with cinematographer

Peter Biziou

P - "It's nice to see Colin, you know, straight out of drama school into this."

M - "Colin's doing very well. I've met him a few times along the way."

P - "He just did go with a ?????"

M - "Quite well."

P - "Yes, very well, very adept."

"Oh, he did this particular scene in one shot. Which doesn't sound as if it would be a difficult thing to do." (dissing Bridget to his mum)

"And dishy Mark Darcy turns up at the party. Ding Dong. In a suit rather than a, um, reindeer sweater. The whole running joke between Hugh Grant and Colin Firth throughout the film was that Hugh insisted that we bought Colin's clothes from C & A while his were all made in Salvo Row. So, ah, but, um, we did a little better than C & A on Colin's suits. We were able to afford something in between."

"The music does something interesting in this scene. Patrick Doyle composed the music. Very difficult to compose music I think, for what is supposed to be a comedy film, comedy music, but you have to keep the music with a light touch and what he did here was to make something was this scene is about the past. There's something in the past that we don't know about yet between Daniel - Hugh Grant - and Mark Darcy - Colin Firth - and the music does two things. It gives us intrigue and it also makes you realize that Colin Firth is falling for you. It also highlights Colin Firth or Mark Darcy is starting to have feelings for Bridget and I thought that this was a very clever musical cue."

"Now I like this scene and this was a limerick, that again this wasn't scripted. It was something that came up in rehearsal. The limerick that Hugh wanted to say was much filthier than this one we ended up with. The alternative one, that was Colin suggested and very generously gave to Hugh. I think it's fantastic."

"Oh and this is spat between Colin and Bridget, Darcy and Bridget, where she refers to what he did to Daniel Cleaver. There's a real tension in there."

"He's got such an intense gaze; Colin. You don't have to write much for him. It's what he's not saying a lot of the time which is more sexy. Now his character doesn't express himself well. He's full of repressed sexuality and that's what is fantastic about the character. Ding Dong."

"The line that Colin's about to come out with here about it being shit wasn't scripted. He just said that  and so the laughter you hear, that's genuine. Most of the crew's laughter really. So that thing. We really didn't expect him to say that."

"Oh, he looks so dreamy there, so does she." (gazing at Bridget)

"And the whole fight thing. It was supposed to be a heroic fight, but then I was working with Hugh and Colin in rehearsals. We talked about how they had fought. If they'd ever been in a fight, how'd they'd fought and it was terribly un-heroic. You know, it was kicking and scratching and pulling of hair and saying ouch, So we decided to go for a whole different way of doing the fight. Wasn't heroic at all. So you can hear now they're going 'ow, ow, ow, ow.' And I think it was a good way to go. Which is often the way to go. The obvious way; which sometimes we inevitably did. But here we thought the obvious way was to make it heroic, but what was the opposite vis? And that would be to make it a sissy fight. That's exactly what it is."

"And there he is. He's got the snowman tie on like as if we've come full circle. This time he's wearing a snowman tie rather than a reindeer sweater."

"Ooh, he's so sexy in this scene isn't he? He's a tiger under all that stuffy, aloof haughtiness. Not that I know for sure, but that's what we were going for."

"At last the kiss. We've waited an hour and a half for this kiss. And we did lots of takes, just for my enjoyment. And I couldn't decide which one to use so we did a mix between all the takes. It was quite passionate bit of snogging."

with Producer

Andy Paterson

P - "It is the first time really that we see Colin." (Christening Dinner)

P - "It all happened very quickly with Colin. I seem to remember we sent him the script on a Wednesday. He read it over the weekend. We had a meeting the following Wednesday and within about twenty minutes he'd led us to believe he was going to say yes."

A - "He cut through all the normal crap and said 'Let's not do this. I want to do this, do you want me?' We said yes and then we talked about the movie. It was so refreshing."

A - "With Colin the big decision, the biggest decision was the hair, to be honest, it was the wig. That's, I think looks fantastic."

