"His point of view " by Germaine van Ast.

AM The Netherlands, September / October issue 2008

Can a woman be too independent?

Maybe, if she is that too busy doing her own things, that you hardly see each other or talk to one other. Then you might as well be with someone else. But I think independency is also certainly a turn-on. It keeps the relationship alive and when the two of you can do what he/she wants to do, it makes you as a human being happy. Some might see it differently. Livia’s mother, (Mrs. Giuggioli, red) has been a housewife all of her life. She never had ambitions for a career, but took care of her husband, children and household. Still she is according to me, an extremely happy person, who is part of a happy family. That ”doing your own thing“, makes one person happy, the other not. It would be fine with me if my wife would only take care of the household and the kids, but I fell for her in the first place, because she is an independent lady.“

What does she think about the fact her husband is so popular?

When we met 14 years ago, she had never heard of me before. She is an Italian and in her home country I wasn’t famous. She didn’t want a famous actor as a love interest. Today she has gotten used to the attention given to me. She isn’t jealous. Not even a bit!“ Laughing: ”If she only could show a tiny bit of jealousy! Ah well, it keeps the relationship a lot more harmonious.“

To what extent do you resemble the British-courteous characters you often play?

In real life I’m totally different, unfortunately! Courteous disinterested men like Mark Darcy do not exist in real life. At least not any more. Also: That character would never become an actor, he would be too introverted and too modest. And I’m pretty extroverted, otherwise I would have never become an actor. So actually the comparison ends with ”British“. Although I try to be as courteous as I can be….. So:

another cup of tea, My Dear?!“ .

 "Then She Found Me " by Rob Carnevale.

IndieLondon UK, 18 September 2008

COLIN Firth talks about appearing in Helen Hunt’s directorial debut Then She Found Me and why he doesn’t feel particularly typecast as an actor despite perpetuating certain myths about English gentlemen!

He also talks about working with female directors, why he thinks the film industry is still sexist at times, taking risks with movies and working with Michael Winterbottom for his next project.

Q. What appealed to you about Then She Found Me? I imagine the writing?

Colin Firth: It was mainly to do with Helen Hunt, to be honest. That’s what drew my attention to it. I was interested in the fact that she was going to be directing. I’d never met her but she projects a degree of intelligence and it was convincing t me that she’d be able to handle this sort of material very well. I was flattered to be asked, because I’m a big admirer of her as an actress. And then I looked at the rest of the cast, so I just saw it as interesting. I didn’t know what to make of the character because he wasn’t quite as defined at that point. We didn’t have that much time, actually… I was about to do And When Did You Last See Your Father?, which was looming in about three or four weeks time, so the answer initially was: ”No, I’m not free.“ But the producers sort of knew each other and worked it out. The next thing I knew I was doing it.

Q. This character is slightly different from the characters you’ve played before in that he’s a bit more nervy and neurotic…

Colin Firth: I find that at almost every press junket I get that comment, ”this character’s different from what you generally play…“ [Laughs] And that’s OK! But I think ”generally play“ stems back to Mr Darcy. I’m fine with it but I tend to find that if it’s a departure, which in other people’s words it always is, it’s always a departure from that. Certainly, from where I stand, I’m not a specialist in wildly different walks and voices. But I find as much variation and nuance as what satisfies me in what I do. So, I don’t find this particularly different. He has his own peculiarities. You’re probably talking about a cluster of Englishmen in suits but I’ve done quite a big cluster of guys not in suits as well, which I’ve occupied myself with. So, I don’t find that this is the one that stands out.

Q. I suppose I was getting at the fact your character is less in control of their emotions than usual…

Colin Firth: I’ve done a few of those as well. I did a film called Trauma where I was killing people with tarantulas and things… he wasn’t particularly in control of his emotions. Or Where The Truth Lies, where I beat the crap out of the heckler in the crowd. So, again, that didn’t stand out for me particularly. Frank [his character in Then She Found Me] has a certain way of dealing with emotions that’s very eccentric and that appealed to me. It was on the page, this idea that he has a hysterical side, which he tries to keep under control with that rather ludicrous walk. That came about from Helen [Hunt] and myself working together in the couple of days we had to prepare. I thought the walk was funnier if he was more hysterical. In fact, I don’t think any man really talks like that… this was very clearly written by a woman. The original Frank said things like: ”I feel angry and I feel afraid and when I feel like this I go for walks.“ I certainly wouldn’t say that. So, I thought it was just funnier to make him very, very angry and very, very inarticulate with his rage. But that grew out of working on him.

I was also making use of my own English stereotype, if you like, which is that kind of polite containment, which is not very representative of real Englishmen. I think that’s gone with David Niven and Rex Harrison but nevertheless, Greek people still believe it… and I’m probably responsible for perpetuating it [laughs]! So, I thought I could have some fun with that idea, because there’s nothing funnier than a kind of Basil Fawlty rage where you’re trying to be civilised, but you have a very uncivilised emotion going on inside you.

Q. How open was Helen as a director?

Colin Firth: Completely. But most directors are. I think the dictator director is based upon stories from the past. I don’t think anyone would put up with it now. There are a lot of people on a film set with egos. So, to be completely authoritarian, you’d probably have to have a reputation like Kurosowa or somebody to get away with it. She commanded a very quiet respect and I think that’s partly because she’s so experienced. She has a lot of name recognition and people know about her. She’s not a first-time director that’s had to introduce herself to everyone. But it’s not just the fact that she’s known, and people are in awe of that, it’s the fact that her profile speaks of years of experience. I think she started as an actress at the age of 10. So, for someone who’s directing a film for the first time, she certainly doesn’t lack experience of the film set. And I think actors tend to make good films when they direct. I caught myself realising this while I’ve been talking about this film and I find it very, very difficult to think of a film that’s been directed by an actor that hasn’t really worked out well.

Q. Why do you think that is?

Colin Firth: I think it is experience. It sounds like special pleading for my profession but it’s almost a parlour game… think of one. Sean Penn, Clint Eastwood, Robert Redford… it’s an incredible strike rate. Something that struck me when I was reading Sydney Pollack’s obituary was that he said he took acting jobs so that he could spy on other directors. Directors don’t get to see other directors at work – they’re the only one on the set. I’ve met directors who’ve asked me what another filmmaker is like. So, there’s probably nobody better placed to make all the comparisons and to pick up stuff than an actor. So, if you haven’t picked up some tips during an apprenticeship like that, you shouldn’t be directing. It doesn’t mean you can do it, but it loads you up with information.

Q. Would you ever think of directing?

Colin Firth: Not for the sake of it. There’s no point in it unless it’s a story that you really want to tell. It’s a nebulous job. Unless you’re doing it well, you’re not doing anything. And there are a few of those. It’s perfectly possible to be a passenger on a film set because if somebody else has written it, you can make nothing of that role and that’s exactly what bad directors do. There’s a para-phrase about Orson Welles saying: ”Great films are made by great directors and the rest are made by everyone else.“ I’ve been very lucky… before I start insulting the profession of directing, but I think a good director is everything and a bad director really is nothing at all.

