Interview: "Colin Firth and Tom Ford make 'A Single Man' one of their single great achievements " by Carla Hay (The Examiner)

Colin Firth and Tom Ford at the Toronto International Film Festival Press Conference for "A Single Man"


Colin, what’s your favorite color?
Firth: What’s my favorite color? Blue.


And how did it feel pulling the clothing off for your nude scenes?
Firth: [He laughs.] I preferred having it on.
Ford: Are you sure you don’t work for a U.K. paper? That sounds like a U.K. question.

Colin, was it difficult to shoot that scene when George gets the phone call that his lover has died in a car accident?
Firth: I find I can’t answer questions about that scene. I don’t know how it was arrived at. I do it happened the night Barack Obama was elected. It wasn’t the easiest day to be grief-stricken. I don’t know. I don’t remember.


We love to get on the set and kind of get emotionally ready. You go, "I’ve got the tears coming. Roll the camera. Here we are. I’m in the zone now." Roll camera. Cry. Histrionics. Or whatever emotion they’re trying to conjure. What I find difficult — and I remember we had exercises in this when I was a drama student — come into the room in one condition and be in another by the end of it. Something has to happen to change your mood. You can’t pre-prepare the end. So basically, I have to start the phone call happy, get a series of shocks, allow that to percolate, and end it in a state of complete devastation with the camera rolling. Tom let it go on; he let the magazine roll out, I think, for about 11 minutes...more

Interview: Colin Firth triumphs with an extraordinarily unique performance in 'A Single Man' by Carlay Hay (The Examiner)

In a recent New York Times article about you said that Tom Ford called you "fat" before you started filming "A Single Man." What kind of changes to your diet or fitness regime did you make to get in better shape?I didn’t do much change to the diet. I just ate less, I guess. I haven’t actually spoken about what version of that is true. The subtext is definitely the thing, but Tom, if he said that, I filtered it out. I didn’t hear it. 
He tended to handle me with honeyed tones. [He imitates Tom Ford’s voice] "You look great, really great. If you want to get a trainer, he’ll come to your house every day. I’ll pay for it." That means, "You’re fat." Whether Tom remembers literally having said it or having it euphemistically, it’s the same. And I guess he did me a favor: one final push in the war against gravity in my late 40s. It’s probably helpful...more

Interview: "Colin Firth plays against type" by Katherine Monk (Canwest News Service)

Warmth radiating behind a cool exterior is a natural draw and, for Firth, it seems to be a natural state of being, because, at some level, you can tell he doesn't care about all this entertainment business hullabaloo.

Just watching him entertain questions from reporters as he sits quietly - and ever so elegantly - in his deco chair at the Toronto International Film Festival, Firth is the embodiment of alpha male tolerance: He's just rolling with the punches as he greets the non-stop parade of inquisitors more...

Interview:"Complexity of character excites Firth" by David Mermelstein (Variety)

"I was faced with a character who has a fastidious exterior but within that experiences despair, frivolity, laughter, lust, regret, terror, melancholy, serenity -- all in the same day he's experiencing hysterical grief," says the actor. "I don't know how many roles I've had that offer that range of emotion and experience."

"I felt at liberty," he says. "In roles where the writing's not very good, you have to suppress things. It's frustrating playing someone stupider than you, but I had the measure of George: He was smart, and the way he masks his massive despair is poignant. That obsession with external perfection is a sign of panic. He has to control his exterior world because his interior one is chaos. His precision is all desperate measures more....

Interview: "Colin Firth, feeling 'Single' by Tina Daunt (LA Times)

"There was a serenity on the set," Firth said. "I was given the space to engage and to feel it. Tom didn't bombard us with instructions; we weren't given any really. But you knew by the way he said, 'That was great,' if it was or wasn't great.

"The movie is about isolation and the agony of loving someone who isn't there anymore," he said. "It's universal. It doesn't matter what your sexual [orientation] is. Love is love." more....

Interview: "A Single Man" Colin Firth by Ian Freer (Empire)

Interview: "Colin Firth's discomfort in skin-tight spandex for A Christmas Carol animated movie" (Telegraph UK)

"The spandex that we were put in bulges in all the places you don't want it to bulge and resolutely refuses to bulge in the places you want it to bulge," Firth said.

