Colin Firth (17 page)

While his conscience wouldn’t allow him to stay silent on issues that he cared deeply about, Colin was aware that some would reject his right to a political voice precisely because of the celebrity status which enabled it. ‘We’re somehow disqualified from having an opinion, but when I look at Bono and the debt issue, or Bob Geldof and the African famine, I’m so admiring that they take on the responsibility,’ he told
The Guardian.
And he was determined not to speak out from a position of ignorance. ‘Give me a year or two more working on this and I’ll really have my facts. Now I just know how painful it is to have to leave home, no one comes here unless they’re desperate, and it’s complete rubbish that we are somehow going to be overwhelmed by a tide of refugees.’

As well as campaigning for the asylum seekers in the UK, Colin had become an active supporter of Survival International, which aims to help tribal communities maintain traditional lifestyles. The charity’s media director Jonathan Mazower revealed that the actor didn’t need to be asked to help them out – he contacted them. ‘One day we got a message that a supporter called Colin Firth had contacted us because he was asking for brochures,’ he said. ‘We spotted the name and wrote to him and said, “We don’t know if you are the famous actor Colin Firth or not but if you are, it would be very good to talk to you. If you’re not, thank you anyway” and he got in touch with us and said he was the actor
Colin Firth. So when we spoke to him for the first time we realized he had been quite an active supporter for quite a few years, quietly, and we didn’t have to persuade him at all of the benefit of our work or the value of indigenous cultures. This was all coming from him.’

Colin’s mother Shirley, who had been helping refugees in Hampshire for years and wrote her PhD on the immigrant community in Southampton, was pleased her celebrated son had followed suit. ‘I think it’s a bit difficult to be the grandchild of four missionaries without it rubbing off in some way,’ she said. ‘In my own life, I’ve worked for Oxfam and been involved with charity, working with refugees so there’s a lot of this stuff going on in the family.’

Before heading back to the Donmar for his second stint in
Three Days of Rain
from November, Colin picked the plum part of Peter in Noël Coward’s
Relative Values.
Filmed in The Nunnery, an imposing mansion on the Isle of Man which had been a real convent in the eleventh century, it is a comedy about upper-class sensibilities and snobbery in post-war Britain.

The Earl of Marshwood, played by Edward Atterton, returns from a trip to America with a blousy Hollywood starlet on his arm, to the horror of his stuck-up family and, particularly, the dowager Countess played by Julie Andrews. Miranda (Jeanne Tripplehorn) is pursued to the family estate by her drunken ex-boyfriend (William Baldwin). As the family struggle with the uncouth American in their midst, loyal maid Moxie reveals that Miranda is, in fact, her long-lost sister. Watching from the sidelines, providing witty commentary and cutting snipes, is Peter, the Countess’s urbane nephew. Colin was perfect for the role, which he actively pursued.

‘I wanted to occupy that position, as a kind of impish commentator and schemer,’ he told
The Independent.
‘I was instantly attracted to the role because of Noël Coward’s wonderful writing. You simply cannot get better dialogue; his lines are airy, witty and beautifully constructed. I had never performed Coward before so it was slightly like going into uncharted water which was exciting.’

As the observer, the character of Peter is based on Coward himself but Colin chose not to imitate the distinctive lofty tones of the playwright. ‘Peter basically spends his time hanging around the place,’ he said. ‘He’s a harmless mischief-maker who enjoys the crisis that’s unfolding and he treats
it all as a bit of a game. I haven’t modelled my character upon Noël Coward because it is very important to appropriate
a role and make it your own. After all, the delivery of a
line now is certainly not going to be the same as it was forty years ago.’

Filming took place on the island from August to September, wrapping on the tenth, Colin’s thirty-ninth birthday. Grand dame Julie Andrews made sure he had a treat waiting for him at the end of the shoot.

‘She was fantastic,’ he revealed. ‘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.’

The wry commentator was a role that suited the articulate actor. His close friend Nick Hornby commented that Colin ‘laughs a lot, and likes to make people laugh’ and his choice of
Relative Values
gave him the opportunity to do just that. On release of the film the following June,
The Times
critic James Christopher remarked that ‘Colin Firth … has a way with one-liners that’s almost indecent’.

As the millennium celebrations approached, he seized the opportunity to make the nation giggle once more by accepting a brilliantly funny cameo in Rowan Atkinson’s
Blackadder: Back and Forth.
While he missed out on the lead in
Shakespeare in Love
,
he got to play the Bard in the time-travelling comedy, which was filmed as a one-off special for screening at the Millennium Dome in Greenwich.

Running into William Shakespeare in a corridor, Blackadder makes him drop a sheaf of papers which the viewer can see is a draft of
Macbeth
. After asking for an autograph, Blackadder sends him sprawling with a punch in the face before telling him, ‘That is for every schoolboy and schoolgirl for the next four hundred years!’ He then berates him for condemning future generations to ‘hours spent at school desks trying to find one joke in
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
’ and ‘Years wearing stupid tights in school plays and saying things like “What ho, my lord” and “Oh, look, here comes Othello, talking total crap as usual.”’

He then kicks Shakespeare and adds, ‘… that is for Ken Branagh’s endless uncut four-hour version of
Hamlet
’.

The tiny role marks Colin’s first collaboration with writer Richard Curtis, who would later put words in the mouth of his character in
Love Actually
and be instrumental in his next big movie role, in
Bridget Jones’s Diary.

The busy year of 1999 wrapped up with the Boxing Day screening of
The Turn of the Screw
on ITV. The spooky ghost story, adapted from a classic Henry James novel, is set in a country house where the charismatic master, played by Colin, employs a governess to look after his two children. The new arrival (Jodhi May) soon begins to see two mysterious figures, which the housekeeper informs her are spectres of a former governess and valet, who are both dead.