Q. What makes a good director then?

Colin Firth: It’s entirely to do with personality, I think. There are good directors who talk a lot, bad directors who talk a lot, and good directors who don’t say much and vice-versa. It just depends on whether people respond to that personality and whether people have a willingness to do something for them. It’s whether they have a vision and whether they’re able to communicate it. The best director is just someone who gets over-excited about doing it – they don’t even have to know much about camera or acting.

Q. Do you think generally that female directors get the recognition they deserve?

Colin Firth: Probably not… I guess the fact there aren’t as many as there are men is probably testament to that. It’s hard to get yourself into a position where someone will trust you to direct a film anyway, whatever sex you are. Certainly in England, the film set is a very male preserve. There’s a lot of very rough looking men pushing equipment around that don’t want the gaffer to be a girl. And I’ve seen that. Some people come up to be directors by coming through the camera department and there’s not a lot of women in the camera department. The ones that are have to kind of prove they’re one of the boys, I think. I don’t want to get into trouble with generalisations but I think it’s a fair observation. Some do make it. Beeban Kidron was a camera operator. And that is a hard route for a woman to come through. There’s still a lot of roles that have to be conformed to. It’s quite an old fashioned environment in a lot of ways.

Q. Is it sexist?

Colin Firth: Sexist. Less racist now but it has been. I don’t think it’s been completely stamped out. There’s a class element to it. And who’s supposed to do what. You’re very unlikely to get a gay grip. I’ve actually heard people protesting furiously about straight male costume people as well [laughs]. It’s not universal and there are examples that break the mould all over the place. In my experience, it’s more prevalent in the UK than in America.

Q. Helen used a predominantly female crew…

Colin Firth: Yeah, this is really a woman’s film.

Q. So how was that for you?

Colin Firth: I’m quite used to it. You should have been on the set of Mamma Mia! Even the men were of questionable masculinity [laughs]. I sometimes wonder if I was written by a woman in real life [laughs]. There’s been quite a list of stuff where the character I play was originated by a woman novelist, or the person who adapted it, or were seen through the eyes of a female protagonist [laughs]. But this is an imaginative, truthful story that happens to be about a woman.

Q. What do you think of the finished film?

Colin Firth: I think it’s very good. We shot it nearly two years ago, so there’s been a lot of time between doing it and seeing it. But all those elements of honesty that we hoped for, I think are there. It’s funnier than I had expected it to be, even though I thought the dialogue was always good. It’s closer to comedy than I had imagined. I don’t think it’s aiming at gags, I think the humour is woven into it. It’s part of how the characters operate and how they deal with disaster because they’re worldly enough to have a bit of irony and wryness about their own circumstances. So, I think the humour comes out of that. I do also think it eludes genre a bit – not in any groundbreaking way but you can’t quite call it a comedy and you can’t quite call it a romantic anything. It’s not quite a drama either really. But it has elements of all those things.

Q. Do you find it hard to read good scripts? And find original ideas?

Colin Firth: I do. I think they’re very thin on the ground. I don’t know if there’s a problem with original ideas… I think a healthy film industry should have a good supply of good, original writing. I do think a good story in a novel is fair game and there’s nothing wrong with adapting that. It sometimes gets a bit facile where they think: ”Let’s get the next best-seller and see if we can turn it into a film.“ But I don’t think that was the case with this. Helen was captivated by a story 10 years ago and it echoed something of her, I think. This certainly isn’t an attempt to cash in on something, which often doesn’t work. This is just a story that happened to start life as a novel. Saying that, I haven’t read the book. But from what I understand, my character barely exists in the book so I think he’s very largely been created by Helen.

Q. You mentioned this doesn’t stick to any particular genre. Do you think that’s the problem with a lot of films – that they need to stick to a particular genre?

Colin Firth: I think it helps to get a film made because people who put money in are nervous. They like to have something recognisable enough to make them secure that there’s a pattern there – that someone else put their money into something like this and made it back. But this is where you get all the market research and things get in danger of becoming formulaic, and where you depend on brands and getting recognised actors. It’s the thing that precludes risk very often, otherwise everyone would be avant-garde all over the place.

Something like Shakespeare in Love, which became such an established hit that it now seems like a foregone conclusion… but it really wasn’t. The script was around for a very, very long time and had people chickening out all the time. It was kind of like: ”What’s this kind of Shakespeare comedy… kind of pantomime for clever-clogs or something? Who’s going to laugh at thigh-slapping, riddle Shakespearean jokes?“ So, somebody eventually took a risk and put an awful lot of money into that film and it was a huge hit. But the way the business responds to that isn’t by saying: ”Look, risks pay off!“

They say: ”Shakespeare pays off!“ So, they’re ignoring the rule that made it a hit by going off and saying: ”Get a film out about Marlow!“ It’s the risk that made it, not the fact that it was Shakespeare. So, I think there’s a danger that good stuff can fall by the wayside if it doesn’t conform to formula. But I think it comes down to money and they just don’t know where it’s going if they haven’t got any precedent. I don’t know where this was going for the 10 years it took to make. I know it was in the hands of a studio at one point, it had a different cast and our production came together very, very quickly and with a small amount of money. They said: ”Make it in this amount of time and go for it now…“ Which is why I was suddenly ambushed and we all found ourselves doing it. I suspect this wasn’t quite recognisable in its genre to give people the confidence just to throw money at it.

Q. How was working with Michael Winterbottom [on Genova]?

Colin Firth: It couldn’t have been better. The way I’ve described Helen’s sort of rigorous honesty I just think he also has tremendously. It’s very strange… he just has this sort of way of making it happen really. You’re not really aware of being directed, so much as being a part of this thing. You’re very close to… unlike Helen’s film or any other film we were walking around with a little video camera and there were 12 of us altogether. The people in the room were less than that… there were no lights, there was no continuity person, a wardrobe department of one, a make-up department of one, a props and design department of one, and a camera and him.

There was also just four walls and dialogue you could depart from and come back to at will, and a very quiet and non-interfering director. The film, I think, is fantastic and I felt it was this refusal to allow it to slide into anything obvious. It’s never mawkish, it’s never sentimental, it’s never overly dramatic, it’s never tragic… even though it’s pretty weighty stuff. It’s something I’m very proud of.

 "People don't take heart-throbs seriously' " by Benjamin Secher

Telegraph UK, 11 September 2008

In his pre-Darcy days, Firth (now 48 years old) felt he "was cultivating a nice reputation for versatility". Variety was the defining characteristic of his early life - born in Nigeria to schoolteacher parents, he moved throughout his childhood between Africa, England and the US - and the first phase of his career saw him embody such diverse characters as a Marxist Etonian (in Another Country, his feature debut), an 18th-century French viscount (in Valmont), and an officer in the Falklands War (in Tumbledown, for which he won a BAFTA).

"I was slightly marginalised in those days, struggling a bit," he says. "In a way it puts you in fairly good odour with the critical community if you are seen to be slightly outside of things." Then Darcy came along and deposited him slap-bang at the heart of the nation's affections. "I discovered that as soon as the term heart-throb comes up, you have got some hard work to do to get people to take you even remotely seriously."

