| FEATURE Bridget Jones's Diary
Love at Firth Sight
Colin Firth reveals to Anwar Brett why he'll never escape from being Mr
Darcy - especially when his new film has huge parallels with Pride and
Prejudice...
From Film Review May 2001
We've all read the interviews, the opinionated, analytical,
psycho-profiling type piece that actors and actresses are typically
subjected to. And we all carry with us the impressions - right or wrong -
that flow from those newspaper and magazine features. Take Colin Firth,
for example. The one thing that every article you read seems to agree on
is that he is fed up with being tagged, six long years after Pride and
Prejudice, as Mr Darcy. He even hates talking about it, apparently.
"In a way I think I should just say, 'Okay, I hate talking about it'," he
sighs. "But I never do have to talk about it unless a journalist is asking
me those sort of questions.
"It's only when I get into a room with a journalist that they'll say, 'you
really hate this don't you? You want to shake it off?' But I don't. It
doesn't do anything for me one way or the other, so it's fine. But I'll
still read that 'Colin Firth is still trying to shake off Darcy' and this
only perpetuates it."
The question is relevant now because Firth is playing the dashing Mark
Darcy in this month's Bridget Jones's Diary - a literary déjà vu in that
the character was inspired by the actor's previous portrayal of the hunky
Jane Austen hero. So starring in a film that has been cross- pollinated in
this way by his own past work is hardly a sign that Firth is desperate to
avoid the subject being brought up.
"If you can't beat them join them," he laughs. "I just thought I'd get in
on the act now. And in a way there's something quite satisfying about
being a part of it again. The problem with the Darcy thing before was that
it's always very difficult to have anything new to say about something
you're not doing any more. But now I sort of am doing something that at
least has a connection with it, so at least something I'm doing is
relevant to it."
So relevant, in fact, that Firth found himself re-watching some episodes
of the 1995 series. "I did have a look at it before doing the film. Not
all of it, but I hadn't seen it in a very long time and just wanted to try
and remind myself who they were talking about, when they were talking
about my character being loosely based on 'this guy'. I'd lost all sense
of who 'this guy' was supposed to be."
The new film - inspired by Helen Fielding's popular newspaper column, and
the best-selling book that came about as a result of them - introduces
hapless 30-something singleton Bridget (Renee Zellweger), drinking, chain
smoking and dieting her way towards reluctant middle age, watching those
around her pairing off and settling down. Could there be a flame, a spark,
or some, small smouldering feeling between the eternally romantic Bridget
and the reserved but sometimes rather charming Mark Darcy? We shall have
to wait and see. At the time of the interview even Colin Firth had not
seen the film, but he held out high hopes for it.
"One has to be a bit careful of something that has been so well designed
to be a hit," he says, tentatively. "But I think this film has been done
properly. If there is a problem that British films tend to suffer from -
and this is not true of most American films - it's that we rush things
into production that really aren't ready to go. But that's not true of
this film. They've worked very hard on making this script work and they
even brought Richard Curtis in, and he's the genius who knows how to pitch
this kind of territory."
The fact that Hugh Grant and Colin Firth are actors who are quite familiar
to American audiences will surely not hurt the film's chances of success
in America. And the two heart-throb actors do get to indulge in one of
this year's more memorable screen fights.
"Oh, that was great," Firth smiles. "We just decided to fight like a
couple of wallies, which is probably how we would fight if we did it for
real. No big cowboy punches for us. The whole thing probably took two or
three days, and while it was very tiring it was terrific fun."
Bridget Jones's Diary opens on April 13 and is distributed by UIP.
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