''I tried every form of fruit and vegetable available to me in my trailer, every culinary item, juicers, blenders and I thought 'well no, it's the spandex so it's obviously not me I'm fine,' and then I walk into Jim, hung like a waterbuffalo.''

''I tried every form of fruit and vegetable available to me in my trailer, every culinary item, juicers, blenders and I thought 'well no, it's the spandex so it's obviously not me I'm fine,' and then I walk into Jim, hung like a waterbuffalo.''....more

Interview: "Colin Firth on A Christmas Carol" by Simon Brew (Den of Geek)

Do you really hate Christmas?
No, I don't! I've just said [at the press conference for the film] that there's something that happens every Christmas that brings out the Scrooge in everybody! That's fair enough. There's always some person you don't want to hear singing a novelty song in the now increasingly three months leading up to Christmas. Please, never let that be me!

Christmas used to be one special day.
Now it's become three special months! And I'm complicit in that this year! It's only the 3rd of November, and I'm going to be switching the lights on. I have to say, though, how much of a Scrooge do you have to be to not get some thrill of pleasure from switching on the lights on Regent Street. It's fantastic. I know it's early, but hey, Disney need a good run! [laughs]....more

Interview: "A singular man" by Susan Chenery (The Australian)

"LAST time we met you may have noticed me looking at you strangely," the email said when Colin Firth went online one morning. "This is why," continued the email, going on to offer him a lead role in a film.


Trouble was, the email was not from any film director of whom Firth had heard. It was from fashion designer Tom Ford. "I didn't know what to think," Firth admits. "Like everybody else I thought, 'Isn't he to do with the fashion business, eyewear and all that sort of thing?' " Firth's scepticism was not unfounded; panic, in fact, might have been an appropriate response....more

Interview: "Dickens’s Victorian London Goes Digital" by Dave Kehr (NY Times)

“A couple of technicians flew out to Shepperton Studios and started to take data on my face and body,” recalled Colin Firth, who plays Scrooge’s nephew Fred in the new film, “which meant standing in my underwear on a platform while something that looked like a laser beam scanned me up and down. I turned around and there was a kind of a gray, clay figure on a screen of me, with all of the shapes and contours. And then they did something similar with my face. They had me do a million different facial expressions while a camera took pictures of me.


“Then a couple of months later I was in Los Angeles having more stuff like this done,” Mr. Firth continued. “You go into rooms with lenses on every surface of every wall. They give you a heavy spandex suit covered in dots that are read by some sort of beam that shines across the room you are in. This room is not called the set, but ‘the volume.’...more

Interview: "The dashing Mr. Firth" by Marianne Gray (Couriermail Australia)

He speaks Italian - his wife is the Italian documentary producer Livia Giuggioli - knows Italy well and has three children of his own.
"You don't consciously try to equate your own life with your work, but there was a familiarity here, with ideas and feelings about fatherhood, that just resonated when we were doing it.


But talking about his private life is not something you'll catch Firth doing willingly.
"The thought of someone wanting to write about me and my life makes my blood run cold," he says. "Even if an article is brilliantly written, it always feels reductive and surely we all resist being defined. "I would prefer it if you exhumed my life after I've gone." More

Interview: Michael Winterbottom on Genova (FILMINK Australia)

The November issue of FILMINK is available from October 16 across Australia,

 online or by emailing dina@filmink.com.au'.

This Interview is published thanks to FILMINK,

 Australia's best movie magazine.

Interview: Colin Firth masters the art of getting older, wiser and better (The Examiner)

Congratulations on winning the award for best actor at this year’s Venice Film Festival. People seemed to be impressed that you accepted the award in Italian. Your accent was pretty flawless. Did you pick up any tips from your wife on how to speak Italian? [Firth’s wife, Livia Giuggioli, is from Italy.]
No, she hasn’t taught me a damn thing! [He laughs.] I did know [I won the award] a few hours before. Word gets around a little bit. I’m not supposed to say that. The camera wasn’t on me when they announced it, so I didn’t have to do one those [he does a fake surprised expression on his face]. I knew nothing about [which film] won the Golden Lion Award or anybody else’s.
But I didn’t have to fake how I felt. Even when I talk about it now, still, it makes me a little speechless. What I first thought was, "That’s why people cry at the Oscars!" I’d never understood it. I wasn’t about to cry, but I can see why people get their breath taken away. It really is unexpected. It disarms. More

Interview: Colin Firth doesn't always have to play the romantic (Vancouver Sun)

"There are certain times in one's career when you take a role out of necessity. You just need a job. That's a very real concern for almost every actor. But the luxury of being employed on a regular basis is you can afford to, you know, evaluate each project and what it means to you," he says.