P - "Yeah well he was, you know, obviously worried to get it right. The first time I saw him in the hair and make-up test with the wig on looking like a rock star I thought, this is going to be amazing."

P - "We have a lot of Colin lurking in corridors and doorways with shadows and all the rest of it. That makes him a voyeur and therefore a movie director, I suppose."

P - "The thing that you can never tell when you cast two actors, when you haven't had chance to bring them together; you know each of them individually are going to be very good. I mean you know, obviously, Scarlett and Colin, they're world class actors. You just can't tell whether there's going to be any chemistry when they come together and that was the one thing that we were waiting with baited breath when you put them in a room together because you can't fake it, you know. We've all seen so many films where it doesn't happen between the two leads. And Thank God. Thank God it did that's all I can say. And that meant on some levels you're shooting a documentary because the sparks you see flying are sparks that are really there in the air rather than two actors having to....having to invent something. And it's so important in a film like this which is all about unspoken emotions and about deep feelings."

A - "There's a very specific form of chemistry it's not 'twenty-one year old boy falls in love with nineteen year old girl.' It had to be a chemistry that was irresistible and yet forbidden and worked without being kinda creepy of an ever so slightly older man with a younger girl."

P - "Don't mince words. Ever so slightly older, I believe is forty-three and she was seventeen. If that's ever so slightly older than I have to worry."

A - "She was certainly eighteen by that time."

A - "And his laugh here is incredible.

P - "Yep, one of the few moments he laughs in the film."

P - "The thing that I really admire about Colin in this is that he took the challenge of being mysterious, of hiding in the shadows, of being - I don't know - almost rafe-like in the film and I think there's a lot of actors whose egos would get in the way. I think it shows that he worries about what is important."

P - "It's an interesting scene this one because of what Colin did to Scarlett. There was this line ("Make Time") He delivered it a certain way during every single take. I think this was the fourth take that I used and when it came to the last time he just threw it in in a different way; commanding and powerful, and really put her on her back foot and got a very different response out of her. It just meant that there was an emotional response out of her that was real. It really surprised her."

P - "Now one of the great mysteries for men is women's reaction to Colin Firth. You suddenly discover when you change a shot that a lot of women are so invested in Colin wearing that pashdema (sp) that if you change it or reduce it they think you're insane. It goes completely over our heads."

A - "Yes, that's something that I heard. Colin was always such a great actor. It was only later on that I came quite to realize the degree to which he is loved and lusted after by a huge range of women out there."

P - "I like again the use of subtle camera movement in here. Especially going into Colin. Just pushes in and pushes in. It just provides a certain creepy atmosphere and light that Eduardo has thrown on his face when he's standing there off shadow and it does as much of the storytelling as Colin's face does. A very, very important moment here as he resists the temptation to walk into the closet and get closer to the girl."

P - "This is where we nearly lost Colin's eye. I seem to remember."

A - "Oh my God, I'd forgotten."

P - "Very shortly there's a moment when they grapple in front of the camera. Now we had spent a long, long time preparing the choreography for this because she's going to be shortly waving a..um..spatula around. Now, they're very, very sharp. So we must have spent three-quarters of an hour, an hour, very carefully deciding how we were going to play this.. She would raise her arms, Colin would raise his arms to grab hers to make sure no possibility of him being stabbed by the spatula. Now, unfortunately, I changed my mind about a camera position. That meant we had to slightly re-choreograph the position. Um, I don't know whose fault it was, but you know, people get carried away. In the heat of the moment the choreography was forgotten and the spatula plunged straight towards Colin Firth's beautiful and expensive face. Now not only would this have been a problem for him if it had landed there but it would have been a problem for us because we would have lost Colin. So Colin, thankfully, saw the spatula heading down towards him. He managed to step away and it did strike his face, but it didn't go into his eye. It was about a millimeter, two millimeters away and he was fine. He stood there going, 'No, no, no, I'm fine, I'm fine' and he put his hand up to his face and saw there was blood and though we stopped at that moment, thankfully, we got the cut that we needed to get."

