Colin Firth arrives at the hotel in Richmond in a glossy black Mercedes limo, wearing his usual incognito outfit of black sweatshirt, jeans and jodhpur boots.  He is affable and blokishly polite; the first thing he does after saying hello and choosing a table in the far corner of the hotel bar, is to apologise for having changed the time of the meeting a couple of times.

  He is filming the sequel to Bridget Jones's Diary nearby, which he finds 'very weird....Because since the first one came out, we've been besieged by questions about when we were going to do the next one. That made it feel like a neglect of duty not to, but now we're doing it there is this skepticism. People say, "Oh, are you sure that's wise?" and, "Aren't you just trying to cash in on the first one?" That encapsulates the dilemma of the sequel world.'

  I wonder if he and his co-star Hugh Grant had to do weight training while Renee Zellweger fattened up again?

'I took up all sorts of political positions, partly because of feeling guilty about having success so young. It was all very Worker's Revolutionary Party'

He grimaces slightly and groans, 'Well I think a lot has been made of that' - but then his helpful side reasserts itself, and he says yes, Zellweger has larded up again, and no, he hasn't done any training himself, but yes, he did for the first one because he thought he was going to have to get his shirt off, which would have embarrassed him. "Hugh was going to have to get his shirt off as well, so last time he was joking about us both eating salads. But this time he swears to me that he is not making the slightest bit of effort. Maybe he's cheating and trying to throw me off my game - I don't know,' he says with a chuckle.

  Previous interviewers have ascribed much of Colin Firth's character, and his decision to be an actor, to a miserable boyhood in England and overseas.  His parents were lecturers born of Methodist missionary stock in India, moved to Nigeria (where Colin was born (incorrect)), Essex and St. Louis, Missouri, before settling in Winchester. (There were three children by then, Colin being the eldest; his sister Kate is a voice coach, brother Jonathan is an actor.) At his American school he was

Passion player

Colin Firth has spent years trying to shake off the Darcy effect. But, as Richard Benson discovers, this one-time angry young man is a romantic at heart.

Photograph by Eva Vermandel