Oscar Nom – Colin Firth Finally Frees Himself of Mr. Darcy

Finally, 15 years later, Colin Firth is ridding himself of a stereotype in hollywood that’s plagued him for the last 15 years. After playing Mr. Darcy in the BBC smash hit miniseries, Pride and Prejudice, it seemed he would  forever be relegated to playing roles similar to the brooding, snobbish handsome and wealthy Englishman he’s become so identified with.

It happened after the astonishing success of the 1995 British version of the BBC adaptation of Jane Austen’s novel which has been declared over and over as “one of the most unforgettable moments in British TV history”.

The phenomenon could be seen in the sheer quantity of consumers buying up copies of its DVD, which saw sales soar to   70,000  in its first week, then 200,000 copies by the end of the first year. The selling success of the BBC  mini-series prompted four different releases of the 13 part romantic epic,  including a digitally re-mastered Tenth Anniversary edition, and most recently, the high def Blu-Ray release. Even the soundtrack to Pride & Prejudice flew off shelves, selling 20,000 copies immediately, while hoards of fans snapped up “The Making of Pride and Prejudice” companion book within days of its release. Fans recollected they had seen Pride and Prejudice so many time they could remember every line of dialogue in the BBC adaptation-sensation. Undoubtedly, a scene of Firth  in a wet t-shirt became known as one of the sexiest scenes in film-dom history.

The miniseries also elevated Firth into the role of major celebrity, with film and television roles now flying his way.

But throughout his career, no matter how hard he tried, his most successful films were those that bore some sort of resemblance to his Pride and Prejudice character. Roles like Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy , the steady and slightly boring co-star of the Bridget Jones films. Even on the British comedy series St. Trinian, he played a cabinet minister with a dog named Darcy. Firth has said in the past, that he’s chosen to embrace his Darcy image as part of his brand appeal instead of considering it a bad thing. He believes it’s because of Darcy he was able to obtain so much  work because studios never hesitated to cast him in Darcy-esque roles, knowing he had a huge fan base that was willing to shell out the bucks to see him in them.

The 50-year-old actor’s career actually started long before Pride and Prejudice put him on the Hollywood radar. It has spanned the stage, television and on screen, over 25 years, dating back to his first film Another Country, opposite another young actor making his movie debut, Rupert Everett. But it wasn’t until this year though that the Academy began taking him seriously as an actor. His performance in ‘A Single Man’  won critical praise, and earned him Best Actor nominations for nearly every single major “pre-oscar” award from SAG to the Golden Globes, to New York Critics and the Venice Film Festival Awards, which he won last year.

He also sealed up a Leading Man nomination for A Single Man, in his memorable portrayal of a gay English professor in Los Angeles during the 1960’s whose longtime companion had been killed in a car crash. The small film was helmed by first time director Tom Ford and had been a longtime hit on the independent film festival circuit.

Firth has has kept busy in the past few months making the red carpet rounds across the award show circuit. The actor admits, that his red carpet style benefited from the film’s director, who  is also the notable fashion designer who is credited with saving Gucci from extinction, that he’s been getting ‘the good stuff’ wardrobe-wise, including a very expensive pair of 1920’s studs and cuff links he showed off at a recent event. “I own a nice house and make a nice living but I’m not in a position to own these,” the Brit star said backstage at the Globes.

Above from left to right, Firth at the Single Man Premiere, SAG Awards, Golden Globe Awards

Firth isn’t  just thrilled with his nomination because of the respect it’s bringing him in the film industry, but because of the renewed interest it is bringing to the film. As Firth stirs up more Oscar buzz, so does the film, as a more mainstream audience becomes aware of it. A Single Man had been traveling across film film festivals trying to find an audience for many months now. “I’m just going to carry on with my life and be thankful and that’s it. My celebration days, which were huge, are now slightly modified, shall we say,” he said on the reaction to his nomination. “At my exalted age I can’t quite do the old 24-hour nightly shifts that I used to.”

It’s hard to deny the impact of getting an Oscar nomination for playing against-type will have on his career. In the past, he seemed stuck in roles in which he plays a man who loses a women to another man. The pattern was clear. In Bridget Jones Diary, he played an Englishman who loses a glamorous women to another man. In Shakespeare in Love, he also lost a woman to another man. And it happened with his character in The English Patient as well. When he was not playing the man who loses the women, he was playing ‘well English-mannered’. Like in the musical Mamma Mia with Meryl Streep and Pierce Brosnan or as Mr. Brown in children fantasy adventure Nanny McPhee.

