THE FIRTH FACTOR
Beneath his natural warmth and charm, there s something altogether darker and sexier about Colin Firth these days. His career-altering role in Tom Ford's debut film seduced us with a brooding sensuality. And in his latest, Oscar-tipped performance, as George VI, that smouldering darkness is evident again. STEPHANIE THEOBALD cosies up to the serious yet mischievous Brit, and discovers why his fortunes — and fitness levels - are at an all-time high
Portrait by CARLOTTA MANAIGO.
Styled by NATHALIE RIDDLE
Observing Colin Firth in downtime, you can see why directors have tended to typecast him as the debonair English gentleman. While the Bazaartesm prepare for a photo shoot to celebrate his new film The Kings Speech, Firth holds doors open, offers to carry equipment, chats in Italian to the photographer and is generally being the affable, sensitive, self deprecating chap who might have just stepped out of a Richard Curtis film.
He tells the anecdote of how he recently found himself in Paris trying to impress an Austrian director famous for his bleak epics when his mobile phone suddenly went off - with a 'Super Trouper' ring tone (a remnant from his stint in Mamma Mia!). 'Not ideal,' he quips, with perfect timing.
His fellow Mamma Mia! actor Meryl Streep describes his humour as 'wicked'; but underneath the bonhomie, the politeness and the eagerness to please, there is something unmistakably brooding.
When you ask his old friend Emma Thompson what he's like, the first thing she replies is: 'Very serious, is Colin.' She jokes that during the filming of Nanny McPhee, in which Firth plays the hapless romantic lead, she had to keep reminding him: 'Colin - this is Nanny McPhee, not Nanny Macbeth!'
Tom Ford glimpsed this depth and potential for darkness when he cast Firth in A Single Man, a film that transformed his career. Firth's image was spectacularly revamped when he played the mid life-crisis gay professor George in the award-winning 2009 adaptation of Christopher Isherwood's short story; and, now 50, he finds himself propelled from quirky-British-film-star status to respected actor of substance on the international movie circuit.
This newly discovered gravitas undoubtedly helped him win his new role in The King's Speech. Firth excels alongside Helena Bonham Carter as the Queen's buttoned-up father, George VI, blighted by a serious speech impediment from childhood - and his performance has already been tipped for Oscar success.
'There's something about Colin that does seem very contained on the surface,' Ford says. 'Yet inside, you know there's enormous emotion.' This unbroken storm of passions is almost palpable when the shoot is over and Firth and I find ourselves sitting alone in the boudoir-style private dining room of a London restaurant. Raking one hand through a head of dark locks and cradling a vodka tonic in the other, he describes the whirlwind of his life during the past two years. 'Success,' he says, sighing, can feel like 'reeling back into space - it's certainly not a restful thing that's happening to you'.
He has changed out of the Alexander McQueen suit he was photographed in, and is now wearing his own flatteringly cut ton sur ton black shirt and jacket. The two top shirt buttons are undone and the fabric is straining at the neck just enough to suggest a bat's squeak of sexuality - as well as a few dressing tips from Ford.
Firth has become better at fashion since A Single Man. The film was so low-budget that much of his remuneration was Tom Ford suits ('They fit well and they're just very, very classic'). Patting his toned stomach and adjusting his horn-rimmed specs (by Tom Ford, naturally), he admits Ford came into his life at just the right time, as far as his physique was concerned. 'I was at an age where you think, "Oh, shall I let it all go?'" he says. 'Actually, Tom caught me at that point and it was great.' He still sees the personal trainer Ford hooked him up with. They box in the back garden of his Chiswick house.
In spite of the warm, rich voice, there is something difficult to get close to about Colin Firth. This, of course, is part of his charm and also something that infuses his acting. In his roles, he often appears as though behind a sheet of glass, and when that shatters, the effects are breathtaking. Few actors cry on screen better than Firth. There's the poignant moment in ‘A Singfe Man’ when George breaks down after the family ban him from his boyfriend's funeral. In ‘The King’s Speech’ too, Bertie, as he was known, suddenly weeps inconsolably on realising what it will mean to be King George VI.
On the subject of screen crying. Firth muses: 'If you've got a mask on, I suppose you're safe behind it to release certain things.' Then out of the blue, he adds: 'I'm not very good at it in real life, funnily enough.' Aren't you? 'No,' he says, wistfully.
You can't help but think of an updated Darcy as you watch Firth sipping his vodka tonic and struggling to talk about his emotions. The vision of the troubled Jane Austen hero emerging wet and smoldering from a lake in 1995's ‘Pride and Prejudice’ became the focus of middle-class women's fantasies, yet marred much of his career. It left him typecast to the extent that Helen Fielding's char¬acter in the Bridget Jones books - the rude, awkward Mark Darcy - was reportedly inspired by it.
When asked about the Darcy moment, he modestly analyses why the female population of Britain is essentially mistaken about his sex appeal: 'It was because you've seen this man so buttoned up. It was the storytelling, it wasn't anything to do with me.' Tom Ford came into Firth's life at just the right time, as far as his physique was concerned. I was at an age where you think, "Oh, shall I let it all go?" Tom caught me at that point and it was great'.