‘I love the mystery of it,’ Colin told the
News of the World
. ‘When ghost stories are told well, they are brilliant. But they are incredibly rare. It is a perpetually misjudged form of storytelling. I also like the mood of a ghost story. It is perfect for a cold wintry night, sitting by the fire. In fact, perfect for Christmas.’

The down-to-earth actor revealed he didn’t believe in the supernatural but admitted to some ‘uncanny and inexplicable’ experiences in his past. ‘When I was a teenager I dreamed up all sorts of things, but as I got older I’ve found explanations for them all.’

The one ghost that Colin was haunted by was Mr Darcy, and he was aware that taking another period drama role always risked stirring it up once more. ‘Let’s just say I’m not a fan of this kind of production,’ he stated. ‘Despite my reputation for it, I am not drawn towards watching period drama on television. But on the other hand, I won’t steer away from it just because Darcy was so successful.’

His role as the romantic hero’s namesake, Mark Darcy, in
Bridget Jones’s Diary
was to be Colin’s final attempt to lay that ghost to rest.

E
VER
SINCE
THE
iconic pond scene in
Pride and Prejudice
,
London’s most famous fictional singleton, Bridget Jones, had been lusting after Colin in print. When her best-selling book looked set to make it to the big screen, author Helen Fielding had only one man in mind to play Bridget’s real love interest, the starchy but sensitive lawyer she had named after the Jane Austen hero.

‘I had just finished watching the miniseries
Pride and Prejudice
, and, like most of London, I fell in love with his Mr Darcy,’ she explained. ‘As a wink, I named Bridget’s “Mr Right” Mark Darcy. I described him to look like Colin Firth. In fact, part of me was worried that the actor would feel my descriptions were too close to him.

‘In my wildest dreams, I never thought he would actually play Darcy in the movie. But a girl can dream.’

Colin had taken a fair amount of ribbing from his friends and family over Bridget’s lustful diary entries and at first he
had refused to read them. Curiosity got the better of him, however, when the mention of his name got more frequent and he began to read regularly. ‘It was a hall-of-mirrors thing for me. Very bizarre.’

Before he was asked to star in the celluloid version of
Bridget Jones’s Diary
the search was on for the perfect Chardonnay-swilling, weight-obsessed thirty-something to take the lead role.
Titanic
star Kate Winslet was favourite for the role but turned it down when the production took too long to get off the ground, leading to clashing schedules. Producer Eric Fellner voiced his disappointment in February 2000, saying, ‘We were in negotiations for the deal. I am absolutely amazed that it didn’t work with Kate.’

Helen Fielding was keen to cast an unknown in the role, believing an ordinary girl would be more believable as Bridget than a glamorous star. ‘I keep seeing girls who I think would be perfect for the role,’ she revealed. ‘My favourite was a girl in the gym who was sitting on a machine reading a magazine and not exercising at all. I nearly walked up and offered her the part.’

The final casting was a surprise to everyone. Renée Zellweger was a super-slim thirty-year-old Hollywood star with a Texan drawl – a far cry from the chain-smoking, calorie-counting Sloane. But she was a big fan of Helen Fielding’s original book. ‘The diary is an amazing evocation of the life of a single girl. It reads like Jane Austen, with comic and ironic twists and turns,’ she said.

Before perfecting her accent, Renée had to wean herself off her habitual lifestyle of low-fat healthy food and regular exercise. The
Jerry Maguire
star tucked into pizza, peanut butter sandwiches and fast food in a bid to gain weight. ‘I’ve put on more than 15 lb and I’m very proud,’ she said, just
before filming started in the summer. ‘I’m down to three pairs of sweatpants and four T-shirts that still fit. Everything else is in boxes ready to be shipped home.’

In order to immerse herself in British culture, she also rented a flat in Kensington, listened to the Spice Girls, and went to work in a London magazine office. ‘British women are less hard on each other and less judgemental than Americans,’ she told
the
Sunday Express
. ‘I suppose it’s because they’re not judged as harshly themselves. When it was somebody’s birthday, everybody had a piece of cake. In LA, nobody would have eaten it.’

With Renée on board, the producers were free to approach their first choice for Mark Darcy. Colin had been expecting the call and had already mulled it over in his head. This, he thought, would bring his association with Darcy full circle and prove that he could poke fun at his own image. ‘There’s a certain inevitability about it,’ he said. ‘I think it’s healthy for me to do it.’

Hugh Grant was cast as Mark’s love rival, the dashing cad Daniel Cleaver, and Jim Broadbent was on board as Bridget’s long-suffering dad. In another bizarre life-imitating-art twist, the film was to be directed by Sharon Maguire, the model for Bridget’s best pal Shazza in the column and Helen’s real-life best friend. And Andrew Davies, the man who had Colin making a splash in
Pride and Prejudice
, was one of the writers called in to tweak the script.

Colin had become an avid reader of the column but took issue with Bridget’s division of friends into either singletons or smug-marrieds. ‘I’m married and extremely content. Extremely happy. But I don’t see the world in terms of married and single people. I would never walk into a dinner and be horrified that they were all couples except me.’

He told the column’s home paper,
The Independent
, ‘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. I wouldn’t have done it just to be symmetrical about the Darcy thing.’

While embracing the connection between the two Darcys, he still sought to distance himself from the BBC series that had propelled him to heart-throb status. ‘I don’t have anything to do with anything I did six years ago,’ he said. ‘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.’

However, as he prepared for the role of ‘v. eligible
bachelor’ Mark, he did watch some of the scenes again partly, he said, to inform his performance. ‘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.’