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
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?
Most actors will tell you they have some sort of dream of doing something other than what they're doing.
Actors are basically drag queens. People will tell you they act because they want to heal mankind or, you know, explore the nature of the human psyche. Yes, maybe. But basically we just want to put on a frock and dance.
I do think I'm a character actor.
Directors don't get to see other directors at work - they're the only one on the set. I've met directors who've asked me what another filmmaker is like. So, there's probably nobody better placed to make all the comparisons and to pick up stuff than an actor.
However good a communicator a director is, unless they've been actors, it's just not the same as the shorthand you get with someone who's been an actor.
But it's interesting being directed by someone who is a very good actor. There's nothing like it. It might sound like a territorial thing about what I do, but I don't think you can understand what it is until you've done it. I know that to be a fact.
But this is where you get all the market research and things get in danger of becoming formulaic, and where you depend on brands and getting recognised actors. It's the thing that precludes risk very often, otherwise everyone would be avant-garde all over the place.
I can't bring you absolute truth in the detailed factual sense. All I can do is bring you an interpretation as I understand it. That's all you can ever get from an actor.
The sheer level of fascination on the subject is really a symptom of how this issue affects people, particularly women who are in utter disbelief that anyone would consciously go the other way -- to actually try to gain weight,
is that it is like Hamlet. If you thought about who had played it before, you'd never play Hamlet again.
I was not quite as gracious as Mark Darcy about wearing what my mother tried to make me wear. It tended to stop really, when I was quite young.
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.
I want to say, strenuously, that although I have never considered the Darcy thing to be a problem, that is simply not going to happen.