There is no delicate way to put this, but looking at Firth these days one sees the figure of a man shifting squarely into middle age: the black hair fading to grey around the temples; the angular jawline softening into a genial curve. Surely the time is approaching for the secretary of the international heart-throb club to inform him that his membership has expired, freeing him from frivolous romantic roles for good.

"Oh I thought that time had already passed years ago," he says, with a surprisingly toothy smile. "I thought past 30, I wouldn't be doing romantic stuff: one of the reasons I finally accepted the role in Pride and Prejudice was that I thought it was probably my last chance to play a lover. But no, they'll drag you on. You get all kinds of geriatrics playing romantic on screen - and they usually throw in an 18-year-old girl [to co-star]. I don't think it's over for me yet. I've just joined all the other bald, old, fat bastards that we are supposed to believe have got the likes of Scarlett Johansson lusting after them."

Part of the appeal of the new film - which also stars Bette Midler, Matthew Broderick and, in a bizarre cameo as an obstetrician, Salman Rushdie - is that, for once, his leading lady is of the same generation as Firth (Hunt is 45). "I liked that," he says. "I think this film is an honest attempt to tell a story about people in their forties making a mess of their lives, bringing a whole lot of misery on themselves. The characters are not seen at their most flattering - everybody behaves shabbily at one point - and there is something grown up about that."

As a heart-throb or otherwise, Firth remains as in demand as ever. Then She Found Me follows on the heels of an all-singing appearance in Mamma Mia!, and he already has two further films awaiting release. The first is a Michael Winterbottom movie called Genova (which Firth thinks is "just fantastic"); the second, an adaptation of Noël Coward's Easy Virtue.

"The wonderful thing about acting in a film - unlike theatre - is that you have always moved on by the time it comes out," he says. "You can feel somehow protected by the optimism of the new project." Filming is also about to begin on a big-screen version of Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray, in which Firth will appear as Lord Henry Wooton, the corrupter of Ben Barnes's Dorian.

After appearing in more than 50 films, does Firth ever consider giving up acting to focus his energies elsewhere? After all, he is also a published writer - he once contributed a short story to an anthology edited by Nick Hornby - and has a young family to occupy his time (two sons with his wife, Italian film producer Livia Giuggioli, plus a teenage son from a previous relationship with the American actress Meg Tilly).

"There are people who can't quite believe that I am still putting on a frock and mincing about in front of the camera," he says, "and I do sometimes feel that myself. Part of the problem with acting is that, unlike being a concert pianist, the better at it you are, the more trivial it appears to other people; the more it just looks like you are doing a load of behaviour in front of a lens, and anybody can do that." He pauses, his smile fading. "Sometimes I ask myself, is acting a job for a grown-up? Am I stuck with the decision of an 18-year-old? And I think in some ways, yes I am. But then I find myself involved in a new project that's so interesting, working with an actor or director I admire so much, that I wonder why I would even consider giving up."

 "Interview: Colin Firth"

Movies.ie, 11 September 2008

Which is great, successful things, you're probably only too aware of all the oddities that come out over time, but they've all been romantic. So from where I stand romantic is not more than a theme, I think this is more to do with other people's perception of it than mine."

Q: Did you get a handle on such a dark character right away?

"I wasn't sure who he was when I first read it. We didn't have a lot of time, I don't quite know the history but I believe financing came together very suddenly so I was cast in haste. I had 'When Did You Last See Your Father' looming, and I didn't think I had time to do it, but this just fit in beforehand. I didn't know whether they wanted me to play him English or American. He was a little bit undefined on the page, really. But Helen was up for any suggestions, and we just sharpened it in that direction. I think it's quite funny to use that English stereotype and insert a bit of hysteria."

Q: Some of the dialogue doesn't sound like the work of an American screenwriter, did you have a hand at adding some classic Colin Firth dialogue into the script?

"Yeah, I think I tweaked one or two lines in that direction. My character wasn't written English, which is a blessing really because there's no 'I say, old chap,' which could well have been there if they decided to make a virtue of his Englishness. There was a little bit of tailoring to be done to make him playable in my tones. That line is pretty comical, and I think that's not unusual for English guys in a rage. It's usually a preposterous spectacle."

Q: There are a lot of ladies out there who think of you as a sex symbol and a romantic icon. . .

"When I look in the mirror I'm glad that they feel that way. I haven't been chased down the street, not has anyone ever thrown their underwear at me! Anyway, I've spent years trying to figure out why Mr. Darcy's fully clothed swim in his breeches and shirt caused such a sensation. My wife Livia certainly wouldn't go weak at the knees if I came home in a sodden shirt! And I've certainly never seen myself as a sex symbol."

Q: Do you think you will ever get away from the Mr Darcy tag?

"Mr Darcy got my name recognised but it also put me in a box. It made me

feel a bit of a star but 12 years on it feels like a school nickname you can't shake."

Q: Would you ever follow in Helen Hunt's footsteps and direct a movie yourself?

"I don't want to direct myself, it's just too much like hard work. I would direct something if I felt passionate about enough about it to stick at it for a couple of years, two or three years, because it really does take that if you want to develop something yourself. I wouldn't just change my job description for the hell of it."

Q: When playing a dad on screen dad are you conscious that your younger co-stars might steal the scene and take away some of the gloss from your performance?

"Very. This thing about not working children and animals isn't just a mindless adage, there's some wisdom in it. It's not because they're impossible, for one thing there are two conflicting things going on here. You're dealing with a kid of about four, and their needs are nothing to do with the filmmaker's needs. They're not going to time it conveniently, filmmaking does not happen to a schedule, you don't shoot something because you feel like it and you're ready, you shoot something because the camera guy is ready, the circumstances are right, the light is right and the producer is looking at his watch. That's why you shoot it. A four year old is very, very unlikely to have a temperament that's compatible with any of that. And so the chances are you're going to have people there who just ask a child to do that thing, now, and get going again. Also because you're going to lose them in a few minutes because of all the rules. Actually a child doesn't need any of that at all. Probably shouldn't even be there. A child needs all sorts of other things that are nothing to do with filming, or a filmmaker's interests."

Q: Your screen daughter performed beautifully in one scene in which she was supposed to have earache, didn't she?

"We called her Meryl Streep, she's just extraordinary. There was a scene I was talking to Helen about, we just watched her having no self consciousness at all. I can't remember how old she was, I think she wasn't older than about three or four, and she just sat there, existing as a human being while all these cameras and things were going around her. Actors can't do that very easily, we act like we're sitting there existing. But that was the thing where you just think you could take a leaf out of her book, because that's the real thing happening."

Q: Does being a dad actually help in the scenes that you share with younger actors?

"I don't know, dealing with somebody else's child is so different from dealing with your own that you might as well be someone who doesn't have kids. I acted with kids, not as a dad, but I did act with kids before I became a father and I think you're just using your imagination in another way, really. People with kids don't necessarily like anyone else's kids and a lot of people who don't have kids love kids anyway, so I don't know."

