2007
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"No one was talking about Emos and Chavs and Posh Tottie in the 1950s" |
News and Star, 20 December 2007 | |||
How would you describe your character in St Trinian’s? Oh, I’m a suit again. Basically, it was ‘Do you want to play the Minister of Education?’ Yeah. I’m very much the stooge, the patsy, the guy who’s set up for a fall.
Do you have fond memories of the original St Trinian’s films? I have almost no memory of them. I don’t think I’ve seen them since I was quite young. I was a bit frightened of the girls. I fancied them. Even though I was young, I found them attractive and rather frightening. I’ve always been attracted to frightening girls! I’m married to one!
And how would you describe the older women in the film? They’re a bit naughty and very, very confident. A great sense of entitlement and a little bit sexy inclined to a drink and a cigarette. And they can be frightening too!
How would you describe Rupert’s take on Miss Fritton. Like a pantomime dame? It’s not a pantomime dame. I’ll say that. Rupert plays her convincingly as a certain kind of woman. But Rupert and I have a love scene at the end of the movie. I can vouch for how difficult it is to grapple with all that extra material!
How do you think modern audiences will react to the film? I saw bits of the old films after we did this. To be honest, I was surprised how much the old versions are like this. Obviously some of the lingo had to be changed no one was talking about Emos and Chavs and Posh Tottie in the 1950s.
Maybe the current Minister of Education might raise objections in the House! He might not like the way he’s portrayed! But we don’t show any girls smoking. There’s some very strict film rules about that now.
Did you get to meet Russell Brand? How did you find him? Well, we don’t have any scenes together. But it’s interesting. Our job is trying to inject some freshness and excitement into a very dull job description, which is repetition. To work effectively in a film, you have to repeat and work consistently. Basically, you shoot a big master then you do close-ups. You’re supposed to be in the same moment, the same thirty-second moment, for a day. The skill of a good actor is to make it always seem like you’re in that fantastically spontaneous moment. Very often, a stand-up comedian has a different instinct, which is to reinvent. Once you’ve laid down some material, and made them laugh, you move on and find some new material. I often think it can often be very difficult for comedians to revisit the same gag. I think Russell’s a bit more than a comedian.
I believe he trained at the Drama Centre, where you trained? Did he? He must be such a mess! We all are! I enjoyed drama school it was very exciting. I was a very earnest 19 year-old. I loved all that.
What feelings do you have now to your own school days? It’s a funny thing the reality is I have no feelings about school. It’s long gone. Funnily enough, the bad memories of which I don’t have any left to be honest, I can just remember a sense of tedium have faded. And teachers that I liked have remained quite vivid. There are three or four left.
Were you in love with English and drama at school? Yes, obviously. I probably ended up in those areas because those were the inspired teachers. If I’d loved my chemistry teacher and my maths teacher, goodness knows what direction my life might have gone in. I remember there was a primary school teacher who really woke me up to the joys of school for about one year when I was 10. He made me interested in things I would otherwise not have been interested in because he was a brilliant teacher. He was instrumental in making me think learning was quite exciting.
How was it to shoot the scene where the dog humps your leg? It was a bit of a pain. There was a little ball of nylon, which they used to substitute the dog, because the dog was not co-operative all the time. But there was a real dog. The only dog they could find in England that was prepared to do it was a female called Dolly, who proved not to want to do it when the time came. Dolly would intermittently be persuaded to play the game for two or three seconds. They gave up and they stuck the nylon on me instead.
So you weren’t embarrassed about doing it? When I read, it was the thing that gave me the biggest laugh. Then once you’re working on the business of the laugh, on the set, the old adage is how comedy is a rather serious business.
Do you find comedy easy? It is an unknown quantity. It’s actually almost a clichι to say it, how hard comedy is. What’s that famous quote? ‘Dying is easy, comedy’s hard.’ I think the broader it gets, if you miss by a millimetre, you’ve missed completely. It’s a very hard thing to do.
You’ve worked with Rupert Everett before. How has your relationship evolved? I think there’s a slight feeling of us being a couple of survivors, really. It’s almost a quarter of a century in a business that does claim a lot of 15-minute flash-in-the-pan scalps. And meeting again after Another Country, where we famously didn’t get on, [for The Importance of Being Earnest], even the fact we didn’t get on very well 18 years before was already a source of connection somehow. There’s something quite reassuring ‘Oh, it’s you again!’
Do you hang out now off set? We don’t hang out. We’ve come close to hanging out. After The Importance of Being Ernest, if we’d kept up phone-calls I sat and listened to him holding forth on spiritual matters for hours on the set [of St Trinian’s]. I was glazing over and he was talking matters of the soul, in his trailer.
You made it into his recent autobiography. How did that feel? I was totally ambushed! There’s one portion with a drug story and Rupert thought that might bother me but that wasn’t my problem at all. I was ready to take legal action over him accusing me of wearing sandals and of strumming a guitar and singing a limp Sixties protest song, which I have to say did capture my soul! Rupert said I brought the guitar to the set and started strumming Lemon Tree Very Pretty! But I never brought it to the set.
You’ve also worked with Oliver Parker, the St Trinian’s co-director before. How do you get on? Very well. I’ve known Oliver since I was a student. I probably met him in 1978. He was an actor at the time. It’s one of those things. If you’re around long enough, you’ve met most people over time.
You’ve just done The Accidental Husband with Uma Thurman. How was that? That’s a fairly straightforward rom-co. Griffin Dunne directed, who I loved as an actor. After Hours was one of the great comedies. Griffin did tell me stories about it, but for him it was a rather long time ago, and I know what it’s like answering questions about a film you did 20 years ago! But it’s interesting being directed by someone who is a very good actor. There’s nothing like it. It might sound like a territorial thing about what I do, but I don’t think you can understand what it is until you’ve done it. I know that to be a fact. However good a communicator a director is, unless they’ve been actors, it’s just not the same as the shorthand you get with someone who’s been an actor.
