By JANE STEVENSON, QMI Agency
British actor Colin Firth, who was nominated for an Academy Award earlier this year for his stirring performance in A Single Man -- but lost to Jeff Bridges in Crazy Heart -- appears to be headed for another.
His moving and often funny portrayal of the shy and stammering King George VI in his latest film, The King's Speech, is one of TIFF's most universally praised so far. In an interview on Thursday, a day before his 50th birthday, Firth addressed the growing buzz over his performance.
"I think I'm old enough to manage expectations, frankly," he said. "And those things are wonderful, but they are what they are. And I thinks it's entirely fine to bask in all of that as long as you don't lose sight of the fact that your film isn't measured by that. The answer is, let's hope it all happens, and it'll be disappointing if it doesn't, but I think the film will still be what it is. At the moment, that's where it's at, people are liking it and, on the whole, loving it -- and it's a very, very gratifying thing to be a part of, obviously."
If the Oscar nod should come for Firth in The King's Speech, he says there was nothing that he learned from his Academy Award experience for A Single Man that will help him prepare for the Oscar red carpet again.
"Everybody I know who are veterans of those events say you never learn, you never get used to it," Firth said. "It's too giddy, too strange, too unreal, too unlike any other part of normal or natural life, so I went through it in a complete daze. I did have fun, actually, particularly because the tension had peaked earlier for me. There seems to be actually no question of winning, which takes a lot of tension out of it 'cause otherwise it's almost like sitting on a ticking time bomb."
In fact, Firth said this past January he hit the Golden Globes red carpet, which are staged earlier than the Oscars, literally 24 hours after he had filmed his last scene in The King's Speech.
"I had to run for a plane, so that was a little bit hard to process," he said.
The story of what turned into a lifelong friendship between King George VI -- or Bertie, as he's called in the film -- and his Australian speech therapist Lionel Logue, played by Geoffrey Rush, was unknown to Firth, although he was well aware of the King's stammering issues because they had been made so public.
And Firth, who met Rush when they were both in Shakespeare In Love, was thrilled to act opposite someone whose company he enjoyed so much in real life.
The cast -- which also includes Helena Bonham Carter as the royal's wife -- went into an intense three week rehearsal process before shooting began on the Tom Hooper-directed film.
"I think the fact that I take great joy in (Geoffrey Rush's) company was helpful," Firth said. "We had a lot of fun together. And humour is very much the basis of our relationship. And there was no way that we were going to allow Bertie and Lionel's relationship to not make use of that ... These men had a sense of humour."
Firth also felt it was important to show the well-documented love shared between King George VI and his daughter, the future Queen Elizabeth II.
Firth, whose next film will be an adaptation of the John Le Carre novel -- Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, with Swedish director Tomas Alfredson (Let The Right One In) -- has no idea whether the real Queen Elizabeth II has seen, or will see, the film.
"It's been offered. It's been shown to Prince Charles' -- whatever they are, the private secretaries -- and I think Tom (Hooper) was present at that, and I think verbally he got a very positive feedback. Whatever the official line is, I think the Royal Family would have to be quite careful. My line in the movie where I said, 'We are not a family, we're a firm,' that's a quote, that's Bertie's quote. And I have writtten to Prince Charles and he's written back, and he's expressed a curiosity to see the film -- but whether he accepts or likes it, we'll have to see."
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Спасибо! 
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Как бы не сглазили. Стало быть, в Торонто покажут, а в Венецию решили не везти. Интересно, почему? Но тут об этом ничего не говорится. 
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