A - "I think Colin was very funny. Once he realized that it wasn't that serious he said he just couldn't really choose between wishing it hadn't happened and loving the attention he was going to get for the next few days."

P - "But it was a nasty moment. He realized sharp things and actors just don't go together."

P - "Now Colin was due to be on a plane and out of here when we were filming these scenes. I can't remember if he had a film to go on to. I think he did have another commitment."

A - "He was having a baby."

P - "Oh, he was having a baby."

A - "Well, his wife was having a baby." (this is not true, as this was January or Feb 2003. Mateo was born in August)

P - "Scarlett very much wanted him on the other side of that door when she was shooting this scene. So, being the gent he is, he cancelled his plane flight and made sure that he was there. I don't really think that makes a difference for actors because they're not pretending. People think acting is all about pretending, but it's not that simple and having him on the other side of that door just meant that the emotions you see there are real."

R - "Colin in early sunlight

B - "God he looks good."

R - "Ah, here we go. Oh I so love this tune and I like the performance as well, although I think Colin's car is controversial."

R - "Colin was responsible for remembering that he had a stutter in this role and often we'd do a whole scene then he'd say, 'Oh C-Christ, I've got a stutter. We better go back and do it again.' "

R - "And Colin got stung by a sort of animal and his elbow swelled up to the size of three avocados the next day."

R - " And there's this joke that, ever since Pride and Prejudice, every time I do a film with Colin he always fall into water cause the girls like him in a wet shirt."

R - "Colin is so gorgeous in this scene - that's such a.....Look at this smoldering look coming up."

B - "Oh my God."

R - "You could learn a lot from that look Hugh."

R - "He walks so beautifully, Colin. Have you seen that? The shoulders are sort of up."

H - "This is a good, I grant you. This is a very, a happy accident." (in car second time)

B - "God he looks good." (on escalator)

R - "Look at that walk."

B - "Wow!"

R - "Look at that man walk. That's an audition for James Bond if ever I've seen one."

B - "Yes."

R - "Ah.......no, no. Brilliant, you see and he can do funny too. That was the first shot of the film. He was already on peak form."

R - "Well then we thought, 'it's the end of the film, we better put the star, we better put the star in here. A lot of people enjoyed this bit. I think it's really romantic."

R - "Colin's so relieved it's over."

B - "Lovely polo neck that Colin's wearing."

"Colin Firth, I think, really does a terrific job with Jack. In that he can often be the straight man in the play. Algy has some of the great lines, the terrific comedy lines and Jack tends not to have that so much. He's the one who's more troubled by his predicament, um, and in shaping the film I found that that's almost the best way of telling the story. We're following his character a great deal. He's, after all, the one who changes the most. The man who's trying to find his identity. And Colin has again, I think, a very good balance of the seriousness, the earnestness, with which he takes the predicament he is in. And the way he holds back the feeling of, ah, almost liberation as he discovers who he really is."

"Colin is the master of this type comedy in my mind. So much going on underneath. So much control and understatement."

"These two act so well together. A lot of this happened quite spontaneously there. So the mirror effect."

"Colin....fantastic improvisation in front of the mirror for his moment there. I wish I could have used more of it in the end. But, he uses the mirror on several occasions in the film. You get a glimpse of a man who's continually trying to find out who he is and it was great fun to play. I had to post-sync all his stuff in front of the mirror because we had a fire alarm going off right next to him."

"At one point Colin wrapped her too tight and bent her wrist back. Anna was so in character she was just calling out to 'Mr. Worthing, stop." And Colin didn't realize what all had gone on till she finally called him Colin."

"Some article was written about that spanking scene in The National Enquirer which Colin had to field off."