Q: What's the reaction of your own children to the notion of acting for a living?

"Two of them are too young really to be at that point, and I haven't really exposed them to much of it. I've got older step kids who I've known since a very early age, and a son, and they're not interested. But they haven't only seen the good bits, they've seen that it's a bit of a mixed commodity."

Then She Found Me is at Irish cinemas from September 19th

"Colin Firth calls intimate Italian film Genova a career highlight"

by Suzanne Ellis.

Toronto City News Canada, 8 September 2008

Video by Brian McKechnie here

Colin Firth describes making Genova, director Michael Winterbottom's latest film, as one of the most enjoyable moviemaking experiences he's had in his career.

"Just in terms of the work because, no offense to crews, but there are no crew," he explains in an interview with CityNews.ca at the InterContinental Hotel in Yorkville. "There are no technicians, no continuity person, no lights, a camera smaller than this one (pointing to the Citytv camera). (Director Winterbottom) doesn't close down the streets, doesn't say 'Action,' doesn't say 'Cut.' So, you're in a room with your family, and you are completely connected to the process the whole time."

Genova is an emotionally complex drama about a middle-aged professor who takes his two daughters from America to live in Italy after their mother dies in a car crash. Shot on DV, the film looks beautiful yet feels intimate and raw, as if you've been invited into the lives of three people coping with loss in their own individual ways.

Firth, who plays the bereaved father, muses that because the setup was minimal he felt a tangible connection to the process.

"There's no auteur as such, you're all creating it, you're all at the heart of it and so it's yours as much as anybody's," he describes. "And even though you're in a fictional world you're able to apply your experiences to it in a way that's quite unusual. If you want to leave the kitchen and go into the bathroom the camera will follow you, with all hope there's nothing in there you're not supposed to see - like the one man props department diving into a laundry hamper to get out of the way."

The British actor, who has built an impressive career over the years with roles in films including Bridget Jones's Diary, The English Patient, Girl With A Pearl Earring, and last year's festival selection When Did You Last See Your Father?, says what attracted him to Genova was the honesty of the story.

"It's not about grief, it's not about love. It's about family in an everyday situation following, as it happens, the death of the mother," he says. "But you still have to cook the eggs for breakfast, you still have to get the kids to school, life has to operate in some way and I think it observes that and I don't know how else to interpret it."

Firth hadn't been to Genova before shooting the film, which occurred over six months, and it clearly captured his heart.

"It's an absolutely stunning city. Italy is spoiled for beautiful cities as you know. It's not one of the ones that's necessarily a big destination and perhaps deserves to be," he notes. "Camogli, which is the village on the sea near Genova where we did a lot the shooting, is as wonderful a place for a holiday as I could ever imagine. Watching the film actually, part of the pleasure for me is just the aching to be there."

CityNews.ca covers TIFF08 on YouTube

 "Englishman who refuses to be typecast ",  by Marianne Gray

The Weekender South Africa, 30 August 2008

Shot in Greece with Meryl Streep as the all-singing, all- dancing mother of the bride, it is one of those films that is such a hoot you come out embarrassed at having had such a good time watching it.

”Like most boys at that time, Abba wasn’t my sound as a teenager,“ says Firth. ”I loved music, but not that kind of music. I was actually a member of a not terribly good band doing Doors covers.“

Better looking in real life than on the screen, a lanky 1,88m with rumpled brown hair, Firth is mellow and articulate, looking endlessly boyish at nearly 48 .

Well known since the 1984 spy film Another Country, his career was for some years typecast by the image of the smoulderingly glandular Mr Darcy in a wet shirt and breeches in the 1995 BBC adaptation of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. ”I would become miserable in this business if I were to be typecast as some quintessentially repressed Englishman in well-cut clothes, and never do the small, interesting, challenging, low- budget film like When Did You Last See Your Father or do a bit of silliness like in Mamma Mia!“ he says.

When Did You Last See Your Father, co-starring Jim Broadbent and Juliet Stevenson and based on Blake Morrison’s book of the same name, is the touching journey of a son (Firth) to discover who his parents (Broadbent, Stevenson) are at the time of his father’s death from cancer. ”It’s an unflinchingly warts and all tale , honestly written and really unguarded. Its honesty gave me an added edge to work with,“ Firth says. ”I didn’t need to look too far for the character. I knew the book, and have had a lifetime of having a dad. Like most children, five minutes within the family home and I’m 16 again.“

Firth was born in Hampshire, the son of academics and grandson of missionaries and ministers on both sides.

He says he was not a great pupil at school, and remembers getting 3% for a chemistry exam.

”As a child I acted a little, and when I was 14 I realised I didn’t have to do the kind of job that school prepares you for. I could act! I got a job in London on a theatre switchboard and stared into the abyss until I met a casting director who helped get me into drama school.“

Never out of a job since he left London’s Drama Centre aged 22, Firth has played everything from the heartless seducer Vicomte de Valmont in Valmont, the Hollywood-backed version of Les Liaisons Dangereuses; to the uncomplicated husband cuckolded by Kristin Scott Thomas in The English Patient; Lord Wessex in Shakespeare in Love; an Arsenal supporter in football movie Fever Pitch; and Johannes Vermeer in Girl with a Pearl Earring.

He played both himself, Colin Firth, and Mark Darcy in the Bridget Jones films.

”I was lucky. I never became a mega star. I didn’t become very famous, very quickly, very young. I had moderate degrees of what, for me, felt like astounding success. Just getting a job out of drama school was fantastic.

”Acting keeps you alive. The more you do, the more you learn. There is no one certain (criterion) for me. I do need to earn a living and I’m insecure about what’s coming next.

”Most actors have this thing that each job could be the last job ever. So I follow Peter O’Toole’s attitude: one to show, one to go.“

Firth lives in London with his wife, Livia Giuggioli, an Italian documentary filmmaker. He has a teenage son called Will with actress Meg Tilly, who he met making Valmont in 1989, and two young sons, Luca and Mateo, with Giuggioli, who he met on location in Colombia while filming the BBC mini-series based on Joseph Conrad’s book Nostromo.

He says they live as green a life as possible and offset their flights for work by contributing to an Oxfam project to install solar- powered water pumps in an African village.

He is also a co-director of Oxfam’s Café Progreso, a chain of ethical coffee bars founded to create fair trade opportunities for coffee co-operatives in Ethiopia, Honduras and Indonesia. He has worked behind the counter in the Portobello Road branch in West London.

Firth is also the unlikely shopkeeper of Britain’s first ecological destination store called Eco in Chiswick, West London and one of the four owners of the shop which offers not just eco goods, but the services of environmental experts to help homeowners make their spaces more energy-efficient.

”I’m no eco hero,“ says Firth . ”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. I feel very political. 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 be donning a wet shirt again soon? ”I might put on a wet shirt again but it would have to be eco cotton and recyclable water,“ he jokes.

