The seven
myths
of Firth
Women love him; men are,
at best, deeply suspicious of him. But Colin Firth is not Darcy (either
of them). He’s funny, he rarely smoulders and the last thing he ever
wanted to do was another Bridget Jones movie
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1
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He is repressed |
| “I’m a big smiler. I have a
fairly outgoing disposition. Like most people, I deal with shyness in
my own ways. But I like to talk, I’m not quiet. I think about things
too much, though. I enjoy that, probably to a fault. It can be quite
paralysing, over-thinking. There’s this Hamlet quote, something like
being “sicklied o’er with the pale cast of cast and losing the name of
action”. I’ve changed over the years, I’ve become better at thinking
and doing. But there’s nothing repressed about my passion—I wish there
was. People around me wish there was.” |
| He
is just another English public-school boy |
2 |
| “It was strange for me to
come to represent the public-schoolboy. I started speaking posh at
sixth form in Eastleigh in Hampshire, because the crowd I considered
cool were well-spoken; before that, at my secondary modern in
Winchester, I was putting on the Hampshire accent. It was survival—you
couldn’t do Queen’s English, not in the playground. I’m a bit of a
mongrel, really. I have all these American strains running through me—I
was at school in St Louis for one year and was called The Yank during
my secondary-school days. My sensibilities, my tastes and my
preferences and where I feel at home are largely the other side of the
Atlantic. My mother’s upbringing was largely in the Mid-West, and I was
there eight years. My sister married an American, the mother of my
first child is American... I consider it to be a huge part of myself.” |
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3
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He has no sense of humour |
| “If there’s any perception
of me—I mean, I’m ignored and treated as a stranger most of the
time—but if I do get noticed, I do tend to find a smirk creeps onto the
face, as if it’s rather ridiculous that I exist. There’s a smiling
shake of the head; if I’m in a particular shop or restaurant, it’s
like: ‘Him? Here?’ The
funniest and silliest thing they’ve ever seen is
me in this place. Once they get past the smirk, there’s curiosity. I
get questions. I think it’s wanting to know if I’ve got a sense of
humour. There’s nothing I like more than seeing the absurd side of
things. Every time I’ve been down, my saving grace has been to see the
absurd side of it. You can’t philosophise your way out. I don’t think
I’ve got any friends—any
friends—where taking the mickey isn’t in the
mix.” |
| He is a bastion of middle-English values |
4
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| “I love England for its
wryness and its incredible sense of humour and its relish in
friendships... but it’s the whole thing in the street, in the queue, on
the train, at airports—people are talking too loud behind you, they’re
walking too slow in front of you, too fast behind you, someone didn’t
say please, they cut someone up in the road...and it can extend
towards, ‘If you’re not polite I’m going to beat the crap out of you.’
Take Love Actually: people
flocked to see it and lots of people got
very cross with it, but it was only here that people got annoyed with
it. I’m married to an Italian so I spend a lot of time in Italy, and
they wave their hands a lot but they’re actually not annoyed; they’ve
forgotten it in an instant. An incident in the road happens, makes the
other driver angry, gesture, off: they’ve forgotten about it. An
Englishman I know was annoyed by the shape of the new Citroën—annoyed!” |
5
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He is intellectually vain |
| “An actor with a serious
thought is considered something quite absurd in this country. And the
more celebrated you are, the less you’re allowed to think. I do what I
see fit. I do feel that everyone has a responsibility to do something
as a citizen in a democracy. I’ve attended events where a television
camera’s shown up because I’m there, and I’ve immediately got a
slightly sneering, ‘What are you
doing here?’ The cynics and the people
who don’t give a shit are constantly on the lookout for hypocrisy in
everything that might be well-intentioned—someone eats a bit less meat,
they have to go at them for eating a shrimp...” |
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| He is physically vain |
6 |
| “I’m not especially vain.
There’s an inevitability to thinking about yourself as an actor—you are
your own raw material. But I can walk past a mirror without looking at
it. I do glance in a shop window and I will go, ‘Shit, my hair’s
looking flat,’ but the closer I get to having to go in front of a
camera or on a stage, the more distracted I get from how I look. You
just suspend that, or it freaks you out. There’s something reckless
about going on.” |
| 7 |
He plays the same part every time |
| “As an actor, I’ve learned
to become passionate in small bursts and then to become passionate
about something else. It’s not a very grown-up way to be, really, but
that’s the way actors work...It’s like being a serial monogamist.
That’s why I was against doing Bridget Jones again. There was such an
inevitability about it, and that doesn’t appeal to me very much—the
actor is conditioned to look for new things. I felt I was recruited
more than cast. But my scepticism evaporated on the first script
read-through, when I saw how much goodwill there was towards these
characters, and I realised there was more to be done. And I’m quite
good at convincing myself each time that’s the first time I’ve ever
acted.” |
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"A Bloody Mary really can work wonders,"
says Elfie Semotan
who photographed Colin Firth in London in anticipation of the actor
reprising his role in the new Bridget Jones film. "Colin was lovely
but hates having his photograph taken and only after his
second drink did he start to loosen up."
-contributed by JennyF
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