"Actually, Ben is in every scene of this film, which is quite a tricky thing for Colin, especially had a lot of these scenes about him talking to himself. I just think he's a really great actor from the point of view of making sure he change the model of the performances so that it didn't seem like he's always sort of acting on the same level. Cause he's on the screen all the time, in every scene."

"Of course these scenes are quite a challenge for the actor and for the camera really, because you can never show the reverse angle. This is just Colin, or Ben rather, talking to himself.  And there's no one; no other character, we've got no one else to cut to except Ben here. Which I think is a testimony to Colin's skill as an actor."

"A lot of people have said that the casting of Colin Firth is surprising for this part. That it is not really a Colin Firth type part, but I think that's partly true and one of the reasons we cast him was because I think people trust. People trust him because of the other parts he's played. So, in the old days Hitchcock would often cast his leading men as people that the audience trusted. Jimmy Stewart, for example, as a sort of standard guide so that the audience starts off wanting to believe and trust the main character. But also with Colin I think he's someone who's done a lot of parts before Darcy that people have forgotten about which are more like this. He's a serious actor and done, I mean, 'A Month In The Country,' or 'Another Country,' 'Conspiracy.' It's just that when somebody does Bridget Jones that kind of movie tends to take over people's view of the actor."

What A Girl Wants

with  writers Jenny Bicks and Elizabeth Chandler

D - "Now you're going to start to see in this scene why Colin Firth was my first and only choice to play Henry Dashwood. He is such a fine actor and has such great instincts. And this was a really tricky scene, it's really emotional and yet it has a light hearted aspect to it."

D - "Both Kelly and Colin gave such beautiful performances here and of course, they're not even remotely in the same room. We shot these scenes weeks apart. (first phone call)

J - "I thought this scene was so interesting because it's so...almost like a boy asking a girl out on a date. There's that kind of awkward, which no one does better, I think, than Colin Firth, the awkward pause."

"He kills me here. Don't you just want to rescue this guy?" (first look at photo album)

D - "I love the staging of this. The way Colin is torn between his daughter and his step-daughter and fiancee. Caught between the stairs there."

D - "Now in a minute you're going to see Colin playing a joke on Jon Price. He hangs Jon out to dry here. Jon keeps saying, 'no, no, no, no, no.' And it was just a joke, the actors are playing with one another, but it really worked. It was kind of a happy accident. The actors were very big on playing practical jokes on one another." (at the dress show)

D - "I love seeing Colin here trapped by Roger Ashton-Griffiths."

D - "Colin had never seen this prop before we actually shot this scene, at this moment and Richard Field, another one of my art directors, had acquired real baby pictures of Amanda from when she was a little girl. So when Colin first saw the shots, it really got to him emotionally and this was all very, very real for him. That's Amanda in a tiara as a little girl. And I'm just so happy to have captured that lovely moment on film, because the emotions were so real for him here. Absolutely the real deal."

J - "Now who wouldn't want Colin Firth as their dad?"

D - "I just love Colin's bemused face here. Come on Colin, you were young and wild once too." (seeing the tattoo)

D - "Always got a huge laugh. Love the way Colin played that line." (James Brown, 1976, etc)

D - "Again, music being such a way to bridge generations, we were trying to find the perfect band there. Little Feat was actually Colin's favorite band. When he first read the script it was one of the first things he really dug."

D - "Now this was shot on our very first day of photography between Colin and Oliver. And we were so jazzed how well Colin and Oliver played off of each other. I mean just absolutely no first day jitters in evidence at all between these two actors. You know, Colin being such a veteran and Oliver's very first movie. I later found out that Colin had invited Oliver into his trailer to watch the World Cup and it was such an icebreaker. So they were already mates - rooting for the same team - by the time that they got to the set."

J - "....Colin was so great on the bike and so excited to do stunt work....  Colin had so much fun here with all this."

