Colin Firth (18 page)

He admitted that the series told ‘an intoxicating story’, told with beautiful language and that the actors ‘did a good job’. But he insisted that the focus should have been on Jennifer Ehle’s performance as Elizabeth Bennet, pointing out that she was the one who walked away with the BAFTA. ‘Darcy is the romantic destiny. She’s the one you’re meant to identify with.’

Although the two Darcys are from different eras, Helen Fielding and screenwriters Andrew Davies and Richard Curtis had given Mark many of his namesake’s character traits and had even recreated scenes from the 1995 hit drama.

In both productions the hero is at a social gathering and ‘standing there looking down his nose at everyone’, Colin
pointed out. ‘And it reminds me of high-school parties where you’d stand there, feeling all hung up and repressed. And the only way you can deal with that is to pretend it’s because you’re superior and enigmatic. So that’s what you hide behind to deal with the paralysing situations.’

The fact that the social paralyses are misinterpreted as smouldering superiority is what appealed to Colin. He finds it hard to be consciously sexy, ‘But if a director says, “Be really revolting and a bit dull”, you think, “Yes, I can do that, I manage that every day.”’

Although playing with his image of the taciturn, brooding love interest, Colin remained uncomfortable with his sex symbol status and modestly claimed he wasn’t even sure he was attractive.

‘I am considered attractive by some people and I’ve been completely ignored by others, so I know that I am somewhere in the middle,’ he told one journalist.

Asked by yet another whether he considers himself attractive, he answered, ‘Does anyone? I have good days and bad days. I don’t recall ever looking in the mirror and having a fully fledged erotic experience. I’ve tended to try and put it down to a combination of things; playing a role, having the right make-up, and the cameraman being very generous.’

But he also claimed the reaction to his most famous role stripped him of his identity. ‘I felt as if I’d lost my whole personality,’ he told
The Observer
. ‘It’s been very strange, this idea of Mr Darcy appealing so much to women. Because obviously, as you can see, I don’t carry that around with me. I’m not Mr Darcy every day of my life. If people expect to
see a saturnine, dark, smouldering tall aristocrat, they are going to be disappointed.’

Having been constantly reminded of his wet-shirted
hero and the effect he had on the opposite sex, Colin decided, ‘I might as well have some fun with it and join in the process.’ But he confessed that the two productions had taught him nothing about the opposite sex, saying that back in 1994 ‘I knew nothing at all about women. And I still know nothing about them.’

Unlike the famous Mr Darcy, Mark was required to shed his shirt in
Bridget Jones’s Diary
so, while Renée was fattening up, Colin was vowing to get in shape. ‘I was threatened with the prospect of having to take my shirt off, which was a chilling thought,’ he recalled. ‘So I decided that, rather than change profession, I’d get a trainer and try to do something about it.’

The trainer in question was Cornel Chin, whose previous claim to fame had been getting Leonardo DiCaprio fit for his swimwear in
The Beach.
Called in two weeks before filming, Cornel had Colin on a strict diet of pasta, poultry, fish, cereal and rice, with no alcohol or fried foods.

‘Colin wanted to meet a target in a short time so we had to work incredibly hard,’ he said. ‘We blitzed his whole body. He is one of the most hard-working clients I’ve had.’ The star’s daily workout was ninety minutes long, beginning with a fifteen-minute warm-up jog and a series of aerobic exercises plus 400 sit-ups. Colin lost a stone and gained an impressive six-pack.

‘Colin has done exceptionally well,’ Cornel marvelled. ‘There’s a distinct difference and I don’t think his female fans are going to be disappointed. Now he is in really good shape. He is a lot leaner than he was as Mr Darcy, when he was fairly podgy. He has lost a lot of weight and it shows. He has made a complete lifestyle change.’