# Mamma Mia! is on circuit and When Did You Last See Your Father is being released on October 10.

”I was lucky. I never became a mega star. I didn’t become very famous, very quickly, very young. I had moderate degrees of what, for me, felt like astounding success“

 "ABBA addict",  by Tina Daunt

Los Angeles Times, 11 August 2008

To call him a Jane Austen fan these days would be an understatement: His decision to play Fitzwilliam Darcy in the 1995 BBC version of "Pride and Prejudice" made him a Janeite pin-up, the wet shirt scene forever held on pause.

And now, with his role as Harry Bright in "Mamma Mia!" - which seems to have sold every movie ticket not stamped "Dark Knight" - the quintessential English actor has taken a fresh look at the band he and his high-school mates in southern England once ridiculed and disdained.

Unshaven and casually dressed on the morning after the London premiere, Firth sipped cappuccino at a members-only club near his home in a quiet outer London neighborhood. He explained how his cultural roots actually were planted deep in American soil and then somehow grew to include a Swedish disco band that sang in English.

"I think it's time we all came out," he said. "I think you either like ABBA or you're lying."

Firth brings to his new role not only an astonishing range of film and television experience but also a certain kind of intellectual masculinity, honed by years of reading William Faulkner and D.H. Lawrence and listening to American folk songs, along with a variety of English underground music and experimental jazz .

The son of an American history teacher who specialized in 1960s folk music and the civil rights movement, pop was never played in his boyhood home.

"I came from a class and a generation of English people - it wasn't conscious snobbery, it's just that pop was really for other people," he said. "We were listening instead to Paul Robeson, Woody Guthrie and Joan Baez.

"The '60s had a big effect on me. I grew up with a fascination for America and a passion for America."

By the 1970s, he was listening to music that made him seem cool. "I was looking for the most obscure music I could find - Soft Machine, Little Feat. Also Hendrix."

Relaxed but reserved, his conversation is at first guarded but then eases into that English version of intimacy — self-depreciating humor, dry and complex, like a good gin.

"There are so many reference points in ABBA's songs," he said. "You remember the first time you got beat up in the disco, 'Dancing Queen' was probably playing. You'd get an ABBA song stuck in your head and would hear it over and over while taking exams or when your girlfriend was dumping you."

And as the decades went by -and Firth's acting career flourished, with movies such as "Valmont," "Bridget Jones' Diary," "The English Patient" and, recently, "When Did You Last See Your Father?" - ABBA's music would pop up. The music seemed to have invaded the consciousness like a sonic kudzu vine.

"I'd listen to Little Feat, but not to the extent that people were listening to ABBA nearly 40 years later. It was quite extraordinary."

Last year he received a call from director Phyllida Lloyd and producer Benny Andersson asking if he would join the "Mamma Mia!" cast.

The idea both intrigued and terrified Firth. For starters, he'd had never sung outside his own shower.

"I tried to persuade them that I couldn't sing," Firth said. "Stellan (Skarsgard) and Pierce (Brosnan) had the same experience. None of us had any faith in our ability to sing.

"I didn't care about the dancing. I'm not really a dancer. You get what you're given on that one."

Firth came to think of the men in the film as "the token amateurs, if you like. Just there to make everyone feel included.

He started singing ABBA songs everywhere - in the car, in the kitchen. (He lives in London and Italy with his wife and two children.)

"Certain people wanted to move out of my house at that time," he joked.

"Suddenly, film actor Colin Firth is everywhere",  by Nancy Mills

New York Times , 27 July 2008

"For my wife's documentary 'In Prison My Whole Life' (about imprisoned political activist and former Black Panther member Mumia Abu-Jamal), I was sitting in a room in Amsterdam interviewing Snoop Dogg on a Wednesday. Two days later I was singing for Benny and Bjorn (Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus of ABBA, whose music provides the score for "Mamma Mia!"). The week before I was kissing a transvestite, played by Rupert Everett, for 'St. Trinian's.' I was also working with Michael Winterbottom on 'Genova,' which is about grief and death.

"I'm just an actor!," he exclaims. "To be going through all these things is incredibly fortunate."

And he hasn't even mentioned the two movies now onscreen. In "Then She Found Me," which marks Hunt's feature-film directorial debut, Firth plays her character's potential sweetheart.

"The film offers a good balance of showing the defects in people's ability to conduct relationships," he says. "It allows everyone to be sympathetic while seeing the little and big disappointments we inflict on each other.

"Helen's character is jittery and bruised and neurotic," the actor continues, "and my character has this strange, eccentric volatility about him. Whenever he loses his temper, he goes for a walk."

Firth recognizes the type.

"Most Englishmen losing their temper resemble Basil Fawlty," he observes, referring to John Cleese's immortal innkeeper from the television series "Fawlty Towers" (1975-1979). "There's something about the English need to compose themselves and be polite, so, when they lose their temper, it comes out in a shrill and hysterical way. When I lose my temper, I tend to get laughed at, rather than have people twittering with fear."

"When Did You Last See Your Father?" also resonates with the actor. Based on Blake Morrison's memoir, the film is about a son coming to terms with his dying father.

"I don't think there's a man I've met who's seen it who didn't feel, in a personal way, that it's his story," Firth says. "Blake talks about his feelings in a very male way, through gritted teeth at times, railing and flailing, before finally giving in to this very moving acknowledgment of how much he loves his father. You hear all the resistance and anger along the way. It's not sentimental. It's not an easily earned father-and-son love story."

"What we probably suffered from was that he was reserved," he says. "My father didn't want to give in to expressing personal feelings."

Raising Firth, the eldest of three, may not have been the easiest job, he admits.

"I was probably nothing more than a huge irritant most of the time," says the actor, who spent his toddler years in Africa with his parents, both of whom were teachers, before returning to Hampshire, a county on the southern coast of England. "I wasn't going around getting locked up. I just didn't do things the way people wanted me to. I didn't attend classes all the time, I didn't go to university. I went my own way and stuck to my own interests.

"Luckily I found acting, which made room for all my particular foibles," Firth says. "I never read Jane Austen until I came to do 'Pride and Prejudice,' because it didn't seem cool. I thought cool people read Heller and Sartre."

His parents didn't initially encourage his aspirations.

"I remember watching a crowd scene on television," Firth says, "and my mom said, 'See all those people walking up and down the street? They're actors.' It was a case of 'Do you want to do that? Because that's what most actors do - you've got two people doing dialogue in front and 200 people walking in the back.' That certainly wasn't my ambition."

As it turned out, Firth became one of the two people in front. He studied at the London Drama Center, played Hamlet, found an agent, got cast in the West End production of "Another Country" (1983) and then starred in the 1984 film version. Since then he has worked steadily, making more than 50 films, including "The English Patient" (1996), "Shakespeare in Love" (1998) and "Bridget Jones's Diary" (2001), in which he played Mark ... Darcy.

This summer's "Mamma Mia!" will give audiences a chance to see Firth's musical side. He sings ABBA's "Our Last Summer" - not the group's biggest hit, which is fine with Firth.

"It's not hugely well known," he says, "so I'm not on sacred ground."

Nevertheless, the chances of his becoming a pop star are slight at this point.