You’ve also just done Genova, the new Michael Winterbottom film. A ghost story, is that right? It is, yes. I think like a lot of his films it’s not that easy to label what it is, certainly until you see it. But it has a ghost. It’s about two young girls, who lose their mother in a car accident. I’m the father and the mother appears to the younger of the two and has a relationship, so in that respect, yes, it has a ghost element. | ||||
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"Colin’s set up for a fall at St Trinian’s" by Barbara Hodgson |
The Journal, 18 December 2007 | |||
This time, the pupils are battling to save the school from bankruptcy in a story updated for modern audiences. Rupert Everett plays school headmistress Miss Fritton and Firth shares a love scene with him. It’s the third time the pair have appeared together on screen. Following Another Country in 1984 at the start of Firth’s career, they worked on the adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest 18 years later.
The 47-year-old sums up their working relationship as ”p*** taking“, adding ”but I think there’s a slight feeling of us being a couple of survivors, really.
”It’s almost a quarter of a century in a business that does claim a lot of 15-minute, flash-in-the-pan scalps. ”And meeting again after Another Country, where we famously didn’t get on, even that fact was already a source of connection somehow. ”There’s something quite reassuring ‘Oh, it’s you again’!“
He says on the St Trinian’s set he ”sat and listened to him holding forth on spiritual matters for hours. ”I was glazing over and he was talking matters of the soul, in his trailer.“
For his part, Everett awarded Firth a mention in his recent autobiography. ”I was totally ambushed!“ claims Firth. ”There’s one portion with a drug story and Rupert thought that might bother me but that wasn’t my problem at all. ”I was ready to take legal action over him accusing me of wearing sandals and of strumming a guitar and singing a limp Sixties protest song, which I have to say did capture my soul!“
Of Everett’s role in St Trinian’s, he says: ”It’s not a pantomime dame, I’ll say that. ”Rupert plays her convincingly as a certain kind of woman. ”But Rupert and I have a love scene at the end of the movie. I can vouch for how difficult it is to grapple with all that extra material!“
Comedy, he points out, is very hard to do. ”It is an unknown quantity. What’s that famous quote? ‘Dying is easy, comedy’s hard’. I think the broader it gets, if you miss by a millimetre, you’ve missed completely.“
While the film sounds huge fun, Firth has only vague memories of the original popular films. ”I don’t think I’ve seen them since I was quite young,“ he says, and adds: ”I was a bit frightened of the girls. I fancied them. Even though I was young, I found them attractive and rather frightening. ”I saw bits of the old films after we did this. To be honest, I was surprised how much the old versions are like this. Obviously some of the lingo had to be changed no one was talking about emos and chavs and posh tottie in the 1950s. ”But we don’t show any girls smoking. There are some strict film rules about that now.“
His memories of his own school days are also vague. ”I have no feelings about school,“ he says. ”It’s long gone. Funnily enough, the bad memories a sense of tedium have faded. And teachers that I liked have remained quite vivid. ”There was a primary school teacher one year when I was 10 who made me interested in things I would otherwise not have been interested in because he was a brilliant teacher.“
He enjoyed English and drama and thinks this is due to his ”inspired“ teachers in those subjects. ”If I’d loved my chemistry teacher and my maths teacher, goodness knows what direction my life might have gone in!“ But since Firth embarked upon his acting career, he’s never looked back.
While he is perhaps still best known and most admired in female quarters for his portrayal of Jane Austen’s hero Mr Darcy in the BBC’s 1995 adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, he has starred in a variety of films including Fever Pitch, Love, Actually, Bridget Jones’ Diary and its sequel Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason. He’ll also be in Michael Winterbottom’s new film, a ghost story called Genova. ”It’s about two young girls, who lose their mother in a car accident. I’m the father and the mother appears to the younger of the two and has a relationship, so in that respect it has a ghost element.“
The co-director of St Trinian’s is Oliver Parker, with whom Firth worked on The Importance of Being Earnest. ”I’ve known Oliver since I was a student. ”It’s one of those things. If you’re around long enough, you’ve met most people over time.“
Girls Aloud, who perform the theme tune, also make an appearance in the film as some of the errant schoolgirls. And comedian and TV personality Russell Brand is Flash Harry (played by Cole in the original films) although he and Firth do not share any scenes.
Firth says: ”Our job is trying to inject freshness and excitement into a very dull job description, which is repetition. ”To work effectively in a film, you have to repeat and work consistently. You’re supposed to be in the same 30-second moment for a day. ”The skill of a good actor is to make it always seem like you’re in that fantastically spontaneous moment.“
St Trinian’s opens in cinemas on Friday (note: 21 December 2007). | ||||
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"Girls Aloud join Everett for St Trinian's world premiere" |
Ireland On-line, 10 December 2007 | ||||||
Brand, who stars as Flash Harry in the film, brought his mother along to the London Leicester Square premiere. She told the media: ”He’s a lovely son. I’m very proud of him.“ Brand said: ”People ask ’were you not tempted by those schoolgirls in the film?’ ”I told them they’re children ’but Rupert Everett was a really tasty mistress.’ How I kept my hands off him was a mystery.“ Brand said he had been ”nicking pens“ from autograph hunters on the red carpet. Asked whether he fancied any of Girls Aloud, he said: ”Whoever’s the most single.“ Brand also joked of his recent Royal Variety Performance that the Queen had said to him afterwards: ”A fellow once broke into my bedroom. There’s a way in.“ Brand said: ”I said ’all right ma’am I’ll be right over.’ ”I love the Queen but I do believe there should be no head of state,“ he said.
The film also stars Stephen Fry, former OC actress Mischa Barton, Lily Cole and Jodie Whittaker.
The St Trinian’s stories began life as a cartoon by Ronald Searle. The first film, 'The Belles of St Trinian’s' was released in 1954 and spawned several sequels. Despite featuring sex and drugs, the new St Trinian’s will break with tradition - the students will never be seen smoking.
The co-director of the movie Barnaby Thompson has described it as the ”antidote“ to Harry Potter in its depiction of public school life.