Delighted with his new buff look, Colin vowed to keep
up the good work. ‘I definitely needed to get in shape for the film. In this day and age you need to be in trim if you are going to be a top actor,’ he confirmed. ‘But I wanted to get in shape regardless of the film, and this is going to be a lifelong commitment. To get fit for the role was a bonus, but I intend to stay in shape for life now.’

Five years later he was still sticking to his promise, and going for regular runs. On
Desert Island Discs
in 2005, Sue Lawley asked him if he felt there was ‘a fat person inside trying to get out’.

‘There certainly is, and he’s doing ever better as time goes on,’ replied Colin. ‘Until I was thirty I was one of those people that stayed slim. In fact I was so thin I wouldn’t even go to a swimming pool when I was twenty, and it seems impossible to get fat. But these days I have to go for a run if I want to stay this shape.’

Part of the reason for his fitness regime was a fight scene with Hugh Grant.
Bridget Jones’s Diary
was the first time that Colin had worked with Hugh, who at the time was Britain’s biggest box office draw. Both articulate and quick-witted, the pair entered into a playful rivalry on set that became a running banter away from the shoot.

‘Hugh’s been telling everyone that I fight like a girl,’ joked Colin after shooting the scene. ‘All I can say in response is that it takes one to know one! He was the first one to pull my hair – I’d never have dreamed of doing that. And he scratches as well, so that should give you an idea of his character.’

In truth, Colin has a great admiration for his intensely funny co-star. ‘He is the best actor of light comedy that we have, the best actor of light comedy anywhere,’ Colin told
The Times
. ‘Light comedy implies something less substantial than drama but that’s quite untrue. What Hugh has is an
extremely inaccessible ability. I can think of very few actors at all since Cary Grant who have had it but there are millions of talented dramatic actors.’

As a true gentleman, Colin defended the casting of his American co-star Renée by telling everyone that she had the British accent spot on. And he revealed that she didn’t drop the London twang once, even when the cameras stopped rolling. She is, he told journalists, ‘a gem to work with. She’s generous, friendly, professional and sounds like she comes from north London.

‘I’ve never heard a peep of the Texan accent out of her yet, so I’ve got to know her as this person who comes from down the road. And it’s actually a little bit confusing sometimes because there’s a great incongruity when she tells you something about her childhood in Texas. She says something like “Dad lassoing mustangs and taking me to the rodeo”. And you think, “What, in Croydon?”’

Some time after the movie wrapped, Colin bumped into Renée in an LA hotel and stopped for a chat. ‘She’s now wandering around using what I think is a rather unconvincing Texas accent,’ he cheekily reported.

Remembering his own experiences on an American movie set, Colin felt protective of Renée. ‘I’ve been in that situation too, in
A Thousand Acres
, where I had to be an American in front of American actors. It is mortifying.’

With the role of Mark Darcy being taken by Colin, the question arose of the sequel, should there be one. As the second book,
The Edge of Reason
,
contained the now famous interview between Bridget and Colin Firth, who would play Colin?

‘You might have to change the character of the actor,’ he suggested when the matter was broached. ‘Someone the Americans believe is a credible sex symbol!’

As filming wrapped at the end of the summer, Colin was contemplating his upcoming fortieth birthday. ‘I feel like a bizarre genetic experiment that’s gone wrong,’ he joked. ‘It’s all happened far too quickly.’

While he was keen to leave behind the more obvious romantic leads and seek out character parts, he was aware that he would soon be ruled out of some desirable projects on the grounds of age alone. He related a telling anecdote about an actor friend who shared his agent going up for a role that Colin would have liked in the previous year. His agent informed him that he wasn’t in the running because the character was in his twenties. When he protested that his pal was thirty-five, his agent agreed but pointed out, bluntly, that Colin was thirty-eight. ‘Suddenly I realized that it wasn’t a lot between us, but I was on the other side of a fairly important barrier as far as casting is concerned,’ he told
The Times.
To make matters worse, he revealed, the agent then rang him back to tell him the part had been offered to his brother Jonathan, who was six years younger.