"It's sad to let go of some of your dreams," he says, "but I think that one can go. I still have a private fantasy that it would be nice, so I haven't totally grown out of it. But do I really see it in my future? No. I'm not going to move over into rock 'n' roll now - although I have to say, when I was doing 'Girl With a Pearl Earring' (2003) and they gave me that long hair, my instinct was to get in front of a mirror and put a guitar on."

Recently Firth has begun to reorder his priorities, for which he gives partial credit to "When Did You Last See Your Father?"

"This movie is not just about the death of a father," he says. "It's about being a dad, and I'm a dad. Rarely do I do a film that wakes me up, but this one has made me want to be careful. I want to make sure I don't harm the people around me."

Firth has three sons, the eldest, 17-year-old Will, from a four-year relationship with Meg Tilly, his co-star in "Valmont" (1989). He and Giuggioli, whom he met while making the miniseries "Nostromo" (1996), have 7-year-old Luca and 4-year-old Mateo.

"I'm not prepared to recklessly abandon myself to my job," Firth says. "What happens when I come home is what it's all about. I want my life to be more important than my work.

"I think I'm moving in that direction," he concludes. "I'm mellowing in my dotag.

"Facing my Waterloo", by Gerry Maddox.

The Age Australia, 12 July 2008

"Everything on this film was enjoyable once we'd crossed a few fear thresholds," he says. "It was almost obscene to be getting paid. I remember sitting with Stellan and Pierce on the deck of a boat, gazing out at the Mediterranean, and I actually said to them 'do you ever feel overpaid?'

"I almost got thrown overboard at that moment because the producer happened to be standing there."

Of the challenges facing the actors, learning ABBA's songs was not one. "It's not hard to get it in your head, I tell you," Firth says. "It's getting it out that's the challenge. I was sharing a plane with (co-star) Dominic (Cooper) for 24 hours and (remember) just waking up in a fevered state with Chiquitita running around my head."

Firth was impressed by the way the movie's story was built around the songs. "I don't know how on earth you'd take however many songs we've got and thread them together in this way," he says. "There are times they don't quite fit if you're going to be literal about the narrative. But the spirit of the songs belongs perfectly in each moment that's been designated ...

"What I think the magic of it is for the audience is we all know the songs and we all have a past as well. So rather than fresh dialogue in a new play that you've never seen, you get a moment when suddenly that's your past speaking as well. So you hear the first three notes of a song and everyone is suddenly connected."

"Colin Firth talks about the challenges of Mamma Mia!" by Clair Sutherland.

Herald Sun Australia, 10 July 2008

‘‘No, I'm not. I'm not sure about how convincing that is, really.''

During a later photo shoot, Firth spends some time discussing the G8 Summit and the situation in Zimbabwe. Clearly a press junket discussing the froth and bubble that is the film adaptation of Mamma Mia! isn't his natural habitat.

Which isn't to say he doesn't do a nice line in wicked gossip.

The cast of Mamma Mia!, which also includes Meryl Streep, Pierce Brosnan and Stellan Skarsgard, won their roles before the producers even knew if they could hold a note. Asked what would have happened if one of them had turned out to be tone deaf, and Firth offers: ‘‘Well one of the cast actually was,'' following it up with an enigmatic ‘‘Hmmm'' when asked to name names (all available evidence points to Brosnan).

‘‘They have little levers and knobs behind glass to fix that kind of thing. Funnily enough, once they fixed this particular person's issue with pitch the voice was really rather effective, I thought.''

The non-singing, non-dancing cast of Mamma Mia! took a big risk in signing up, but Firth doesn't characterise the chance of him making a damn fool of himself as a risk.

‘‘I think it's almost guaranteed that I will really. Normally when you take a job on there are all kinds of uncertainties, but I don't think that was one on this. Just the wardrobe choices alone . . .''

The first Firth realised he'd be able to pull off the singing component was when he sat down with the musical director, an appointment he realises now was a quasi audition, despite having been already offered the part.

‘‘Even though you can't really offer a role and then withdraw it, I think if I had sat down and it had been catastrophic we would all have agreed to part company,'' he says.

His path into the world of the musical was eased by the fact his song (Our Last Summer) was one of the least vocally demanding.

‘‘I think I got off rather lightly in that I don't think it's the most difficult song to sing. I haven't tried the others, but it's probably one of the easier ones. It's not a show stopper,'' he says.

He was also more comfortable with his song happening as he's strumming his guitar.

‘‘I didn't have to make that strange transition in the musical-theatre convention of I'm talking to you one minute and the next I'm singing my thoughts. It was a song in a naturalistic context,'' he says.

In Mamma Mia! Firth, Brosnan and Skarsgard play Streep's long-ago lovers. Any of the three might be the father of her daughter Sophie. Very much a chick movie, Skarsgard was moved to describe the threesome as the film's ‘‘bimbos''.

Firth disagrees.

‘‘Bimbos are usually young and attractive,'' he says.

‘‘I've heard us referred to as the handbags the other day, which I think is a little better.

‘‘But he's right. If most mainstream cinema has the female as a kind of accessory to the story, that's reversed here. We're the devices.''

And as such, he's happy to admit they had a free ride.

‘‘There was very little pressure on us, really. Certainly for Stellan and myself it was just a walk in the park -- Pierce had a lot more on his shoulders obviously.

‘‘Some people were working, but it really wasn't us.''

There was more work in his role in the forthcoming British family drama And When Did You Last See Your Father? In it Firth plays a writer struggling to deal with the imminent death of his difficult dad.

It's a part that made Firth reflect inevitably on his own children (William, 18, from his brief marriage to actor Meg Tilly, and Luca, 7, and Matteo, 4, with his wife Livia Giuggioli) and father.

‘‘We all have father issues, they're not all going to be identical, but there cannot be an exception on Earth. Even if you don't have a dad you have issues about it, and so the whole notion of losing this person or being angry at somebody in that position is universal,'' he says.

‘‘But my father is not a bully or a narcissist. He doesn't have that kind of desire for attention. I'm probably more like that dad than my dad is.''

Firth's role in Mamma Mia! comes 24 years after his first film, Another Country, opposite another young actor making his movie debut, Rupert Everett.

The encounter led to a decades-long love/hate relationship between the two, capped off by Everett's memoir Red Carpet and Other Banana Skins, in which he described Firth as insufferably earnest and accused him of bringing a guitar and wearing sandals to the set.

In a later chapter, about making The Importance of Being Earnest together, Everett gleefully describes pressing Firth to smoke a joint on the set, only to be interrupted by super producer Harvey Weinstein.

‘‘Oh, it's lies from beginning to end,'' Firth says, before qualifying himself.

‘‘I mean it's not entirely lies, I recognise glimpses of things that have some connection with the truth as I remember it -- but it's so glaringly embellished as far as I'm concerned I kind of lose sight of the fact it might not be obvious to everyone else.

‘‘It's a bit of vengeful mischief calling it all lies because some of it is outright nonsense, but I think he deserves that response.