Claire Sweeney and Tara Palmer Tompkinson were also at tonight’s event. | |||||||
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"Colin Firth's new eco-store" by Lisa Grainger. |
The Times UK, 17 November 2007 | |||||||||||||||
Called Eco, the shop will be Britain’s first ”ecological destination store“, offering not just contemporary, artisan-made, ethical, Fairtrade and eco goods, but the services of environmental experts to help homeowners make their spaces more energy efficient.
To be fair, the shop isn’t only Firth’s. He is what he calls ”a handy communications device“, and one of four shop owners, the other three being his wife, the beautiful and spirited Italian documentary producer Livia Giuggioli, her 26-year-old brother Nicola, and friend and investor Ivo Coulson. But he is, as Livia says, ”an essential part of the project. Colin’s one of those people who researches everything properly. He’ll get obsessed with something like the Iraq war and then wake up in the middle of the night wanting to talk about it.“ (Or, as she puts it later, with characteristic passion, while the Englishman grimaces at her forthrightness: ”We’re a great match because I’m the ballbreaker and he’s the brains.“)
While the even-more-gorgeous-in-real-life Mr Firth will clearly play a major role in luring customers into the shop, there is no doubt that it is the eco-aware Giuggiolis who are the project’s directors. As children, growing up in the Italian countryside, Nicola says, ”We lived a very eco life, although we didn’t know that’s what it was. Even 15 years ago, our parents used energy-saving bulbs that took half an hour to emit light. We ate local, organic food. Nothing was thrown away. But that’s just how it was in Italy. And I liked learning about it: after university, I decided to do a PhD on alternative energy sources to oil. So, this is a natural progression.“
Sitting in the Firths’ book and art-filled West London sitting room (where Livia proudly shows off a cushion she’s made from a pair of old Armani trousers, and her husband is admiring a wireless device that digitally displays how much electricity their home is using), it soon becomes clear that this shop isn’t just a commercial venture. And it’s not a flight of luvvie fancy, either.
They’ve investigated the market, seen that there’s no central retailer-cum-consultancy to which people can go for ecological building and decorating advice and filled the gap, says Ivo Coulson. And they’ve devised the shop experience so that it’s fun: as well as the eco-products on sale, there will be events and exhibitions of ethical art, curated by hip London designers Marcus Fairs and Barley Massey. ”We want this to be a good place to meet, and enjoy, as well as learn how to improve the planet,“ says Nicola. ”And to do that it has to be fashionable, to have things for all generations. It can’t be an eco-nutter place or it won’t work.“ Click image to enlarge
The building itself, they hope, will become not only Britain’s first self-sustainable shop, lit by the sun, clad in plants and solar-heated, but a place where people can come and touch, feel and learn. On the roof, there will be solar panels to examine (”You can get see-through ones now, shingle, brick, all sorts,“ Nicola says), wind turbines to watch, green-roof insulation systems and garden solar lighting to see (Colin’s favourite product being a jam jar containing a solar-powered bulb).
Inside are all sorts of odd things to fill consumers’ new eco-designed spaces. In one corner sits a simulated office filled with sustainable products, such as a bamboo computer, recycled pencils and a solar mobile-phone and MP3 charger. There’s a section offering energy-saving kitchen appliances. Another offers DIY stuff like natural paint and paper. And, on the ground floor, there’s a range of gifts and gadgets: Estonian Christmas decorations for £1.50, eco-friendly Nest cleaning products, hangers recycled from old chairs, £3,000 Hans Wegner chairs crafted from sustainable wood. In the basement will be the consultancy, stocked with samples of eco-flooring, cladding, tiles, radiators and pipes, so, ”Rather than spending hours on the net trying to track down a sustainable product from abroad, you can take a look at it here and discuss how to build with it,“ Nicola explains.
While the young Italian is clearly pretty authoritative on all things green, his English brother-in-law admits, slightly shamefacedly, ”I’m no eco hero. I’m supporting the shop because I think it’s a good idea. If I’m in a position to say anything, it is because I’m one of the culprits. I’m culpable because I’m a consumer. When you start to think about global warming, Western over-consumption, our energy wastage, it makes you want to improve the negative effects of your complicity in it.“
Neither of the Firths is averse to adding their voice to a campaign, if the cause is one they believe in. As a child, Colin door-knocked with his father for the Liberal Party, handing out pamphlets. The couple have both been vocal about the needs of Congolese refugees in the UK, Colin taking part in public demonstrations, and have been to Ethiopia with Oxfam to highlight the plight of coffee farmers ”whose weekly wage is what you would pay for a single coffee“, he mutters. And, at the British Film Festival, Livia’s first project as executive producer, working with Amnesty International, is about a man who’s been on death row, after a flawed trial, for 25 years.
”The thing is, if you have been given the privileges we have,“ says Firth (between bursts of chat about the failure of the Doha trade talks and real change after the G8 summit, trying to meet Peter Mandelson to protest against unfair European bilateral trade agreements, the effect of dumping subsidised American rice on Haiti, and what he calls ”the great rip-off of British coffee drinkers at the expense of Ethiopian farmers“), ”if you have this many perks, surely you can help out. Rather than being a luvvie with a lofty opinion preaching to people, I prefer to do things, to get involved, put my money where my mouth is and learn along the way.“
So, will he help out behind the till? ”God, no!“ he groans, covering his eyes in horror, as his wife threatens him, laughingly, with Wednesday-afternoon shifts. ”I worked in the cafι when it opened and the coffees I made were probably the worst we ever served.“
No chance, then, of him putting in a guest appearance in what many women might hope would be the Eco uniform: a wet white shirt? ”Perhaps if it’s eco cotton and recyclable water,“ he grins good-naturedly. ”Depends how badly we need the customers. At the moment, I’ve got three films out and all anyone wants to talk about is the shop. So, hopefully, another drenching won’t be necessary.“
Eco opens on December 1, at 213 Chiswick High Road, London W4 (www.eco-age.com ) | ||||||||||||||||
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"The unlikely lad" |
Eve Magazine, November 2007 | ||||||
Uploaded by Colinfever. Submitted by Angelika | |||||||
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"Colin: Producing too hard" |
North Scotland, 29 October 2007 | |||
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"Winchester Mayor was my favourite teacher". |
Hampshire Chronicle, 22 October 2007 | ||||||
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"Colin 'worried' about sword-fighting" |
This is Nottingham, 18 October 2007 | |||
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"And When Did You Last See Your Father? - Colin Firth interview" by Rob Carnevale. |
IndieLONDON, 6 October 2007 | |||
Have you reached the point in your life when you look in the mirror and see your father looking back at you? Colin Firth: When I look in the mirror, I don’t see my Dad, I see my grandmother. For a while it was my mother looking back at me. If only it was my Dad.
