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