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There's no escaping Mr. Darcy
Colin Firth hates the whole 'Darcy business' but looks set to revive it
by appearing as Mark Darcy, opposite Renee Zellweger, in Bridget Jones's
Diary. What's he playing at?
By Carol McDaid
09 June 2000
At a sedate drinks party, I mention to a poised mother of two that I'm
going to interview Colin Firth. "Oh, God, that shirt, those trousers," she
moans, sitting back into a bowl of assorted nuts. A friend says:
"Something deep in my soul is moved by the man." (Her wedding is soon.)
Another friend e-mails a request: "Will he sleep with me? But in Mr Darcy
garb? I'd hate to get off with Nick Hornby."
Poor Colin Firth. Will he ever be free of that shirt, those trousers? The
"pond scene" of 1995's Pride and Prejudice (intense, sullen Mr Darcy
douses his quietly scorching desire for Miss Bennet, then bumps into her)
recently made it into Channel 4's Top 100 TV Moments, between Death on the
Rock and the Gulf war. Firth, 40 in September, got rave reviews last year
for Three Days of Rain at the Donmar; has appeared in A Month in the
Country, The English Patient and Shakespeare in Love; played any number of
aristocrats ("I have never been inside a stately home in any other
circumstances," he tells me) plus Nick Hornby (Fever Pitch). Yet in most
minds - female ones anyway - he is still striding towards Pemberley,
clutching a riding crop and half his clothes: damp, magnificent.
We meet in a dark, paneled room in Soho House, the London media haunt
that could easily double up for a spot of costume drama. Unlike Mr. Darcy,
Firth lopes in, tanned and casual, though the sideburns remain impressive.
He is perfectly polite but has been doing interviews all day; the words
"under" and "duress" hover in the gloom (outside the sky is bright blue),
and the publicity woman is holding her watch like a stopwatch. Also,
Arsenal are playing in the Uefa Cup on telly in a couple of hours, and
Firth, I later discover, is going to watch the match round at a friend's
house. I plan to avoid the D-word for at least 10 minutes.
He is here to promote Relative Values, an adaptation of Noel Coward's play
shot last August in an old nunnery on the Isle of Man. The comedy is
needlessly hammed up, though Sophie Thompson is a revelation, and Firth,
as the twinkling, camp Cowardy character, manages to sit around smoking,
reading the paper and getting the best lines. He chased the part. "I
wanted to occupy that position," he says in that well-groomed voice, "as a
kind of impish commentator and schemer." The opposite of intense and
sullen, in fact.
His co-conspirator in the film is the long-lost, radiant Julie Andrews, as
his aunt. "She was fantastic," Firth says, possibly not for the first time
today. "She was a company leader in the traditional sense. She wanted
people to be comfortable. If there was a birthday, she would celebrate it
in style. There was this sense that we were working with a legend."
Ten minutes are up. I will have to mention Mr Darcy. Not least because the
next morning, Firth is to start filming Bridget Jones's Diary, in which he
will play the "v. eligible bachelor" Mark Darcy, the Helen Fielding
character inspired by the Jane Austen character as played by Colin Firth.
"I'd read the columns in The Independent," he says. "There are certain
things that I didn't identify with - weight and boyfriends - but I did
think it was very funny and I think the script's very funny as well. I
wouldn't be doing it if I didn't. And it's got a very good cast [notably
Hugh Grant]. I wouldn't have done it just to be symmetrical about the
Darcy thing."
Unsurprisingly, he is not ecstatic about discussing the Darcy thing or,
more sinister still, "the Darcy business". But somehow he cannot stop
himself: "I do feel that I am talking about something which I know nothing
about," he explains, sinking further into his small, battered armchair.
"It honestly doesn't mean anything to me." And later: "I don't have
anything to do with anything I did six years ago. I don't know if you
remember how you spent your summer of '94, but that's how I spent my
summer of '94, and that's about it."
He protests too much: the Darcy business is karmic; there is no escape.
For her Bridget Jones sequel, The Edge of Reason, Helen Fielding
"interviewed" Firth over lunch (he could always have said no). She
pretended to be Bridget filing for The Independent; he pretended to be "a
rather serious actor", a cross between himself and Mr. Darcy, someone
impatient to finish an interview. The resulting transcript is one of the
best bits in the book. And now, to prepare for his current Darcy
incarnation, Firth has tapped into the Austen original.