Beyond acting, Firth is the father of three children (William, 18, from his brief marriage to actor Meg Tilly, and Luca, 7, and Matteo, 4, with his wife Livia Giuggioli) and has remained relatively outside the constant celebrity chatter of the gossip arena that has come to exemplify hollywood, although on occasion he’s spoken out on such heated celebrity topics like what he considers an over-abundance of plastic surgery in showbiz.

“Your face is supposed to move if you’re going to act. Why on earth would you take a violin and make the strings so that they don’t vibrate? Injecting something in to your face so it’s paralyzed, or cutting bits of it up so that you take any signs of life out of it is catastrophic if you’re going to express yourself in any way at all.” he said, during recent promotional tour for his film Mamma Mia.

Next up for Firth?  He just wrapped up Main Street co-starring Orlando Bloom, about several residents of a small North Carolina city who are confronted by stranger with plans to save their decaying hometown. He also doesn’t have plans to give up Darcy-like characters altogether, and is considering taking on Bridget Jones Diary 3, a film whose development has been stalled for several years now. “I think that could be very interesting,” he told EmpireOnline.com, “because Helen [Fielding] is such an interesting writer…sometimes a third film is an improvement on a second. I don’t really want to be part of a perpetual franchise, but we’re all getting so old! I think the idea of Mark D’Arcy and Daniel Cleaver and Bridget Jones in advanced stages of deterioration could be quite fun. We’re making a comedy after all.”*” While the there were only two Bridget Jones Diary books released, the film would be based on Fielding’s continued ‘Bridget Jones Diary’ columns that ran in the British newspaper, The Independent, and saw Bridget trying to get pregnant.

But for now, he’s riding the academy award buzz wave as the anti-Mr. Darcy.

A Look at some of Colin Firth’s most memorable films

“You always have to find something about a character that you like,” he said on the many characters he’s played in films like The English Patient, Shakespeare in Love, Love Actually and Girl with a Pearl Earring. “You can play the most despicable human being, but if you pronounce them despicable then you won’t be able to make it real.”

Firth plays Colin Ware, an awkward British artist who takes an impulsive trip to the United States after being dumped by his girlfriend. Minnie Driver is the acid-tongued ex, Heather Graham is the sweetly dippy new love interest, and Firth is the man in the middle. The one whose bruised silences speak volumes.

Mamma Mia (2009) Firth played a nerdy business man in the on screen version of the Abba rock musical.‘‘I think I got off rather lightly in that I don’t think it’s the most difficult song to sing. I haven’t tried the others, but it’s probably one of the easier ones. It’s not a show stopper,” he says…‘I didn’t have to make that strange transition in the musical-theatre convention of I’m talking to you one minute and the next I’m singing my thoughts. It was a song in a naturalistic context,” Firth said.

Fever Pitch (2002) Colin Firth played a soccer loving English teacher attempting to juggle both a budding relationship with a woman and his passion for the local football team.

Girl with a Pear Earring - “Vermeer had this extraordinary softness in his view of everything. That fascinated me as an actor. Some of his characters are in soft focus and there’s a kind of intensity and gentleness to everything. I didn’t know if there was a way to express that and, in some ways, it made everything frustratingly elusive. But that interested me more than the brush technique, ” he said on playing the seventeenth century dutch painter in Girl With a Pearl Earring opposite Scarlett Johannson. “It’s what Vermeer sees when he looks at the girl, or when he looks in the corner of a room, or when he looks at the light coming in through the window. It was that, really.. “There’s something very elusive about his paintings and there’s something quite elusive about the man, I think. And maybe it was just as well that it stayed elusive.

Pride and Prejudice Miniseries (1995) “I’m sitting in a barren room that looks like an interrogation room in a Belgrade police station,” he complains (not that he’s ever been inside one). “If I look out the window, however, I’m looking at a beautiful terracotta-tiled roof with a million TV aerials and a dome, of the mini-St Peter’s variety. Beyond that there’s an ancient Roman palace, and to my right there’s a statue of St Peter. I’m high up, so I’m overlooking the rooftops,” Firth said on his experience doing the promotional interviews for Pride and Prejudice in Italy.

Tagged as: a single man, bridget jones 2, bridget jones diary, bridget jones edge of reason, Colin Firth, Colin Firth a single man, fever, girl with a pearl earring pride and prejudice, importance of being earnest, shakespeare in love, tom ford