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With a non-romantic role in Noel Coward's Relative Values, followed by
Bridget Jones' Diary, Colin Firth is playing against his "dashing" screen
persona
He's still best known as TV heart-throb Mr Darcy in the BBC's 1995
dramatisation of Pride And Prejudice, but Colin Firth's cinema work has
been equally impressive. From his debut with Rupert Everett in Another
Country, he's developed into a reliable character actor in features such
as The English Patient and Shakespeare In Love (he also plays Shakespeare
himself in the Millennium Dome's Blackadder film), mixing in more
contemporary films such as Nick Hornby's Fever Pitch. In the current Noel
Coward adaptation, Relative Values, he plays the foppish cousin of lady of
the manor Julie Andrews.
Was the prospect of working with Julie Andrews daunting?
There's no question she has legendary status. But she was a wonderful team
leader in an old-fashioned sort of way. You know, rallying the troops and
keeping spirits high, reminding us to keep our backs straight.
The film addresses Anglo-American tensions and differences. Were there
any on set?
It's funny, I do find that American actors tend to be irrationally in awe
of English actors and the whole English tradition. And we envy American
actors for their ease in front of the camera. I think, certainly in the
press, there's a sort of self-loathing for our own cinema at the moment,
but that's not how it's perceived abroad. The Americans all perceive us to
be highly trained and to have this theatrical discipline, some sort of
substance which they lack, which I don't think is really true to be
honest. So generally there's no tension. If anything, there's a tremendous
mutual respect, probably slightly baseless.
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You're in the middle of Bridget Jones'
Diary. Is it refreshing not to be doing a costume drama?
Everything's a costume drama really. It's all an artificial world
you're creating, and in some ways it feels far more artificial trying to
re-create the present day. It's very odd, you get bogged down in far more
difficult detail when you do modern stuff than when you're doing period.
If you're playing Mr Darcy [in Pride And Prejudice] you just say he'd wear
one of those sorts of frocks and it would probably be blue, whereas with
the modern stuff you really get caught up in some tricky decisions - what
kind of trainers would he wear, etc. The audience knows what the reference
points are.
You, Colin Firth, actually feature as Bridget Jones' fantasy in the
book. Does that make things complicated?
No, thankfully they've dispensed with all references to me in the film.
You did actually meet Helen Fielding, though, didn't you?
Yes, the interview she does in the second book, I was part of the
contrivance. It was a sort of performed conversation we had, which was
very funny. I don't know how conscious she was, but she sort of went into
"Bridget" mode, which was rather different from her.
Does that mean you had to go into Colin mode?
Well I did a bit. I tried to be a bit more serious, and less patient.
There are also rumours that you're going to play Tony Blair.
This often happens: I read what I'm going to do in the papers, but no
one's told me about it.
Did you entertain the prospect for a while?
Well, it depends, it's very hard for those things to work when they are so
contemporary. It's better to wait 10 years or so to get a perspective on
it, but by that time I'll be old enough to do the Enoch Powell story or
something. |