With three years of marriage under his belt, and his fortieth looming, Colin was also thinking about starting a family with Livia. Again, he was feeling the passing of time and, having felt too young to fully embrace the huge responsibility of children when Will had been born, he was determined not to feel too old when any subsequent children arrived.

‘It’ll happen,’ he said and, on the subject of leaving it too late, he added, ‘There does seem to be very little in between. You finally reach adulthood and you go through a time of being too young for everything – I’m not thinking about acting here. “Oh, you’ve got plenty of time, it’s all in front of you, you’ll find out that later in life,” and then suddenly on a dime you’re past it, you’re not young any more. There does seem to be a missing middle bit.’

By the time his fortieth arrived, on 10 September 2000, the couple had made a start on their next big production. Livia was three months pregnant.

A
FTER
THE
PURE
fun of
Bridget Jones
, Colin moved on to his darkest role to date.
Conspiracy
was a truly chilling dramatization of a meeting which sealed the fate of six million Jews.

On 20 January 1942, fifteen senior Nazis met in a villa at the lakeside village of Wannsee, on the outskirts of Berlin. Over a buffet lunch, followed by coffee and brandy, they coolly discussed the ‘Jewish problem’ and after ninety minutes of talk came up with the infamous ‘Final Solution’.

After the meeting Adolf Eichmann produced thirty copies of a transcript, only one of which survived the war. The terrifying dialogue based on this document has the Nazis casually discussing the extermination, sterilization and forced emigration of the Jewish population of all the European regions under German control and those they intend to conquer.

Colin’s character, Doctor Wilhelm Stuckart, was the
legal mind behind the Nuremberg laws. At the gathering, he made a particularly disturbing speech which begins with his sounding as if he abhors the mistreatment of Jews, because he argues that the SS view that they are subhuman is wrong. But he finishes by proposing a solution that is almost as inhumane as the gas chambers. Urging his colleagues to face ‘the reality of the Jews’, he tells them, ‘To kill them casually without regard to the law martyrs them and it’s their victory. Sterilization recognizes them as part of our species but prevents them becoming part of our race.’

The star-studded cast was led by Kenneth Branagh, as SS officer Reinhard Heydrich, and included Ian McNeice, David Threlfall and Stanley Tucci, who played Adolf Eichmann. Devoid of frills such as background music and camera tricks, the content alone was powerful enough to make a huge impact on viewers.

‘It is shattering stuff,’ Colin explained on set. ‘This is utterly banal. They cracked a few jokes. Discussed whether bullets were better than gas. Whether sterilization was better than forced emigration. Basically, the brief was no messing around with these half measures. We have to free German living space, as they put it, from all Jews so there is not one left.’

The clinking of glasses as the extermination of Jewish men, women and children is casually debated emphasized the pure disregard for human suffering. ‘He talks about it as if it were a meeting to discuss foot and mouth disease,’ Colin told
The Daily Telegraph
. ‘That’s what’s astonishing: these men cracking jokes, passing the cheese, looking at their watches … and talking about genocide. I think what is shocking is how you can get reeled in. Put yourself in that position: could you be one of the men round the table?’

For human rights campaigner Colin, the horrific discussion was both historical and contemporary. Hitler may have been defeated, he argued, but similar war crimes were still being perpetrated. As the TV drama was filmed in London and Germany, Serbians were being tried for their part in the ethnic cleansing programmes in the former Yugoslavia.

‘I am reading a book on Rwanda at the moment,’ he said. ‘And it is remarkable to me how many parallels there are. The Balkans might be a more fitting comparison.’

The Germans at that fateful lunch, he observed, ‘weren’t doing it in the spirit of passion, but because they felt it was necessary and that their lives would not be better until they got rid of an entire race of people. The same sort to normalization of what is absolutely unthinkable is still happening today.’

Paradoxically, the horrifying content of the script led to a certain amount of levity on set, at least initially. Colin remembers the first few weeks of filming were punctuated by fits of giggles.