Colin Firth: the picture of a star

James Luxford

• Last Updated: November 23. 2009 9:52AM UAE / November 23. 2009 5:52AM GMT

Colin Firth, who rose to prominence with his role as Mr Darcy in Pride and Prejudice, is happy to talk about his past as well as his future on the screen. Samir Hussein / Getty Images

Colin Firth has barely sat down, yet he is already shifting attention from himself. The first topic of discussion is the breakthrough of Ben Barnes, his co-star in Dorian Gray and an actor he has already played the father of in the previous Ealing Studios production Easy Virtue. Being young and predominantly starring in period dramas is something Firth can relate to, “but Barnes is better looking than I was”, he jokes.

He has been in the film industry for nearly 25 years, but it is during the past 15 that he has risen to become one of Britain’s most prominent actors. In the 1990s, he starred in three notable productions – the BBC mini-series Pride and Prejudice, in which his portrayal of Mr Darcy won him fans across the world, and the multiple-Oscar-winning films The English Patient and Shakespeare in Love. Since 2000, he has steadily established himself as a regular in romantic comedies and family movies such as Love Actually, while still finding time for independent fare like When Did You Last See Your Father? and last year’s Genova.

In Dorian Gray, a dark adaptation of the Oscar Wilde story, he plays Gray’s friend and mentor Lord Henry Wotton, who takes a naive young Gray (Barnes) and introduces him to the hedonistic side of London. “There is a paradox in the role Ben plays,” Firth says, “because in the second half of the film, he has to play someone who has aged 20 or so years, whilst still looking like he does in the beginning of the film. In Ben, you have a young actor who has to play a man who is experienced, while an older actor wouldn’t be able to look young enough to play the young man. Ben is by far the best Dorian that there has ever been. He has got much more complexity, partly in what he has been given. He has a very interesting quality. He is clearly very beautiful. He has a lot of the right physical qualities, obviously, but he has also got these very, very dark eyes. And it kind of makes him rather interesting when he changes.”

Firth’s character can be viewed (albeit loosely) as the villain of the piece. He finds Gray as a fresh-faced 20-year-old who has just arrived in London and lures him into the city’s seedy underbelly. Wotton coerces his young charge to leave no pleasure denied, using Gray’s youth as a way of revisiting his own. As with the book, Wotton is very much the catalyst for Dorian’s eventual downfall, but a fundamental difference in the film’s plot reveals Firth’s Wotton as somewhat more human.

“The stakes are high for Henry, but for different reasons to the book,” says Firth. “He realises that he is in some way responsible for creating a monster. But giving Henry a daughter in this film means that something, or rather someone, is at risk, so it’s not just this story of one man’s destruction. It has ramifications.” It also makes the plot more viable for the cinema format. “In the book, Dorian has a whole lifetime of regret, but now we have something we can specifically focus on that makes it worthwhile for him to try and forgive himself. Also, it gives Lord Henry a vulnerability that he otherwise wouldn’t have and we have got a means by which we can care about Dorian, which we wouldn’t have otherwise because, as he says, his life is a monstrous corruption.”

This will obviously infuriate some literary purists, who would not be pleased with this retelling of their beloved story. “Absolutely right,” Firth agrees, “but that’s what [the director] Ollie Parker wanted to do with this, open it up to people other than academics and literary enthusiasts. That’s what he did when I worked on The Importance of Being Earnest with him, and it’s something that was fairly well received despite the grumblings of the purists.” Firth also believes that it’s something the author himself would have approved of. “The original book caused some controversy, but Wilde was never a writer who liked to play up to people’s expectations and this is very much in that spirit. The book is still there and will always be there. Ollie did the version of the story that he thinks people will enjoy, and as with any adaptation there is some percentage of our voice and some percentage of Wilde’s.”

Firth, who turns 50 next year, has turned his hand to a different type of role in the past few years; for example, playing a father in family films such as Nanny McPhee and What a Girl Wants, as well as a potential father in last year’s hit musical Mamma Mia! “It’s something that happens with most actors” he says. “I’m playing married men more often now, or figures of authority such as the part I played in St Trinian’s.” However, he doesn’t believe this means his career is becoming boring. “To play these characters, with such interesting backgrounds and challenges, is something I would be pleased with at any age. I think the fact that I am now the husband or father rather than the boyfriend doesn’t necessarily mean I am playing less interesting roles. Perhaps it’s more a reflection of my age. There’s more depth because these characters have had a past and are more established in their lives than younger men would be. For example, Wotton is a man who enjoyed his youth very much, and finds getting older a great source of depression. This is, of course, why he finds Dorian so interesting and why the events of the film transpire.”

Next year will be the 15th anniversary of Firth’s performance in the BBC’s Pride and Prejudice, which he has been associated with ever since. Rather than wanting to distance himself from it, the actor is at ease with the topic, and in an interview with a French magazine even went as far as to include Jane Austen as one of the three women in his life (along with his mother and wife). “It’s something I’ll never get away from, but I’m not sure I’d want to,” he says cheerfully. “I mean, I’d rather it not be the only thing I’m remembered for but it’s certainly a highlight – it got me the role in Bridget Jones’s Diary and brought me opportunities I would have not been afforded otherwise.” It also earned him the affection of female fans worldwide, and although Firth squirms a little bit when the phrase “sex symbol” is mentioned, he can at least laugh about it. When asked whether his wife agrees with the label, he replies: “I don’t think so. She sees me in the morning, so it destroys the illusion.”

But while he is proud of his past, it hasn’t held him back. Among his current and future projects is a diverse mixture of both mainstream and independent films. He is appearing during the festive season in the Walt Disney production of A Christmas Carol, directed by Robert Zemeckis and starring Jim Carrey as Ebenezer Scrooge. “It’s amazing the different ways stories can be told now,” Firth says. Equally exciting but in a different context is Main Street, a small-town story from the screenwriter of the classic film To Kill a Mockingbird, Horton Foote. It concerns the citizens of a small town who, faced with a bleak economic future, are offered a proposal that could change their lives forever. “This, sadly, turned out to be Foote’s last piece,” Firth says. “The story and the character are rather enigmatic and rather than leaping all over it and giving it a different interpretation, I tried to play the contradictions that I found. Hopefully, people will be as mystified by the character as I was. It’s about the economic downturn, in some ways, although it was written before our current credit crunch.”

Finally there is the drama A Single Man, in which Firth stars as an English professor attempting to deal with the death of his partner. It is directed by the fashion-designer-turned-filmmaker Tom Ford. A Single Man was nominated for the Golden Lion at this year’s Venice Film Festival, and Firth won the Volpi Cup for Best Actor. Both he and the film are tipped for success in the coming awards season. “It takes place in a single day, featuring flashbacks to the past,” Firth explains. “It’s about a day in the life of a man who’s grieving. I’m extremely pleased with it.” Even with all his forthcoming projects, Firth still finds himself connected to all manner of films. “The internet throws things up. I don’t go on IMDb (Internet Movie Database) very often, but in the past I have been connected to projects that I had no idea about!”