Has doing this film affected the way you are with your own children? Colin Firth: I think it’s a constant issue for any working person, questioning how available you are for your children. As actors, we have quite a lot of down-time and however all-consuming the work period is, the down-time is real down-time at home, probably more so than with people who have a regular job. So one thing balances off the other. In terms of it affecting my being a Dad, I don’t know it’s hard to quantify all that. Doing a job, or even watching a film, can make a difference to your life, but I don’t think it ever has an explosive impact where your life will never be the same again. It kind of seeps into your life, and perhaps realise you’re a little more vigilant about certain things than you might have been.
Would you like to think there was nothing unresolved with your own parents? Colin Firth: I’d like to think there’s nothing unresolved with my parents. It’s a vain and fond dream, I think. One of the reasons why people respond so much to this story is that everybody’s got unresolved issues in any important relationship, and this story is so starkly honest about that. You don’t come out depressed. It gives you some rather difficult truths that apply to all of us, and I think there’s something soothing and edifying about that. I don’t know why, I don’t know whether you realise you’re not alone with all your inadequacies in that department. But I think it makes you feel actually better than coming out of a sugar-coated fantasy.
Were you surprised at Blake’s honesty in the book, and did that give you an added responsibility playing the role? Colin Firth: There was something surprising about the honesty in the film and book. There’s something so sort of unflinchingly honest about the warts-and-all side of things. I heard Blake say that he wrote the book fairly shortly after his father’s death, and he was probably in an unguarded period. He might have been more cautious if he’d written it a bit later on, but somehow he was prepared to really address it all, because so many of these conflicting and uncomfortable emotions were very present.
So, the unsympathetic portrayals of himself and members of his family at times are quite startling, and that’s what I think lends power to the passionate love that he clearly exhibits. It’s a portrait of a warts-and-all character that he eventually embraces very warmly, and so it earns that moment, in a way, than if it was just a kind of love-fest, no-one would care.
Did you find it important to try and speak to Blake for this, or did you keep your distance from him? Colin Firth: There was no conscious strategy I didn’t seek out Blake. I didn’t feel we were going that way and when I met Blake, I considered him more the author than the character. There didn’t seem to be anything in his behaviour, speech patterns, or his appearance, that had information that was going to add anything. And it was such a self-contained piece.
The adaptation is quite a big reinvention of the book. There’s nothing of a film in the book. There are little episodes you can imagine being filmed, but it doesn’t have that shape, that quality it doesn’t cry out to be a film at all. It’s a series of brilliant, courageous observations. But making a film of it meant in some ways starting again with the material, and to keep reaching back into the other source would almost have split the focus. And Matthew [Beard] and I didn’t do much collaborating either how are you going to walk. We did a little bit of ”let’s lose the accent through the ages..“. The little boy sounds like he might be from Skipton, Matthew’s a little bit more, and mine’s completely gone. I asked if he’s right-handed for one scene in particular.
Have you worked with Jim Broadbent before? And did you get much rehearsal time to build a relationship with him? Colin Firth: Funnily enough, before I’d taken off to do another job, I was working with Jim. Jim never made it onto the screen, because he injured himself he had a walking across the room accident! So I rehearsed with him for a week or two on the film of the Pinter play, and we literally arrived on the first day of the shoot and another actor was then playing his part. But it meant we had a bit of time to talk during that period, which was just a happy accident. I’ve also worked with Jim twice before. However much you rehearse and talk, nothing makes up for the length of time you’ve known somebody, and the kind of comfort level that comes with that familiarity. | ||||
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"Family Matters" by Rob Driscoll. |
IC Wales, 5 October 2007 | |||
Based on Blake Morrison’s award-winning autobiographical memoir of the same name, the film is an extraordinarily honest and unflinching exploration of a father/son relationship, as Morrison deals with his father’s terminal illness and imminent death.
In the film, Firth plays the real-life Morrison, with Jim Broadbent as his father Arthur, ultimately struck down by cancer. As soon as Firth was offered the part, there was no hesitation about accepting it. ”Everyone can relate to this movie,“ explains Firth. ”We’ve all had a father or a father figure. The issues in this film are so wired into absolutely all of us, that I really don’t think you have to look that far to find bits of your life that overlap. ”One of the reasons why people respond so much to this story is that everybody’s got unresolved issues in any important relationship, and this story is so starkly honest about that. Yet you don’t come out of the cinema depressed. ”It gives you some rather difficult truths that apply to all of us, and I think there’s something soothing and edifying about that. I don’t know why, I don’t know if it’s because you realise you’re not alone with all your inadequacies in that department. But I think it makes you feel actually better than coming out of a sugar-coated fantasy.“
Indeed, the very notion of Hollywood getting hold of this project and heaping it with gloss is a terrifying one. The strength of And When Did You Last See Your Father? is in its deadpan truths and refreshingly un-flashy honesty. Firth immediately empathised with a screenplay that refuses to shirk from all those petty embarrassments of a suburban upbringing in baby-boomer Britain that still hover over his conscience.
In the film, Firth’s parents are played by Broadbent and Juliet Stevenson, while his wife is played by Gina McKee. TV star Sarah Lancashire makes a telling big screen debut as a family friend of the Morrisons whom we slowly realise means much more to Arthur. The essence of the central father and son relationship is further expressed through flashbacks to Blake’s teens a family holiday, a fumbled affair with the au pair where the awkward and introverted Blake is constantly crushed by his father’s flirtatious ways and need to be the centre of attention. ”The more you enter the film, it’s clear that there’s so much of this that is immediate to everyone,“ says Firth, whose own father is 73.