‘‘Now, I never owned a pair of sandals. I didn't ever bring a guitar to the set. I think he saw me as terribly earnest and he was rather decadent and worldly and sophisticated. I would have liked to have been like that, and kind of thought I was a bit, until I met Rupert and suddenly he made me feel like a choirboy.

‘‘What is it he said? ‘A ghastly guitar-strumming redbrick socialist' -- I think it was almost entirely based on the fact he saw me with a copy of (left-leaning paper) The Guardian one day. Everything else fitted into place in his imagination.''

Firth will allow that some of his second appearance in Everett's book may be rooted in fact, ‘‘but it's wildly decorated''.

For all his denials of sandal-wearing and guitar-strumming though, Firth found himself doing both on the set of Mamma Mia!, albeit in sandals provided to help him cross a stony beach, and a guitar to use as part of the scene.

‘‘We got paparazzied during that moment,'' he laughs. ‘‘I realised I had become the thing I had always denied being.''

Mamma Mia! opens today.

When Did You Last See Your Father? opens July 31.

"Profile: Colin Firth" by Todd Hill

Staten Island Advance, 5 June 2008

(The Michael Winterbottom movie "Genova," which stars Firth, opened last month in the U.K., while the actor will likely be seen by a considerably larger audience next month in the ABBA musical "Mamma Mia!")

"But I didn't do them all in one year so it's a kind of totally bogus perception in a way. These are past sins all coming to visit me at once," said Firth, in a suite at Manhattan's Regency Hotel.

In "Father" the actor plays Blake Morrison, who authored the memoir on which the film is based. At the center of the movie is a troubled relationship between father (played by Jim Broadbent) and son (Firth's role), which comes once again to the fore as the son returns to visit his dad as he's dying.

"I think a lot of the things that he's furious with his father about can be far more generously interpreted. I just think his son happened to be in a very sensitive place at the age of 17, when your need to be taken seriously is at its height and you want people to think you're a Dostoyevsky scholar and your father comes in with humiliating jokes and just basically reminds everybody that you're some little squirt," said Firth.

"The trouble is some part of that can last until you're 47. You've grown up and you think you don't care, but then you go home and a tone of voice will conjure it all up again. Dad, you know, he's moved on, so why are we back here?"

While the film features a grand, somewhat showy performance by Broadbent as the narcissistic father, Firth's role is considerably more subdued -- "my job is to sit by his deathbed most of the time," he said.

"I actually find it the most difficult work you can have," said Firth of such interior roles. "Blake was waiting to be colored in a little bit. I don't really feel it's my job."

The actor shifted the discussion to another movie he previously appeared in, 2003's "Girl With a Pearl Earring," in which he played the Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer.

"I'm using another example because it's easier to talk about something further away. I don't want to write for anybody. I've done a lot of roles like this and I was very conscious of it," he explained.

"In the case of Vermeer there's a mystery there. We don't know anything about him, there's a hole there. We know about his family, the names of all his children, we've got quotes from friends and contemporaries and everything, we've got self-portraits of every Dutch artist of the period. There's nothing on him, nothing."

Continued the actor, "I think for the actor to weigh in and solve the mystery is not appropriate. I'll fill it in secretly, but I don't want to take it in a direction that's not there explicitly."

Firth, happily, doesn't take the same approach to press interviews, and acknowledges that the profile of past performances can easily overshadow more current ones he's obligated to promote.

For most of his fans Colin Firth is most readily associated with his turn as Mr. Darcy in a British television miniseries version of the Jane Austen novel "Pride and Prejudice," considered by those fans to be the definitive Austen screen adaptation. So we, of course, asked the actor about how he feels about this association.

"It happens so often that you can't have any feelings about it. The question I answer now is how I feel about answering it, rather than about answering it itself," he said.

"You just go around in circles until you actually don't have any opinions about it at all anymore. It all feels like it's someone else's deal."

But Darcy remains very much Firth's deal, and the actor appears to have made peace with that, as perhaps he must -- it's what he gets most recognized for in public.

"It will be that or 'Bridget Jones,' which is very connected to it obviously. Every so often I get a nice surprise and someone picks out something that I did either before or after," he said.

"As for it being my breakout role, I felt things were going very well before 'Pride and Prejudice' so I was a little surprised to find how anonymous I must've been."

In fact, "Prejudice" first aired in 1995, 11 years after Firth first began appearing on television and in film.

The final word has yet to be written on Firth's acting career, however, so the jury's still out on whether any future roles may yet usurp his Mr. Darcy. Right now, for instance, he's feeling a lot of anticipation for "Mamma Mia!"

"My repertoire in terms of what I liked to listen to or tried to play did not include ABBA as a teenage straight male in the '70s," he said in explaining why he signed on for the project.

"It felt like fun. It just made my year very colorful. A big dose of not taking yourself very seriously every so often is a matter of survival in a business that is absurd otherwise.

"Once you dress up like that and sing an ABBA song you've long left your dignity behind."

"Q&A Colin Firth"

LA Times-Washington Post , 18 March 2008

Q.: So what did your parents imagine you doing, if not acting?

A.: No ... they weren't prescriptive in that way. Acting was unfamiliar and frightening to them. And even though acting's familiar to me, I'd be frightened for my children if they went into it. It can mess with your mind unless you've got a very solid basis to put yourself.

Q.: And did you have to work on that foundation before you dove into acting or did you do it along the way?

A.: I had a fairly stable family. My father was a history lecturer and even though we moved around a lot, we were together throughout. I had a lot of friends. And humor was also very important. ... I was soundly mocked by friends growing up.

Q.: Mocked? For what?

A.: Well, for everything, really. Being too tall ... you name it! And if other people took me too seriously, it certainly wasn't going to happen on the home front. I think self-mockery and having people who keep you on edge, I think that is where you get that solid core.

Q.: In other words, if you can't take a joke, you become one.

A.: Well, I think so. And also, I didn't become a megastar. I didn't become very famous very quickly and very young. I had moderate degrees of what was, for me, astounding success. Just to get a job out of drama school after being told constantly how that couldn't happen. Instead, I got a fantastic job, taking over for Daniel Day-Lewis in "Another Country," and suddenly I'm on the West End and my picture's outside the theater, and if that wasn't stardom, I didn't know what was. But then the next thing came along and that didn't work out and the next thing did and the next thing didn't and so on. So that graph had been going up and down for about 10 years until a new level of recognition came about, and by then, I was a few years older and the sense of healthy skepticism was hard-wired into me at that point.

Q.: Was it "Pride and Prejudice" that made you everybody's first, second, third, even fourth or fifth choice for romantic lead?

A.: Interestingly, I tend to think it was more "Bridget Jones" that did that, though it could be said that "Pride and Prejudice" led to "Bridget Jones" ... which in turn led to other romantic comedies. At the time, I did "Pride and Prejudice," I was wondering if anyone would cast me in a comedy.

Q.: And did you get this role in "Then She Found Me" on the basis of what you had done in romantic comedy since?

A.: I don't mean to shuffle off the question, but that's something you may have to ask Helen (Hunt, the director-star) because I've never asked her. I just got the call and the script.

