
Archived completely due to unavailability on the internet
Interview thanks to Christina.Translation German to English thanks to ColinFever
“I’m flying to London and will interview Colin Firth”, I said and grinned happily like Bridget Jones. “Who?” my colleague asked. I showed him a photograph. “You like him? I thought you women all go for Brad Pitt.”
Film and theatre actor Colin Firth is Great Britain’s sex symbol N°1.
And not only since he made Hugh Grant lose the favour of the chubby RenĂ©e Zellweger. Since Mr. Darcy emerged from a lake "naked" in the 1995 BBC mini-series of “Pride & Prejudice”, every child-bearing woman in the UK wants his child.
In real-life Firth has got three, on screen seven children: in the movie “Nanny McPhee” he plays the widowed father of a mischievous bunch which is brought under control by the magic arts of Nanny Emma Thompson.
Very british
“I first had my doubts to take this part. I thought after all this Bridget-Jones-madness, people need to recover from my face”, said Firth during the KURIER-interview in the chic Soho Hotel. Sure, that the press awarded Mr. Stiff Upper Lip a title for perfect "Englishness". Everything on this man is very British.
Firth is involved in eight (!) film projects at present. Apart from “Nanny” there is the period film “The Last Legion” planned for 2006.
“To be an actor was the only career aspiration I have ever fostered. I’ve had an unpleasant time at school and have always thought: life can’t be this way. Today I wake up and I’m excited every day about the new things I do”, says Firth. That his parents predicted him a career as a dishwasher in the back room of a dive is old hat. “They had never get to know an actor.”
“I’m coming from a family of butchers, teachers and weavers”, Firth is joking against every Upper-class claim. Born on September 10th 1960 in the county Hampshire, he spent his childhood in Nigeria where three quarters of his grandparents worked as methodistic missionaries and his parents as teachers. When sister Kate and brother Jonathan were born their parents took employment in England. The father as a lecturer in history at Winchester University College, the mother as a lecturer in comparative religion at Open University London.
The son and heir was provided with academical blessings too “but thank goodness I screw up a chemistry test and quickly escaped to the National Youth Theatre. Since that time things were getting better". According to Hollywood scales, Firth has kicked himself out of his filming career by his own hand. To perfect his trade or sometimes even only to be human is much more important to him than any offer from the dream factory. “I have to be careful when such things are written about me. I love money and I’ve got a family which is depending on my financial situation after all”, he laughs.
In fact he retired for two and a half years in the Canadian wilderness after the burn-out of Meg Tilly (with who he had a relationship - 1989). As the work on the thriller “Agnes of God” was burning in the soul of the actress, Firth dabbled in being a carpenter in a wooden house in British Columbia.
The relationship failed. 15-year-old son William lives for the most part of the year with Tilly in Los Angeles. In 1997 Firth married the Italian documentary filmer Livia Giuggioli: their sons Luca and Mateo are four and two years old.
“I have to disappoint you”, he anticipates the next question regarding the “Nanny” movie. “My children have never seen me on the screen. I don’t even like to see myself on screen. Nobody wants to see his face in a movie or on photographs. It's annoying when I’m stuck in a traffic jam and on the bus beside me there is a huge poster of myself.”
Fair play
“I am not hunted by paparazzi and nobody has ever thrown their knickers at me”, Firth quickly puts his star-image in perspective. He only makes use of it on two occasions: to get hold of a table in trendy restaurants and for fair trade. He’s supposed to have 300.000 pound invested in the London coffee-shop chain “Progreso” where African coffee farmers have a share in the profits.
“I was feeling more and more uncomfortable about being a part of the problem, not of the solution”, Firth, who has been in Africa to get an idea of the coffee cooperatives, explains his engagement.
Why he only recently brought it to light? “I’ve met people in Ethopia who can talk about the world market and WTO much more well-founded than I can. But they are not heard, they are not being interviewed. So I decided to speak up for them.”
Firth on…
…being a celebrity
This is when the woman standing behind me at the desk in the supermarket calls her friends to tell them what’s in my basket.
…God
I collect from every religion that permits tolerance, laughter and a little bit of irony.
… ignoring criticism
You also meet enough people who will inform you: “I don’t think, like the Telegraph did, that you are a bit of miscasted.”
… being romantic
I’ve learned a foreign language to impress the woman who became mine later on. Now that was a gesture, wasn’t it?