"That's not to say I think I've made some shabby choices in the past. It just means I can make a noble choice over a shabby one."

The eyes smile. The mouth does not. More

Interview: Colin Firth: Making Dorian Gray Was Challenging (Sky News)

The pair say they've become good friends but that hasn't stopped Colin from being honest about Ben's flaws.

"He's a real talent, I could see that from the first few scenes we worked together. But he keeps coming back to me for advice and when I offer it I just see this disappointment on his face every time. But he doesn't learn." more

Article: Weinstein Crowned Rights to 'King's Speech' Starring Colin Firth (IndieWire)

Rights to "'The King's Speech" which will be directed by Emmy Award winner Tom Hooper ("John Adams","Elizabeth I") have been picked up by The Weinstsein Company from See-Saw Films and Bedlam Productions. David Glasser, TWC's president of international distribution and Tom Ortenberg, president of theatrical films made the announcement of the deal, which includes all rights for North America, Germany, France, Benelux, Scandinavia, China, Hong Kong and Latin America. The script is written by David Seidler ("Tucker: The Man and His Dream") and stars Colin Firth ("Bridget Jones, "Girl With a Pearl Earring") and Academy Award-winner Geoffrey Rush ("Shine, "Elizabeth) more

Column: "If Jane Austen had a laptop" by Joan Wickersham (Boston Globe)

But no: here is something called “Mr. Darcy Takes a Wife.’’ Oh, my. Does he ever. He takes his wife over and over and over, according to the customer reviews Jane reads as she scrolls down the page. Apparently this purported “Pride and Prejudice’’ sequel lets everything rip, especially bodices.

Also DVDs. She downloads some. She watches Colin Firth’s Mr. Darcy trying to cool his passion for Elizabeth by diving into a pond and emerging in a wet, clingy, see-through shirt. She watches Keira Knightley and Matthew Macfadyen as Elizabeth and Darcy, kissing in their pajamas. She sees her characters wearing more modern attitudes, and fewer pieces of clothing.

She looks up from the computer and utters the Regency equivalent of “What the - ?’’

More

Article: Basildon Park in £1 million face-lift (BBC Berkshire)

Basildon Park has also been used as a filming location for Marie Antoinette in 2006, starring Kirsten Dunst.

Most recently the mansion was used in A Picture Of Dorian Gray starring Colin Firth.

"Surprisingly enough we didn't have any shortage of female volunteers wanting to come in and help that day," says Basildon Park house steward Neil Shaw....more

Article: "Like it or not, I'm involved" by Colin Firth (The Guardian UK)

Italy is another relationship I can't wish away. My wife and children are Italian. I am completely in love with that country for better or worse. I was decorated by the Italian ambassador as an exhortation to promote Italy's image abroad; an easy task when it comes to food, wine, architecture, etc … but one which will be made almost impossible if Silvio Berlusconi does not improve his lamentable record on aid. For this reason Oxfam issued me with call-up papers once again. I've held the giddy title of global ambassador for Oxfam for a number of years now.

So, with an all too familiar sinking feeling, the ambassador agreed to go to Italy to try to do something to persuade the G8 leaders to deliver on their aid promises and prevent the overwhelming number of preventable deaths taking place daily on their doorstep. No problem....more

Article:" Andersson: 'Mama Mia! was surreal' by Mayer Nissim (Digital Spy)

Andersson said: "It was probably the most surreal moment of my life. Björn and I were on one side of the studio and on the other side were James Bond and Mr Darcy singing the chorus to 'Waterloo'.

"They were probably thinking: 'What am I doing here?'"....more