D - "Now Colin was initially uncertain that we could or should play this scene here in the park, on the swing set. He was worried at first that it might be a little cutsie, but I argued that it was poignant. You know, they are here in Kensington Gardens where he would have actually taken her as a little girl if he'd actually raised her. And happily, in the end, Colin really loved this scene. The feeling was just right where these little children are playing around them......  Just lovely performances between these two. Just great chemistry."

J - "This scene literally brings the house down. It brings the house down every time I've seen the movie. Originally it was just written that he tries the pants on. That he's found them in the back of his closet and I think on the set Dennie wanted to see how far Colin would take it. So she just needle dropped this song and let him go. I loved it."

D - "......Colin is a really huge star in England and on these street scenes where we're out shooting in the streets he was always swarmed for autographs and it was so great cause he was always so lovely with all of his fans."

D - "Then they have to make the long walk over to Henry. Difficult, difficult walk, but check out the heat between Colin and Kelly.... and everyone senses it."

D - "Now they're on a dolly here to give the illusion of dancing and watch it as Colin forgets to sway sometimes and it's so hilarious. It's like he kind of is flying through the space."

J - "There's so much chemistry between them."

D - "I went to London to get Colin Firth for the movie before the movie was even green-lighted. I just couldn't imagine anybody but him playing this role."

D - "We didn't have Colin's proper wardrobe for this scene. And luckily, I think we borrowed a waiter's costume that happened to be on the truck, because he had a beautiful custom made tuxedo for this scene that wasn't ready yet. But I needed this shot so we found something appropriate for him to wear."

D - "We wanted to see Colin's charisma here."

J - "I'd certainly vote for Colin for President, wouldn't you?"

D - "We just feather in that little score in there to compliment the beautiful work Colin's doing."

D - "The score just takes over here at the triumphant moment when he's given up something in hopes of finding another. Very tough sacrifice for him to (Henry) have made, but a great moment as he sighs there and exits."

D - "The audiences always cheer at this moment when Colin slugs Jonathan Pryce out. Always applaud here. Which is a great sign that we've done our job."

D - "I always wanted this moment to be about Colin, stepping into the light and being happy with his choice."

J - "Personally I start crying every time I see Colin step off of the boat."

D - "I wanted Colin's character to literally and heroically come across the pond to save his family. And I really, really ended up being pleased with the way the gondola and the lights on it; Colin Firth cloaked in silhouette, all bring him across to their shores. And these shots just never fail to get me. It's such a great entrance I wanted for him as he finally comes across the pond to do the right thing for his daughter."

D - "Colin and Amanda were so great in this scene. Just the way that they look at each other. Dialogue is almost irrelevant at that point."

D - "This scene's really for the older women in the audience. Who wouldn't want to have a lovely love scene like this with Colin Firth?"

Scene 2 - "This is interesting here for me because Colin is actually taking on a very demanding role in a way because the memoir is all written from inside Blake's head. So when you've got Blake as a character in the film, especially one that's looking back over a couple of the time-frames, the grown up Blake has a lot of work to do where he's actually doing very little. He's thinking on and reflecting on and having to hold onto the anger that he feels. And it was crucial to the film that Colin stayed angry all the way through because the films' climax and its emotional impact, if it works for you, depends on Colin holding onto that anger and then releasing it at the end. So, for Colin, he has to play quite cross, quite surly, quite buttoned down and I think, you know, Colin is really a very underrated actor. He's a beautifully subtle and very brave actor and he, I think he delivers one of his finest performances."

Scene10 - "Here's another example of Colin being actually quite brave because he's really being a difficult arsey bastard and behaving quite badly to his wife. And, actually, he's thinking about having.. sleeping with someone else and that's because he's feeling desperate and death is hanging all around him and the weight of his inability to reconcile his anger with his father is just literally killing him...... I think."

Scene 12 - "And then here's Colin being incredibly brave because he's really hurting and crying here and there's no fakery. And I leave... we made the decision to leave him naked and raw as possible. You know it's not pretty this, and it's really in your face and I just think it's absolutely so painful.  He had to do it with me throwing cranes down at him and everything."