At 47, Firth is also a father himself to three children the younger two by his Italian wife Livia Giuggioli. ”My father couldn’t be more different from Arthur Morrison, but I still had issues, and I have that dreadful piece of programming in my system, that however far I think I’ve gone in life and however much I’ve moved beyond the trials of living with my parents, it only takes five minutes walking into the parental home and I’m 16 again,“ he smiles.”The film’s made me realise that there’s the danger we let our parents die with things unsaid though, of course, I’d like to think there’s nothing unresolved with my parents.“
Firth had read the book on which the film is based several years ago, although he never imagined seeing it on the big screen. ”I loved the book from the moment I read it for all sorts of reasons,“ recalls Firth, who is an executive producer of the forthcoming documentary feature In Prison My Whole Life, the latest film from Welsh director Marc Evans. ”I responded to the flavour of the ‘60s, the ‘80s, washing your car on a Sunday, putting up a camping tent come hell or high water, being stuck in the family car in motorway traffic jams, all of that. ”It was such a self-contained piece. The adaptation is quite a big reinvention of the book. There’s nothing of a film in the book. There are little episodes you can imagine being filmed, but it doesn’t have that shape, that quality it doesn’t cry out to be a film at all. It’s a series of brilliant, courageous observations.“
Familiar as he was with the material, there wasn’t much time for the eternally-in-demand Mr Firth to prepare for the challenge of playing an autobiographical figure. ”My preparation basically involved getting on a plane in New York and arriving just in time to shoot,“ he chuckles. ”It was a bit on the hoof. I’d lived with the idea of it for quite a long time. But I’d met the director Anand Tucker before, we’d chatted about it, and I’d known the book for a good 10 years. And then there was a lifetime of having a Dad “
As for Firth’s own parenting skills, he insists he tries to make himself available to his children. ”I think that’s a constant issue for any working person, questioning your availability,“ he says. ”Actors, in fact, have quite a lot of down time, and however all-consuming the work period is, the down time is real down time at home, probably more so than with people who have a regular job. So one thing balances off the other.“
Firth is optimistic that there will be a very real audience out there for this movie, which stands out from the usual diet of formulaic thrillers, romances, comedies and period adaptations. ”I really do think its success hinges on its unflinching honesty,“ he says. ”Blake wrote the book fairly soon after his father’s death, and he was probably in an unguarded period. ”He might have been more cautious if he’d written it a bit later on, but what we have is something very real when it comes to warts-and-all portrayals. If it was just the usual love-fest, I don’t think many people would care.“
And When Did You Last See Your Father? opens today. | ||||
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"Proof good guys can finish first" by Evan Fanning. |
The Irish Independent, 30 September 2007 | |||||||||||||||||||||
"I think most people doing something risky in what we'd loosely call 'the creative zone' are probably on a pendulum between feeling very cocky and invincible and important, and being completely overwhelmed by it all. I suppose I've got a bit of that."
You get the impression that there's not much that Colin Firth doesn't know about, be it current affairs, politics, music, sport, art and, of course, movies. Yet he doesn't come across as cocky. Perhaps it's his self-deprecating humour, and mumbled comments he makes about himself under his breath, that are familiar to anyone who's seen him as Mark Darcy in Bridget Jones's Diary. Besides being effortlessly knowledgable, he is, as women are keen to point out, ruggedly handsome. He probably even enjoys long walks and cooking.
In addition, Firth is socially conscious and has campaigned to stop the deportation of a group of asylum seekers.
He also teamed up with his wife to produce a documentary for this year's London Film Festival about Mumia Abu-Jamal, a Black Panther who has spent 20 years on death row for murdering a policeman, a verdict that Abu-Jamal has never accepted.
In short, he appears impossibly well-rounded. One of life's good guys. Anand Tucker, the director of And When Did You Last See Your Father?, describes him as a "true movie star" and "an incredibly intelligent and decent human being". He also says that, "Colin's just a bloke. It was like hanging out with a mate." While shooting the film they went to a Magic Numbers gig together, which brings us neatly back to music.
I ask him about the band he was in when he was younger. He sighs slightly before saying: "I almost wish I'd never said it because it's just not worthy of mention, but, yeah, I did dabble in that." I ask him the band's name, to which he replies: "I can't remember." I ask him if he is sure and he says "yes" emphatically. But I don't believe him.
Music, however, remains a huge part of his life. His interest, he says, "kicked off with glam-rock when I was eight or nine years old. I had a bizarre man-crush on Marc Bolan. Then I discovered things like blues and American slave music. In terms of modern music my sensibilities are very much to do with American music really. It's still blues and country."
He was the singer in his mysterious band without a name, which I later find out was a Doors cover band. He's just finished shooting a film version of the Abba musical Mamma Mia, in which he will sing. He says, "It's not really the direction I had in mind". It's not exactly Jim Morrison, but there is no reason to doubt that he'll be able to pull it off.
'And When Did You Last See Your Father?' is in cinemas nationwide from October 5 | ||||||||||||||||||||||
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"Colin Firth: portrait of a young writer" by Sheila Johnston Interview with Colin Firth and Matthew Beard. |
The Telegraph UK, 22 September 2007 | ||||||
And thus he finds himself sitting now, endearingly star-struck, in a trendy Soho media watering hole. "When you're in London, that's where all the celebrities live," he says. "In Sheffield you don't expect to see them walking down the high street."
The casting director, Priscilla John, discovered Beard who has been acting since he was four, entirely for television during a blitzkrieg raid on Yorkshire drama workshops. "Matthew has got an old-fashioned feel to him. A Northern, natural quality," she says. "He wasn't someone who's had highlights put in his hair and wears groovy gear and does that walk. He was gentle and innocent, and had a great stillness."
For Anand Tucker, the director, "Seeing Matthew was one of those lightning-bolt moments. Matthew's brooding, hurt intensity was absolutely how I imagined Blake to be."
