slapstick as the hapless Victorian widower who has lost control of his seven unruly children.

This is hardly the master plan of an actor trying to promote himself as a leading man after the BBC version of Jane Austen's Pride And Prejudice turned him into a star and wired him into pop culture as a romantic icon.

"I think it is folly to do that," the 45-year-old English aristocrat tells the Toronto Sun in a one-on-one interview after shilling for Nanny McPhee during a press conference. "Because you can't control any of it, in that way.

"We can choose our motivations. We can choose what we want to explore. But you can't dictate the outcome. You can't write a script for a career's trajectory, and the success thereof. You just can't. I think that anyone who tries to structure things with that in mind is on a fool's errand. It comes unstuck very quickly, and there's not fun in it, either."

But on Nanny McPhee, which was written for the screen by Firth's co-star Emma Thompson (who also plays the title character with glee), there was tons of fun.

"This was a nauseatingly happy shoot," Firth says of shooting on location in Buckinghamshire and at England's famed Pinewood Studios near London.

"You know, people who came to the set, they could really be forgiven for loathing all of us! It was just this daily joyous kind of lovefest. And no one really wants to hear about that happening to someone else."

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

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

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

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

Life on the Nanny McPhee trail is laid back, California style, however. Firth is sanguine and smiling. And willing to try to put into words what he feels so strongly in his heart: That the point of all of this is simple; it is about storytelling.

"My love of storytelling began as a child, which I sort of think is true of most of us," he tells the press conference. "Mine was possibly more obsessive than others, to the extent that I had to pursue it as a profession.

"I think there is something about telling stories for children which takes you back to that root. I am a storyteller. I am a professional fantasist. That's what I do as an actor."

On Nanny McPhee, he says, "I think there was something liberating about not hiding behind the kind of veneer of sophistication and irony that telling stories for adults tends to involve. We're trying to delight children. Scare them. Make them laugh. Whatever.

"It's just a much less self-regarding process and it brings you back to the joy of being spellbound by the stories you were told as a child."

"Firth things first" by Fred Topel

The Wave Magazine, 26 January 2006

Colin Firth is best known for playing the inarticulate nice guy in Bridget Jones’ Diary. His new movie might be thought of as a continuation: Bridget Jones dies and leaves Firth alone with seven unruly children. Whatever is a nice guy to do?

The answer: Hire a magical nanny, of course. The nanny (Emma Thompson) whips the kids into shape, Mary Poppins-style, while Firth tries to find a wife so that his great aunt won’t stop his trust fund. Because, of course, it would be better to force the kids to live with a desperate gold digger than a single father. Those darn British.

The Wave: How do you discipline unruly children? Do you believe in a good spanking?

Colin Firth: I have learned that there are no answers. I have a very good answer when the children are not your own, which is give them to someone else. Part of the joy of doing this film was that if the going got tough, I’d just walk away. [With my kids,] nothing works. That’s the conclusion I’ve come to.

TW: Did you walk away from this gang a few times?

CF: Oh, yeah. I mean, not because they’re necessarily unruly. It’s just that you have seven or eight kids away from the bounds of their normal living constraints. A lot of the time, they didn’t have a parent with them. There’s always somebody there legally, but they weren’t in a schoolroom, they were in a kind of very hyper-stimulating situation, being asked to perform and being given hugely unhealthy amounts of attention. And that’s a pretty deadly cocktail with eight kids.

TW: The film ends with a disastrous wedding. Ever had a bad wedding experience?

CF: I’m not a big fan of other people’s weddings. I always find them slightly depressing. It makes me sound a bit of a curmudgeon, but everyone else is weeping because they’re moved, and I’m sort of weeping from despair and boredom.

TW: Why did you want to do a kids’ movie?

CF: I can’t remember. I can remember things that appealed to me. I don’t know what order they occurred. I don’t know if I thought, ”I want to do a family comedy“ first, and then the good one came along, or whether I thought, ”This is good, and it happens to be a family comedy.“ I liked the fact that it wasn’t trying to be hip. I don’t mind the children’s films that have the kind of urbane witty references for the adults. That’s fine, but I did like to see one that didn’t go for that, that was unashamedly old-fashioned. Just, basically, that it allowed itself to have a kind of cozy feeling of old, familiar nursery-parlor fairy tales.

TW: What will the kids learn from this?