Q.: If you weren't doing this, if the acting thing hadn't worked out somehow, what would you be doing ... teaching history?

A.: I don't know. Teaching is so much in my family ... but, I don't know. I've always felt I would have come to no good if this hadn't worked out, become some kind of petty criminal, I suppose, struggling with minor fraud, trying to make ends meet.

Q.: Has the passion grown over time, the longer you're in it?

A.: No, I have a different relationship with it, really, in that ... well, the sheer excitement of being employed at all has obviously worn off, which sounds dangerously close to being jaded. But I've been lucky, so if I've been spoiled to that extent, so be it.

"Finding Colin" by Gene Seymour.

The Post and Courier, 10 May 2008

Movie audiences will see even more of Firth in the coming months. In "And When Did You Last See Your Father?," opening in June, he plays a middle-aged writer having a troubled reconciliation with his dying father. The romantic comedy, "The Accidental Husband," opens in August. And in July, there's "Mamma Mia!," the much-anticipated adaptation of the ABBA musical, in which Firth plays one of two possible candidates for father of the bride.

o, how did Firth get to be so busy, anyway? Gene Seymour asked him about this and other aspects of his respectable - and respected - career.

Is this how life happens to you generally? All these jobs coming at you at once?

Compared to most actors' lives and probably most creative people's lives, I think I probably have some degree of steadiness in that there's been a reasonably reliable work rhythm for me ... which is rather ironic, given how much my parents feared for me when I was entering this precarious profession. They said, "Well, are you sure you could live with that kind of insecurity?"

So what did your parents imagine you doing, if not acting?

No ... they weren't prescriptive in that way. Acting was unfamiliar and frightening to them. And even though acting's familiar to me, I'd be frightened for my children if they went into it. It can mess with your mind unless you've got a very solid basis to put yourself.

And did you have to work on that foundation before you dove into acting or did you do it along the way?

I had a fairly stable family. My father was a history lecturer and even though we moved around a lot, we were together throughout. I had a lot of friends. And humor was also very important. ... I was soundly mocked by friends growing up.

Was it "Pride and Prejudice" that made you everybody's first, second, third, even fourth or fifth choice for romantic lead?

Interestingly, I tend to think it was more "Bridget Jones" that did that, though it could be said that "Pride and Prejudice" led to "Bridget Jones" ... which in turn led to other romantic comedies. At the time, I did "Pride and Prejudice," I was wondering if anyone would cast me in a comedy.

And did you get this role in "Then She Found Me" on the basis of what you had done in romantic comedy since?

I don't mean to shuffle off the question, but that's something you may have to ask Helen [Hunt, the director-star] because I've never asked her. I just got the call and the script.

If you weren't doing this, if the acting thing hadn't worked out somehow, what would you be doing ... teaching history?

I don't know. Teaching is so much in my family ... but, I don't know. I've always felt I would have come to no good if this hadn't worked out, become some kind of petty criminal, I suppose, struggling with minor fraud, trying to make ends meet.

Has the passion grown over time, the longer you're in it?

No, I have a different relationship with it, really, in that ... well, the sheer excitement of being employed at all has obviously worn off, which sounds dangerously close to being jaded. But I've been lucky, so if I've been spoiled to that extent, so be it.

"Colin Firth planning year-long acting hiatus"

Australian News, 9 May 2008

"Kiss my Darcy" by Helen Barlow

The Sydney Morning Herald, 28  March 2008

The Bridget Jones films, including the one where he let Grant have it, had of course already satirised Firth's tall and handsome but rather uptight Mr Darcy. However, nothing would have prepared him for the St Trinian's onslaught, where he says he was "subjected to every indignity possible", including love scenes with his old friend Rupert Everett, who plays the headmistress of St Trinian's as well as her brother, Carnaby.

"This was Rupert's project. It wasn't something that was cooked up as a double act between us. In fact, I was quite resistant to it for a while. After all, what's fun about the education minister?"

Firth came on board the film, an update of the '50s Ealing comedies, when he was able to make a few changes. St Trinian's became a huge Christmas hit in Britain and it wouldn't be nearly as funny without him.

"Originally the role was so incredibly wet there was nothing appealing about him. Of course, as soon as he sets foot in the school, you know he's going to be eaten alive by the girls and everybody else.

"I thought it would be more interesting if he's pretty sure of himself and is quite arrogant. Then they can take him apart and it's a little more fun. It gave a little more frisson to whatever eroticism there is between him and Miss [Camilla] Fritton."

Eroticism with a character Everett says he based on his posh mother and Camilla Parker-Bowles. Is Firth kidding? Of course he is, even though he fails to laugh. Was the biggest challenge getting past Rupert's big boobs or the false teeth?

"Well, you see, Rupert was a little coy about kissing. I've known him for a very long time and I just clearly don't do it for him any more. It took quite a few takes. Rupert didn't think from a story point of view that it should end in a big kiss but we'd tried all sorts of slapstick alternatives - including the popping of the boobs - and it proved to be a monstrous task and one in which I failed spectacularly.

"We even tried taping drawing pins to the palms of my hands to try to get the damn things to explode but they were as tough as anything. It makes you realise what women like this are made of."

Everett, Firth's co-star in movies including The Importance Of Being Earnest - which, like St Trinian's, was directed by Oliver Parker - clearly got his own back by having Firth appear nude.

"They sprang it on me the day before," he explains with mock disgust. "I said to the guys, 'I'm not getting any younger and if you're going to ask a man in his mid-40s, er, late 40s now, to whip his shirt off, 'you've got to give me a chance to combat gravity for a month or two.' So I didn't have time to go to the gym. I was completely ambushed."

Firth was also caught off-guard with the singing of the grand finale number, Love Is In The Air, originally recorded by John Paul Young. The song makes some of us cringe?now.

"Well, I don't think Rupert and I have done anything to make it less cringeworthy," he says. "Initially the producers wanted to release our version as a Christmas single but I flatly refused. I would have had hit men after me if it was played on the radio. I said I'd come in and try something as long as it was on the end credits only."

"Colin Firth pours cold water on 'Mr Darcy myth"

The Age Australia, 6  March 2008

"Movie pair admit it's time for a change" by Rob Driscoll.

Western Mail , 29  February 2008

”In fact, I heard of one woman who was admitted to hospital diagnosed with blood pressure, and told by doctors not to watch any more of Pride and Prejudice. She was 103.“

In The Accidental Husband, Thurman stars as Dr Emma Lloyd, a popular New York radio shrink doling out sensible advice to the lovelorn. Off air, her own life seems equally successful, with plans to tie the knot with the straight- laced, smartly-dressed publisher Richard (Firth), who does all the right things – buys flowers, books, romantic dinners and even takes an interest in interior design.

Yet Emma is also strangely drawn to a handsome fireman called Patrick (Grey’s Anatomy star Jeffrey Dean Morgan), who claims to have accidentally married her by computer error – in a storyline a tad too complex to go into here.

Suffice it to say that Emma must choose between her dependable but safe, politically-correct fiancé, and the more rough-and-ready, blue-collar hunk who would already appear to be her official spouse.

&nb