Morrison himself has spoken self-deprecatingly about his dashing screen avatars. "When I tell people who's playing me, the laughter generally lasts about five minutes," the writer has said.
Tucker demurs. "Actually, Blake's a bit of a dashing fox," he says. "A bit of a hit with the ladies at Hay-on-Wye."
Did he give any tips to Beard or to little Bradley Johnston, who plays Blake at seven? "I always think there's something a bit presumptuous about advising other actors. I've increasingly found I learn more from them than they do from me. It can be a chastening experience to watch the brilliance of a very young actor. Their inexperience means they haven't learned bad habits or put on the protective masks that we develop as we grow."
What next? Beard is currently shooting Hippie Hippie Shake, based on Richard Neville's memoirs of the Oz obscenity trial; he plays a small role based on Charles Shaar Murray, who edited the magazine's infamous "Schoolkids" issue.
"He's a very different character from Blake, much more outspoken. There's a lot of shouting and heckling the court and discussing what we're going to put in the magazine. Anarchy rules, and all that stuff."
He has a place to read English at York University but has decided to take a gap year, "to mess around being an actor. I definitely want to go to uni. To be normal for a bit rather than doing glitzy things that are great fun but could easily warp your brain. But, when this film comes out, I don't want to be tied up with Freshers' Week. At the moment I'm just enjoying meeting these huge directors for projects I could never dream of working on."
'And When Did You Last See Your Father?' is out on Oct 5. | |||||||
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"Colin Firth's Darcy dilemna" by Tim Teeman |
The Times UK, 20 September 2007 | |||
Firth’s confessional mood echoes his role as Blake Morrison in the film version of Morrison’s autobiographical memoir And When Did You Last See Your Father?, which evoked the relationship between Morrison and his domineering father, Arthur. In this moving, quietly powerful film Firth and Jim Broadbent, as Arthur, have just the right kind of double-edged intimacy.
Arthur couldn’t be more different from Firth’s ”quiet, unassuming“ father. ”But I was a surly, pretentious adolescent, like Blake’s portrait of himself. My father and I were not close in a cosy sense but I am as connected with my father as Blake was with his. The difference is my animosity with my dad was left behind in my teens. But, even now, three seconds in my parents’ company and a tone of voice or trigger will bring me back to being 15.“
Firth was born in Hampshire, then moved to Nigeria where his father taught. His parents have always been ”eternal students“ and it is a close family, he says. Firth lost his first grandparent (his grandfather, whom he was close to) at 35. ”It was a shock,“ he says, ”some part of me finding out we weren’t immortal in my family.“
The family returned to the UK when he was small and Firth struggled to fit in schools in Bath and Essex. ”Accents were an issue,“ he recalls, grimacing. ”It was a shock to hear aitches being dropped. I felt like a freak speaking with the accent I had. So I changed it and only started to speak like this when I was in the sixth form.“
He lived in America for a year when he was 12. ”I feel quite strongly about antiAmericanism. I share people’s grievances about the current Administration but I remember my father and I watching the Watergate hearings. Here was a country arraigning its own leaders. America has a fantastic history of dissent.“
Something went awry in Firth’s teenage years. ”I loathed authority but was frightened of it. My rebellions were sneaky, passive. I didn’t smash windows or get into fights if I did I was strictly on the receiving end. Like Blake, I took refuge in books with the hope of getting laid by name-checking Dostoevsky. It wasn’t Hardy or Austen for me, but Camus. I grew my hair long, pierced my ears and then got slightly stranded by the punk thing.“
He loved music and joined ”a not terribly good band“ doing Doors covers. (A Gram Parsons fan, he nevertheless vociferously denies being a ”dad rock nostalgic“ and name-checks Wilco and Lambchop.) He also started to write, although ”there comes a point,“ he says gently, ”when unless you practise something you have to classify it as a fantasy, but I do think there are worse writers than me who have published novels.“ (Acting and writing are linked ”because I quite like to do what I do to hide by obscuring yourself you can reveal something“.)
Firth Sr could cope with the long hair but not Firth’s ”bad choice“ of friends. There was a charismatic hard nut at school who led Firth astray. Or ”the misdemeanours that go along with wanting to be rock-and-roll and hippy, the music festivals, staying out late.“ Drinking? ”I was a bit naughty in that respect,“ he says. Drugs? Firth looks stricken. ”I’m not at liberty to go into detail about such misdemeanours. Yeah, it was all the usual stuff. If Labour Cabinet ministers can confess to some of those things, I probably can as well.“ How did your father find out about the drugs? Did you smoke cannabis at home? ”Nahhhuhhhh,“ Firth mutters. ”It was a whole series of things and was as much as to do with what he suspected. It wasn’t one incident.“ The worst rows with his father ”were about washing dishes and homework. There wasn’t a massive meltdown,“ he insists.
But his teenage rebellion was concerted. ”I would have gone to university had I not allowed myself to be derailed into moody adolescent laziness. I liked to characterise it then as a defiant decision to resist the system. But I was just resistant to schoolwork. If someone wanted me to read Shakespeare, I wanted to read Thomas Mann. If someone tried to make me listen to Brahms, I had to listen to Hendrix.“ On the morning of A-level retakes, ”I thought, ‘F*** it’ and went back to bed, it felt like a treadmill I didn’t want to be on.“ Firth pitched up, ”like Dick Whittington“, in London wanting to act and he got a job at a theatre switchboard. He read Kafka in his cubbyhole, and ”stared into the abyss“, until he met a casting director who smoothed his way into drama school and then to a part in Julian Mitchell’s Another Country.
Sudden fame ”blew me away“. He didn’t get on with his co-star Rupert Everett though denies all reports of 20-plus years of simmering rivalry and resentment. ”Rupert got on with very few people. He found us all ghastly, naive and bourgeois. I envied his confidence. I was intermittently flamboyant but felt outside [and he puts on an LA twang] my comfort zone.“ They have worked ”very happily“ since on The Importance of Being Earnest and coming in December St Trinian’s.
