Colin Firth
Colin Andrew Firth CBE (born 10 September 1960) is an English actor and producer. He was identified in the mid-1980s with the "Brit Pack" of rising young British actors,[1] undertaking a challenging series of roles, including leading roles in A Month in the Country (1987), Tumbledown (1988) and Valmont (1989). His portrayal of Mr. Darcy in the 1995 television adaptation of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice led to widespread attention, and to roles in more prominent films such as The English Patient (1996), Shakespeare in Love (1998), The Importance of Being Earnest (2002), Girl with a Pearl Earring (2003), and Love Actually (2003), co-starring as Mark Darcy in the romantic comedy films Bridget Jones's Diary (2001), Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason (2004), and Bridget Jones's Baby (2016), and Harry Bright in the musical comedy films Mamma Mia! (2008) and Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again! (2018).
Colin Firth
- United Kingdom
- Italy
- Actor
- producer
1983–present
Meg Tilly (1989–1994)
3
- Kate Firth (sister)
- Jonathan Firth (brother)
In 2009, Firth received international acclaim for his performance in Tom Ford's A Single Man, for which he won a BAFTA Award and the Volpi Cup for Best Actor and received his first Academy Award nomination. In 2010, his portrayal of King George VI in Tom Hooper's The King's Speech won him the Academy Award for Best Actor.[2] He subsequently appeared as MI6 agent Bill Haydon in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011), and as secret agent Harry Hart / Agent Galahad in Kingsman: The Secret Service (2014) and its sequel Kingsman: The Golden Circle (2017). He has since appeared in the musical fantasy film Mary Poppins Returns (2018), the war film 1917 (2019), and the romance film Supernova (2020). He is also known for his performances in television, including BBC's Conspiracy (2001) and HBO's The Staircase (2022), receiving Primetime Emmy Award nominations for each.
In 2012, he founded the production company Raindog Films, where he served as a producer for Eye in the Sky (2015) and Loving (2016). His films have grossed more than $3 billion from 42 releases worldwide.[3] Firth has campaigned for the rights of Indigenous people and is a member of Survival International. He has also campaigned on issues of asylum seekers, refugees' rights and the environment. He commissioned and co-authored a scientific paper on a study of the differences in brain structure between people of differing political orientations.[4]
He is the recipient of various accolades, including an Academy Award, two British Academy Film Awards, a Golden Globe Award, and three Screen Actors Guild Awards. In 2011, Firth was appointed a CBE by Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace for his services to drama.[5][6] That same year, he received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and appeared in Time magazine's 100 most influential people in the world.[7]
Early life[edit]
Firth was born in the village of Grayshott, Hampshire,[8] to parents who were academics and teachers. His mother, Shirley Jean (née Rolles), was a comparative religion lecturer at King Alfred's College (now the University of Winchester); and his father, David Norman Lewis Firth, was a history lecturer at King Alfred's and education officer for the Nigerian government.[9][10][11] Firth is the eldest of three children; his sister Kate is an actress and voice coach, and his brother Jonathan is also an actor.[12] His maternal grandparents were Congregationalist ministers and his paternal grandfather was an Anglican priest. They did overseas missionary work, and both of his parents were born and spent part of their childhoods in India.[13][14][15]
As a child, Firth frequently travelled due to his parents' work, spending some years in Nigeria.[16] He also lived in St. Louis, Missouri, when he was 11, which he has described as "a difficult time".[17] On returning to England, he attended the Montgomery of Alamein Secondary School (now Kings' School), which at the time was a state comprehensive school in Winchester, Hampshire. He was still an outsider and the target of bullying. To counter this, he adopted the local working class Hampshire accent and copied his schoolmates' lack of interest in schoolwork.[18]
Firth began attending drama workshops at age 10, and by 14 had decided to be a professional actor. Until further education, he was not academically inclined, later saying in an interview, "I didn't like school. I just thought it was boring and mediocre and nothing they taught me seemed to be of any interest at all."[17] However, at Barton Peveril Sixth Form College in Eastleigh, he was imbued with a love of English literature by an enthusiastic teacher, Penny Edwards, and has said that his two years there were among the happiest of his life.[19]
After his sixth form years, Firth moved to London and joined the National Youth Theatre, where he made many contacts and got a job in the wardrobe department at the National Theatre.[18] He subsequently studied at Drama Centre London.[20]
Career[edit]
1983–1995: Early work and breakthrough[edit]
Playing Hamlet in the Drama Centre end-of-year production, Firth was spotted by playwright Julian Mitchell, who cast him as the gay, ambitious public schoolboy Guy Bennett in the 1983 West End production of Another Country. In 1984, Firth made his film debut as Tommy Judd, Guy Bennett's straight, Marxist school friend in the screen adaptation of the play (with Rupert Everett as Guy Bennett).[21][22] It was the start of a longstanding public feud between Firth and Everett, which was eventually resolved.[23] He starred with Sir Laurence Olivier in Lost Empires (1986), a TV adaptation of J. B. Priestley's novel.[24]
