Colin Firth

18/02/2010

The newly crowned Bafta king explains why he's no longer Mr Bland

by Chris Sullivan

“I’m almost 50 and, I must say, I am really rather happy with where I am ,” explains actor Colin Firth sitting opposite me over breakfast in the Mayfair Hotel. “When I was 25 I was very conscious of being featureless of having no texture. I was very bland - just like your average 25 year old - and I used to look at these older actors and think, ‘that’s where I’d like to be. Obviously I do not relish deterioration but there is a wealth of knowledge and experience, and hopefully wisdom, one can pull on as an older man which just isn’t there as a young man.”
 
The father of three sons, Luca (9) and Mateo (6) with his wife, Livia Giuggoli, and William aged 19 from his first marriage to actress, Meg Tilly, Firth hails from a family of academics and soon after drama school hit pay dirt as, red under the bed, Tommy Judd in, Another Country in 1984. Subsequently, he was BAFTA nominated for his role as Falklands casualty, Lieutenant Robert Lawrence, in the excellent Tumbledown in 1988, picked up rave reviews playing a lawyer defending a sow in the much under rated, Hour of The Pig, in 1993   and two years later, as Mr Darcy in the BBC’s Pride and Prejudice, tickled the fancy of millions of women and thus became a household name.

“I certainly wouldn’t knock my role as Darcy,”chuckles the extremely loquacious actor. “Because it doesn’t happen to many of us but I am still bewildered why it struck such a chord. Even today sometimes when I walk down the street men still shout: ‘look it’s Mr Darcy!’ But without Darcy I might not be here now.”
 
For his latest role as, George, in former Gucci main man now turned film director, Tom Ford’s adaptation of Christopher Isherwood’s, A Single Man, the actor has drawn on all of his thirty years to deliver a performance that has won him the best actor at the Venice Film Festival, four critics circle awards as well as a BAFTA and an Oscar nomination - both of which he is heavily tipped to win. “This guy George wakes up in the morning and   there wasn’t a great deal more to do with him, as it was all on the page, ready to bring to life,” informs Firth characteristically self deprecating. “Once he [Tom Ford] set up the atmosphere, and I saw the house George lived in… it was there.”
 
I will admit, that I approached the movie with trepidation. I was aware of the book that tells of 24 hours in the life of a homosexual man who has lost his long time partner the, love of his life, in a fatal car crash, and is so distraught that he really doesn’t know whether he is animal mineral or vegetable and simply cannot go on. What concerned me was that the film might be overloaded with gay clichés that, as banal as heterosexual clichés, leave me rather cold. But what I saw was  a skilfully crafted picture where, after just the first reel, we completely forget about George’s sexual orientation and simply feel his pain, a remorse that, indeed universal , crosses all race colours and creeds.

“It’s just a good story about grief and loss,” informs Firth dressed in a T-shirt, jeans and a slim lapelled suit jacket.” There are things that occur because of he is in a gay relationship such as when he is not invited to the funeral by the family. But then again that doesn’t have to be about being gay - it might happen to any outsider. He might have been ostracised because he was a much older man. But he doesn’t act gay at all. There is nothing overtly effeminate about him He is an older conservative man.”

 “But one of the thing Tom has always admired about Isherwood,” adds the actor after a pause. “Is that he never makes any issue [about being gay] at all in any of his writing and yet doesn’t hide it. He is not militant, and the characters have their struggles but, none of them are struggling with their homosexuality, and that is certainly true of my character. He certainly knows where he stands on that front and, to him, it really doesn’t matter. It is not his be all and end all.
 
But what George is, is extremely fastidious about his appearance. His shoes are polished. Cuff links are laid out. His shirts starched and his apartment is immaculate.
 
“A lot of people have said it’s over designed but I don’t think so,” opines Firth . “The way he dresses is all about precision but this comes from desperation. It’s a lifetime lived in about 12 hours as he wakes up and, has pretty much lost the will to live. When he says that it takes a long time to become George you get the impression that if he   lost a button on his jacket he’d completely fall apart. These outward trappings are his armour and this is all he has control over. Beneath that façade, inside himself, everything is a total mess. But to play someone with a past means I can get my teeth into the role and even though a lot of his emotions seem restrained he does go through rage, hilarity, lust, love, and regret, frivolity. There was a huge embarrassment of riches to work with.”
 
 Of course the actor is no stranger to such treasures. Most might remember him as Geoffrey Clifton in, The English Patient, William Shakespeare in, Black Adder, or even Lord Wessex in, Shakespeare in Love (“my character was just a big black hole. The antithesis of everything wonderful about the film,” he laughs), while others might be more conversant with his roles in Bridget Jones’ Diary, St Trinians or Mamma Mia or even the reprobate drug taking whoring Lord Wotton in the recent, Dorian Grey. Needless to say, each and every performance has struck a major chord with someone everywhere.
 
“But what I have noticed is  that, maybe because of my age, the roles I am offered are getting more complex and the stories are getting more interesting for me,” he ponders after a pause . “This often doesn’t happen for women as it does get really difficult for them as they get older which isn’t fair but, for me, it just gets better.”
 
A Single Man is on general release from Friday