His looks and upper-class, ruffled demeanour meant he graduated from playing posh schoolboys to posh older men. There were appearances in A Month in the Countryand a controversial Falklands drama, Tumbledown. But Firth’s life really changed when he emerged, sodden-shirted, from the lake as Mr Darcy in the BBC’s 1995 adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. The screenwriter Andrew Davies recently revealed the plan had been for Darcy to be naked. Firth had ”a bit of the usual tension about getting your kit off“ but thinks it remained sexy because we ”rerobed, not disrobed, Austen“.
He groans at the very mention of Darcy, whom he regards as ”a part-time burden. It got my name recognised but it also put me in a box. Things were going well; I was building a diverse working life.“
Darcy made him feel ”a bit of a star“ (he smiles pleasurably at that thought), his wife Livia Giuggioli would greet the sight of him dishevelled every morning with an ironic, ”Oh look, it’s Mr Darcy“. But, Firth says, ”12 years on it feels like a school nickname you can’t shake. It occurred to me the other day to change my name to Mr Darcy and be done with it.“ I laugh but he is serious, despite parlaying the Darcy image to his advantage in the Bridget Jones movies, playing Mark Darcy, much obsessed over by Helen Fielding’s lead character.
”The frustration is anything I do not on a horse looks a stretch,“ says Firth, smiling yet serious. ”When I did Fever Pitch, to get into my own jeans to play a guy living in North London where I lived, to play a character from my own background people considered that a stretch.“
Well, it’s not that bad, I say. He’s about to play a Roman commander in The Last Legion and there’s a scene in And When Did You . . ? in which Blake masturbates in the bath. Firth shakes his head, smiles wearily. ”Every single film since there’s been a scene where someone goes, ‘Well I think you’ve just killed Mr Darcy’. But he is a figure that won’t die. He is wandering somewhere. I can’t control him. I tried to play with it in Bridget Jones. I’ve never resented it if it wasn’t for him I might be languishing, but part of me thinks I should do this postmodern thing, change my name by deed poll to Mr Darcy. Then people can come up to me and say, ‘But you are not Mr Darcy’ which would be different. I dare say it will be my saving grace when the only employment available to me is opening supermarkets dressed in breeches and a wig.“
Away from this half-jokey fretting, Firth is socially conscious. He has campaigned to stop the deportation of a group of asylum-seekers. He is the executive producer of a documentary at this year’s Times BFI London Film Festival, In Prison My Whole Life, about Mumia Abu-Jamal, a former Black Panther who has spent more than 20 years on death row for the murder of a policeman. (Giuggioli is producer.)
Firth is clearly an intense thinker and considers everything family, career, politics quite deeply. Morrison’s book made him pause before teasing his two younger children (he has three; a son, Will, by the actress Meg Tilly and two younger boys with Giuggioli). He jokingly agrees with ”whoever said that when he upset his children he put a dollar in a jar for their future therapy“.
Firth’s own father is 73 and the Blake Morrison film ”made me think we let our parents die with things unsaid“, but he cannot imagine a relationship with his father where ”everything has been resolved“, even though they are close. Firth himself isn’t sure if he is a good father ”I’m not going to be writing the review on that one“ but says he tries to make himself ”available“ to his children. He reveals that he squeezed himself ”into a bourgeois life to reach a sense of being settled“.
Why? ”Serenity. When I was a teenager I romanticised the idea of artistically deranging oneself, whether it was a rock star f***ing himself up with drugs or Rimbaud’s conscious disordering of the senses. Being sane was a tedious, suburban thing to be. Unfortunately it’s not the brilliance, but rather the screwing up, that’s easy to achieve.“
He broods momentarily, agonises, looks down. ”Acting messes with you. Whatever it is to seek that kind of attention is combined with the ability to play different characters so there’s something fractured there. You take a person like that, subject them to all the vicissitudes of praise and attack and critique and you are going to wreak havoc with people who aren’t stable.“
Is he talking about himself? ”Yeah . . . I didn’t go off the deep end. But it gets lonely. There came a time where I wanted to settle down. Excessive praise is like a drug but it doesn’t stay around for long. People can’t come with you while you’re up your own a***. If you want to have any companionship you have to have a little bit of generosity.“ So he’s created ”new disciplines“ to maintain close relationships.
This is said in a halting mumble. It reminds me of the gruff intimacy between Morrison and his father in the film that particularly masculine trait of revealing something heartfelt by sounding as determinedly unheartfelt as you possibly can.
And When Did You Last See Your Father? is released on Oct 5, 2007
Darcy does . . . Darcy
Another Country (1984) Darcy in training: Firth’s first experiment with a furrowed brow (committed Marxist-style) and pairs with it the gentlemanly, earnest, dignified gaze he would practice in . . .
Pride and Prejudice (1995) The lake scene has been replayed a thousand times on a thousand clip shows. Firth hones his stilted but honourable shtick.
Bridget Jones’s Diary/Edge of Reason (2000, 2003) Firth sensibly just gives in the big D is given a modern update.
Girl with a Pearl Earring (2002) His Vermeer is the most charming painter ever on screen: terribly polite, slightly bumbling. Hmmm. Reminds us of someone.
Love Actually (2003) Ahhh. Darcy’s language-barrier love.
And When Did You Last See Your Father?; The Last Legion (both 2007) No more Mr Wet Shirt Guy. Firth does serious and modern and Roman and butch. | ||||
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"Colin Firth: Eben verrόckt ... (just mad)" by Leif Kramp |
Teleschau Gemany, August 2007 | |||
In our interview Colin Firth speaks , with a twinkle in his eye, about his relationship with children, the curse of Mr. Darcy and he lets on why he would sometimes rather occupy the director’s chair.
Teleschau: In you new movie you fight for the well-being of the 12-year old Roman Emperor Romulus Augustus . Do you get along with children in real life as well? CF: I’m dealing with them, nothing more. I do like working with children. But I usually like it best if they are someone else’s children. (laughs) It can even be fun to be with them, because I can make myself scarce any time they start getting on my nerves. And I can return as soon as the storm calms down.