Firth loves to analyse. He soon steers the conversation on to 'extraordinary ejaculations' yet, alas, he's only referring to the writing style of DH Lawrence. In spite, or maybe because, of coming from a family of teachers, Firth failed to complete his A-levels (something he now admits he's trying to make up for). He woke up on the morning of his retakes, 'thought "fuck it" and went back to bed'.
Yet even from an early age, he was something of a sophisticate. Instead of hanging out at bus stops or engaging in vandalism, he sated his teenage angst on Camus, Rimbaud and especially Baude¬laire's Artificial Paradises (an essay on the pros and cons of hashish versus red wine), although he adds with a grin that another attraction to such exotic writing was that 'a girl I fancied read that stuff'.
At 24, scarcely out of London drama school, he was offered the role of passionate Marxist teenager Tommy Judd alongside Rupert Everett in the 1984 film adaptation of Julian Mitchell's Another Country. A string of acclaimed roles followed including The English Patient, Tumbledown, Fever Pitch and Shakespeare in Love. And yet, as far as his image was concerned, it was the affable 'posh boy' (and his incarnations in Love Actually, Bridget Jones's Diary and Mamma Mia!) who always prevailed.
So how does it feel now that he's finally respected as a 'serious' actor? His face darkens (anger is one of Firth's more seductive looks), but then a flicker of smile appears and he begins to talk of a new friend who's helped him cope with that success.
'Tom Ford and I have connected in a way that I think is very rare,' he says, adding that he, Ford, the designer's partner, magazine editor Richard Buckley, and Firth's Italian wife Livia often meet up away from the film world's bright lights. 'Appreciating what's hap¬pening to you takes a bit of serenity. And if you don't have access to that, you're in trouble. We relish each other's company in a more intimate environment. I'm enormously grateful that I have that.'
Firth's 'wilfully perverse' side (he's not a rebel, he insists, despite his flunked A-levels) clicked with the single-mindedness of Ford, a man also known for his insistence on doing things his own way; not to mention a shared penchant for roguish humour. 'That mischie¬vous side to him is always bursting to get out,' says Firth, recalling an awards ceremony where he drank a little more than he should have. The next night, Ford did a re-run of Firth clinging merrily to a door. 'He has a habit of imitating bad behaviour.'
This new friendship has, Firth says, enabled him to see that 'it's very easy to squander your blessings on neurotic doubts and fears that you're going to have those good things taken away from you'.
A rock even stronger than Ford is his wife of 13 years, Livia Giuggioli, 39, a film producer originally from Rome, who runs Eco Age, a fashion shop in west London dedicated to green living. They met in Colombia in 1996 when working on an adaptation of Joseph Conrad's Nostromo. It was love at first sight for Firth ('instinc-tive, inexplicable, I've never looked back'). She doesn't see him as the 'smouldering' type, and he claims to be more of a 'nerd' around her.
But then, Livia Firth is not the average Hollywood-style wife. Undaunted by the prospect of having to appear more frequently on red carpets, she launched a 'green-carpet challenge', which involves only wearing sustainable fashion - often reworked versions of 1960s dresses donated by friends' mothers. Firth has learnt Italian - a great tonic, he says, to escape his English self. It releases him 'into a wonderfully different and rather mysterious world'. This leads us back to crying. 'A lot of Latin men have no shame in crying,' he says. 'African men, too. I think it's quite an Anglo thing. Russians seem to be quite comfortable with tears, as well.'
He escapes as much as he can to the family house in Umbria with Livia and their sons, Luca, nine, and Matteo, seven. Twenty-year-old Will, Firth's son with former long-term partner Meg Tilly, is also a frequent visitor. Firth starts to talk about how he might well run off and 'lie fallow' for a while, but it's unlikely he will do so just yet. He has three new film projects; then there's his work for Brightwide.com, his website that showcases political cinema; and, of course, the potential Oscar nomination.
Meanwhile, he says, he's determined to try to enjoy his extended ride on the rollercoaster of fame. He recalls the recent London premiere for ‘The King’s Speech’. After the hysteria of the red carpet, when everyone had taken their seats in the cinema, he slipped off to recover alone in the empty lobby. 'I looked out of the window and I suddenly realised there was a funfair taking up the whole of Leicester Square. And I hadn't even seen it! Success is like tunnel vision. You sometimes find yourself not fully appreciating where you are.' So he took a deep breath and went back to face the music. 'I thought, "Get into this. You may even be gone tomorrow. You are here, you're proud of the piece, it's up there on a great big screen.'"
Back at the restaurant, Firth gazes into his empty glass, then gets up, ready to go to another gala. 'There are moments, I suppose,' he says with the hint of a grin, 'when it all feels rather wonderful.' 'The King's Speech' is released nationwide on 7 January.
|
<\/u><\/a> 
<\/u><\/a>
- участник сейчас на форуме
- участник вне форума