Colin Firth
Colin Firth
Colin Andrew Firth, CBEis an English actor. Firth's films have grossed more than $3 billion from 42 releases worldwide. Firth has received an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award, two British Academy Film Awards, and three Screen Actors Guild Awards, as well as the Volpi Cup. Firth's most notable and acclaimed role to date has been his 2010 portrayal of King George VI in The King's Speech, a performance that earned him an Oscar and multiple worldwide best actor awards...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionMovie Actor
Date of Birth10 September 1960
CityGrayshott, England
I do think I'm a character actor.
I like playing strange characters. Some people might say it has something to do with a hidden part of myself, but I think it's a lot simpler than that: normal people are just not very interesting.
I find that at almost every press junket I get that comment, "this character's different from what you generally play..." And that's OK! But I think "generally play" stems back to Mr Darcy. I'm fine with it but I tend to find that if it's a departure, which in other people's words it always is, it's always a departure from that.
I don't think it's aiming at gags, I think the humour is woven into it. It's part of how the characters operate and how they deal with disaster because they're worldly enough to have a bit of irony and wryness about their own circumstances. So, I think the humour comes out of that.
If you're playing someone who's impeded by fear, or shyness, or has whatever dysfunction your character might have, you have to achieve the dysfunction first, imaginatively, in order to play someone who is trying to negotiate their way out of it.
In this case it appealed to me partly because it felt close to me in some ways. This is about a confused, bewildered middle class Englishman adrift in smalltown America and that has definitely been me.
My parents and grandparents have always been engaged in teaching or the medical profession or the priesthood, so I've sort of grown up with a sense of complicity in the lives of other people, so there's no virtue in that; it's the way one is raised.
On his fight scene with Hugh Grant in Bridget Jones: It was a delicious experience.
It used to be that I was always paranoid or a loser or something so there's usually something that you seem to associate yourself with at one time or another.
The last thing I would attempt to do is to buy clothes for a child I didn't know well.
My primary instinct as an actor is not the big transformation. It's thrilling if a performer can do that well, but that's not me. Often with actors, it's a case of witnessing a big party piece but wondering afterwards, where's the substance?
I'd love to try my hand at something else.
Bridget Jones is part of literary lore now and actually to be a part of it is enormously flattering.
I do notice that when I've been away and I come back to London. People look at you. People are ready to pick arguments.