Teleschau: You are a father yourself. Where do you get parenting tips? CF: In spite of the scores of books on parenting , that can be found on mile high shelves in bookstores ,we haven’t improved as parents. Even an armada of guide books doesn’t help. Everyone has to find their own way- there is no easy solution, even if the books suggest otherwise.
Teleschau: Why is it that you appear to be playing a brusque character most of the time? CF: I am not interested in characters who are sociable. Indeed I find them most unpleasant. People who don’t have any problems and don’t search for them and have everything just fall into their laps, aren’t interesting in real life or in a movie. Even action heroes, whom we love best, follow the Harrison Ford principal: You never know how he’ll master any given challenge.
Telschau : Your greatest success was as a romantic hero- your favorite role? CF: To be honest I have always been fascinated by Indiana Jones. The concept is pretty easy; ordinary man against destiny. Nobody knows if he will make it. He has obstacles to overcome he has to be honest with himself in order to make it. Inadequacy. Failure, it doesn’t matter which. That is what I’m interested in.
Teleschau. Do you feel haunted by Mr. Darcy? CF; Not really. Darcy is someone who is mostly mentioned when I am sitting among journalists. I do know that I will be connected to this character for my whole life. But he’s no ghost always hovering around me. Sometimes I even forget about him, especially when I am at work. Then suddenly he is here again, when I am sitting in front of a microphone and I know that I have to talk about him once again.
Teleschau: Sounds like torture. CF: To be labeled or categorized means to an actor to have a recognizable name, an identity which makes you well-known to the masses. That can be useful.
Teleschau: Do you think you could have achieved a similar popularity with another role? CF: Who could have foreseen this? An archetype comes into being when people are ready for that character it has to be the right time. They recognize in it their hidden wishes and fears. A hundred years ago it was Dracula, a lascivious figure, that stole people’s souls and sucked their blood. Frankenstein became an icon because the, then still young, industrial society had waited for a character like that, who showed people that he could surpass himself. That he could bring creatures to life, but wasn’t able to control them. On a much less unspectacular level I also hit the right nerve at the right time with Mr. Darcy. But to this day I can’t really explain why. He was pretty unfriendly, distant , and ignorant.
Teleschau: Are you more attracted to amiable or ambivalent characters? CF: I think all actors have an inclination to the dark side. And I try to help my characters get a certain kind of ambivalence even if they are amiable. I am always searching for particular features that make the role more versatile.
Teleschau: Where lies the appeal of obscure characters? CF: As actors we shouldn‘t judge our characters, but justify them and their actions, even if it might appear strange to the audience. After all we hope to get them on our side in the end. You can’t immerse yourself into an identity and leave out what you don’t like. It’s all or nothing. Mr. Darcy is an appalling patron in the beginning and I really tried hard to increase the distrust of the audience. In the end it’s a much better experience if the audience likes one or more traits of the character and doesn’t begrudge Darcy his success in capturing the girl’s heart.
That’s an enormously long journey taken in an incredibly short time for an actor, but the sympathies of the audience is much more sincere because they thought differently of the character before.
Teleschau: Is this the reason why you often portray a character who is actually deeply kindhearted underneath it all? CF: Even roles of criminals have potential. The most favorite villains of movie history are the ones that can get the audience on their side. Take Hannibal Lecter for example, a nearly ideal model of a criminal icon in movie history: reason for its popularity is Anthony Hopkins’ charisma. It’s simply incredible that a worldwide audience will favor a cannibal! But ever since then we can’t get enough of his movies, no matter what topic, as long as Anthony Hopkins is in it.
Teleschau: Anthony Hopkins is a famous representative of the English Method Acting.. How different are Hollywood and British cinema? CF: I’ve worked with innumerable American actors and by now it is quite unusual to me to be in a British movie that doesn’t have an American actress in its cast. The difference between Hollywood and British productions isn’t that big. It’s mostly the audience that assumes an entirely different philosophy.
Teleschau: why is that? CF: It might be cultural differences, which don’t have anything to do with quality. While Americans prefer to film a drama that takes place in a trailer park, the British might decide to make a movie portraying a conservative Prime-minister. I’d love to see Eminem in the role of the British conservative. He might even pull it off. The clichι of the pompous British actor is no longer valid.: Daniel Day-Lewis, Tim Roth, Gary Oldman are all very versatile and have been featured in more US productions than European ones. My schooling in London was based on Stanislawski and Strasberg, which was also Method Acting , yet I have developed an American way of approaching acting. It all got mixed up quite fast.
Teleschau: How do you prepare for a role? CF: Nowadays I no longer prepare myself as intensively as I did in the past. I used to research for weeks and tried to adapt myself to my character’s situation in advance. When I was in my twenties all young actors trained for boxing rolls, because we were all fascinated by Robert De Niro’s ”Raging Bull“. We no longer had the desire to be the typical British actor. It was a real cult that developed around the Method Acting. A whole generation of drama students was hypnotized by it.
Teleschau: Why do you think differently today? CF: There is a danger that the method will eclipse the performance itself. It can have positive results when an actor doesn’t put his role aside after the filming is done, just so he won’t distance himself from the character, but often that gets more attention than the movie itself. When Renιe Zelllweger makes changes to her body in a way that would be out of the question for most actresses ;then you can talk about an amazing achievement. And all of us are impressed by the magic of the change. However everyone involved in the movie was bombarded with questions about her diet. The move itself became unimportant. In my opinion the process shouldn’t become the actual product for the public to become interested in.
Teleschau: Are you happy in you occupation? I experience true happiness, if you can call it that, when we rehearse, best on stage. In the moments when I perform for an audience or when I film the finale scene I simply fulfill my contract. I am nothing but a hard worker.
Teleschau: Isn’t it time then to think about alternatives? For many years I have been traveling from one movie set to another and have worked with very many capable directors. And sometimes they really haven’t got a clue . On such occasion I have often thought to make suggestions, in a way that would sort out | ||||