In 1987, Firth and other up-and-coming British actors such as Tim Roth, Bruce Payne and Paul McGann, were dubbed the 'Brit Pack'.[25] That year, he appeared with Kenneth Branagh in the film version of J. L. Carr's A Month in the Country.[26] Sheila Johnston observed a theme in his early work of playing those traumatised by war.[27] He portrayed real-life British soldier Robert Lawrence MC in the 1988 BBC dramatisation Tumbledown. Lawrence was severely injured at the Battle of Mount Tumbledown during the Falklands War, and the film details his struggles to adjust to his disability whilst confronted with indifference from the government and public. It attracted controversy at the time, with criticism coming from left and right sides of the political spectrum.[27] Despite this, the performance brought Firth a Royal TV Society Best Actor Award, and a nomination for the 1989 BAFTA Television Award.[28] In 1989, he played the title role in Miloš Forman's Valmont, based on Les Liaisons dangereuses.[29] Released just a year after Dangerous Liaisons, it did not make a big impact in comparison. That year he also played a paranoid, socially awkward character in the Argentinian psychological thriller Apartment Zero.[30]
Firth finally became a British household name through his role as the aloof, haughty aristocrat Mr. Darcy in the 1995 BBC television adaptation of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. Producer Sue Birtwistle's first choice for the part, he was eventually persuaded to take it despite his unfamiliarity with Austen's writing.[31] He and co-star Jennifer Ehle began a romantic relationship during the filming, which received media attention only after their separation.[32] Sheila Johnston wrote that Firth's approach to the part "lent Darcy complex shades of coldness, even caddishness, in the early episodes".[27] The series was an international success and unexpectedly elevated Firth to stardom[32]—in some part due to a scene not from the novel, where he emerges from a lake swim in a wet shirt.[33] Although he did not mind being recognised as "a romantic idol as a Darcy with smouldering sex appeal"[34] in a role that "officially turned him into a heart-throb",[35] he expressed the wish not to be associated with Pride and Prejudice forever.[36] He was, therefore, reluctant to accept similar roles and risk becoming typecast.[18]
1996–2008: Romance and ensemble films[edit]
For a time, it did seem as if Mr. Darcy would overshadow the rest of Firth's career, and there were humorous allusions to the role in his next five movies.[37] The most notable was his casting as the love interest Mark Darcy in the film adaptation of Bridget Jones's Diary, itself a modern-day retelling of Pride and Prejudice. Firth accepted the part as he saw it as an opportunity to lampoon his Mr. Darcy character.[38] The film was very successful[39] and critically well-liked.[40] A 2004 sequel was mostly panned by critics[41] but still financially successful.
Prior to this, Firth had a significant supporting role in The English Patient (1996) as the husband of Kristin Scott Thomas's character, whose jealousy of her adultery leads to tragedy. That year he also played the husband of the character of Kristin's sister, Serena Scott Thomas, in the television miniseries Nostromo. Of the two he said "Serena was a much more faithful wife." He had parts in light romantic period pieces such as Shakespeare in Love (1998), Relative Values (2000) and The Importance of Being Earnest (2002). He appeared in several television productions, including Donovan Quick (an updated version of Don Quixote) (1999),[42] and had a more serious role as Dr. Wilhelm Stuckart in Conspiracy (2001), concerning the Nazi Wannsee Conference, for which he was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award.[43]
Firth featured in the ensemble all-star cast of Richard Curtis' Love Actually (2003), another financial success[44] which divided critics.[45][46] He was also given solo billing as the romantic lead in Hope Springs, but it received very poor reviews[47][48] and made little box-office impact.[49] He starred as Amanda Bynes' character's father in the 2003 teen comedy What A Girl Wants, which was based on the play The Reluctant Debutante.[50] He played painter Johannes Vermeer opposite Scarlett Johansson in the 2003 release Girl with a Pearl Earring; some critics praised the film's subtlety[51] and sumptuous visuals,[52] whilst others found it almost restrained, tedious and bereft of emotion.[53] Nevertheless, it received mostly favourable reviews, was moderately successful[54] and earned several awards and nominations.
Writing[edit]
Firth's first published work, "The Department of Nothing", appeared in Speaking with the Angel (2000),[112] a collection of short stories edited by Nick Hornby[113] and published to benefit the TreeHouse Trust[114] to aid autistic children. He met Hornby during the filming of the original Fever Pitch.[115] He contributed to the book We Are One: A Celebration of Tribal Peoples (2009),[116] which explores the cultures, diversity and challenges of Indigenous peoples around the world. It features contributions from many Western writers, including Laurens van der Post, Noam Chomsky, Claude Lévi-Strauss; and from Indigenous people such as Davi Kopenawa Yanomami and Roy Sesana. Profits from the book's sale benefit the Indigenous rights organisation Survival International. Firth was an executive producer for the film In Prison My Whole Life, featuring Noam Chomsky and Angela Davis. It was selected to the 2007 London Film Festival and the 2008 Sundance Film Festival.[117]
In December 2010, Firth was guest editor on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, where he commissioned research to scan the brains of volunteers (mostly university students) to see if there were structural differences that might account for political leanings.[4] The resulting academic paper listed him as an author, along with two University College London researchers[118][119] and the science reporter of the BBC Radio 4 Today programme. For his contribution, professor John Jost called Firth a 'scientific ambassador' in the field of political neuroscience.[4] The study suggested that conservatives had more development in the amygdala, and liberals in the anterior cingulate cortex.
In 2012, Firth's audiobook recording of Graham Greene's The End of the Affair was released at Audible.com[120] and was declared Audiobook of the Year at the 2013 Audie Awards.[121]