"I actually went to look at a bit of Pride and Prejudice for the first
time in five years," he owns up; "partly because of the Bridget Jones
thing. I'm not playing Mr Darcy but I am aware there's a reference
involved and I was just curious again to see if I could understand what
the fuss was about." And can he? "Not really. It's an intoxicating story.
The language is wonderful. I think it's [big intake of breath] very
romantic, beautifully structured, and the actors do a good job." Chiefly
Jennifer Ehle, whom Firth fell for off screen, too. Though people don't
think Jennifer Ehle: Elizabeth Bennet. "No. She won a Bafta for it. [He
didn't.] Darcy is the romantic destiny. She's the one you're meant to
identify with."
Given that he's the role model, does he feel any responsibility towards
Darcy II? "Yes, in a way." He pauses. "No, I think I've had to create him
as something specific in my mind, as unique as possible. He's based on
lots of people I know." Playing the Ur-Darcymaniac Bridget is the Texan
actress Renee Zellweger, a controversial choice (Fielding is said to have
been furious) for a character who hails from Northamptonshire.
"Renee, yes. Well I've been in that situation too, in A Thousand Acres,
where I had to be an American in front of American actors. It's er, yeah,
it is, it's mortifying." It's hard to know if he is being tactful.
Given that he is so famously English, America is "a very big part" of
Firth's life. His mother grew up there; his sister married an American. He
spent a miserable year in Missouri as a boy; five more in the wilds of
British Columbia with Valmont co-star Meg Tilly, where they had Will, now
nine, who lives in LA. Firth is an assiduous transatlantic dad, but,
otherwise, Hollywood holds no appeal: "I feel more connected to London. I
like the multiculturalism, the fact that it's accepted here, despite the
attempts to make it less so - Hague wanting to lock 'em all up, and
unfortunately the Home Office not far behind."
As for the work: "Here you can have a wonderful career without being in
the big time. It's just not where the emphasis lies." He hastily adds that
obviously it's all right for him to say that; he's never been out of work,
a fact he puts down to luck and being "sort of down the middle". As in:
"I'm not enormously fat, I don't have gigantic ears, or a bizarre, squeaky
voice or an incredibly rich, boomy voice. And I come from a family
background [both parents are academics] that means I've got the education
and articulacy to argue my way into things."
I ask which young actors he admires, now he's nearly 40 ("I feel like a
bizarre genetic experiment that's gone wrong - it's all happened far too
quickly"). He perks up. "I've been thinking about this constantly
recently," he says. "Joaquin Phoenix is one - River's brother. I noticed
him right from the start and I think he's absolutely brilliant. I think
River was brilliant, too. And I'm not using his first name because I know
him," he adds, editing himself, "but because we've already used his
surname." He then says: "I do know Joaquin, actually," and, head back,
obligingly tries to reel off Joaquin's movies: "Gladiator, To Die For,
Return to Paradise, Inventing the Abbotts..."
Firth's other favourite is better known: "I think DiCaprio's fantastic; I
think he's got incredible skill in front of the camera. I just think he's
very real. The thing I admire most is when you just look at someone's eyes
and you're convinced, far more than the pyrotechnics. It's what you see
here", he says, pointing to his own famously eloquent eyes, "that's
impressive."
When in Rome, home town of his wife, Livia Giuggioli, Firth does as the
Romans do. "This," he says, hitting the inside of his elbow with the side
of his hand, "means, 'Let's get out of here'. That [brushing his hand
under his chin] means, 'Who gives a shit?'" I suspect he may have been
thinking as much for the past 40 minutes. So you wave your arms around?
"Well, yeah, I quite like that." His voice brightens. "I'm not necessarily
so restrained in my life. That's just something I've been asked to do as
an actor, on film." He starts eating nibbles, warming to his theme now
that our time is up. "I mean, the first theatre job I ever did, Another
Country, was Guy Bennett, who was about as flamboyantly gay as a character
could get. I can still remember my performance being called 'elasticated'.
It's not my condition to be restrained. You do it once and you get asked
to do it again, and off we go..."
'Relative Values' is released 23 June |