 It took a bit of coaxing to get Colin Firth to play Darcy. But it all turned out well.
It's two o'clock on a Sunday afternoon in Rochelle, Illinois, and Colin Firth is still a bit disoriented from a night shoot that kept him out til 5 A.M. Here in the heart of the great, flat Midwest, the romantic English country-side of Jane Austen seems worlds away. But even amid the farms and fields of America's heartland, the man who became Darcy - the unlikely but unforgettable hero of Pride & Prejudice in the recent A&E/BBC co-production - can't quite shake Austen's grip. With good-natured politeness, he answers questions about the role that won the hearts of critics and viewers on both sides of the Atlantic. Surprisingly, he almost missed it all. When producer Sue Birtwistle first approached Firth about playing Darcy in the adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, his response was quick: no thanks. "Absolutely nothing attracted me to Darcy," recalls Firth. "Austen is one of the cleverest storytellers in the English language, but she's famous for writing from a woman's perspective. In the book, Darcy is such an enigma that we don't know anything about him. I thought, there's nothing I can do here; Darcy just stands around and scowls at people." But Birtwistle, a long-time acquaintance of Firth, was convinced that the relatively unknown British actor could bring something special to that scowling, frosty hero. She kept coaxing, and gradually - to borrow another Austen title - persuasion worked.  "The more I looked at Darcy's character the more I started to get ideas as to where he might come from. The ghost began to appear to me as a human being rather than an image," recalls Firth. "Then I suddenly couldn't tolerate the thought of anybody else doing it!"
Like Austen's original masterpiece, the offscreen story of Pride and Prejudice had a happy ending. Critics praised the lavish production, audiences adored it, and women everywhere swooned over Darcy. So much, in fact, that newspapers began to joke about "Darcy fever." Such accolades took Firth off guard. "I knew that if Pride and Prejudice was successful, it would make me such more of a household name than I'd been. But I never dreamed it would be such a hit," says the 36-year-old British actor who, in contrast to his aloof and brooding character, is genial and pleasant. Though fans often assume he's from an upper-crust background because of the roles he plays, Firth's roots were middle class. One of three children of school teachers, he spent his first four years in Africa before returning to England and attending a large, rough public school near Hampshire. He was an avid reader in private, but no scholar. He rarely completed his homework and once had to repeat English because he hadn't bothered to take the final exam.  "In my teens I resented being forced to be interested in things I didn't like naturally," he explains. "My math teacher was always accusing me of not being interested in math as if it were something terrible. And I thought, 'I plead guilty. I'm not interested." Acting, on the other hand, did excite me. It occurred to me one day, why don't I pursue that? It liberated me from the expectation to be interested in other things, and it was a great excuse to be bad at math.
"Eventually, I had to put my money where my mouth was and go to drama school," he adds. Firth attended the Drama Center in London - known for its progressive, often controversial productions - and earned enough praise for his performance as Hamlet to land a part in the West End production of Another Country. That role led to a part in the movie of the same title. Unlike the stereotypical starving young actor, Firth has worked steadily since then. His film credits include A Month in the Country, Valmont, Wings of Fame, and Circle of Friends; his television roles won him the Royal Television Society Award for best actor as well as a nomination for the British Academy of Film and Television Arts Award. Then came Darcy, a literary hero so cold and withdrawn that he could easily have been a villain. In fact, Firth's Darcy is so reserved that he hardly speaks in the first half of the story. His intense emotion and internal turmoil are conveyed almost exclusively through subtle expressions and glances. Luckily, Firth has "never been a fan of highly demonstrative acting" and is known for having a neutral face with tremendously expressive eyes. He did have to make adjustments to become Darcy though. For one thing, he dyed his naturally light-brown hair black. "I remember telling a friend that I was doing the part and he said, "You can't. You're not dark enough," recalls Firth, chuckling. "Everybody agreed that Darcy had to be dark, though I don't think there's any reference to that in the book." (Firth is in good company - even Laurence Olivier dyed his hair when he played the part in the 1940 movie.)  "As far as we know, Jane Austen might have seen Darcy as a blond. But then, you can't really smolder with blond hair; you'd probably just look petulant."
Darcy might be prickly, but Firth has a certain fondness for him even two years after the filming. "Darcy is very much a product of his time and his class," he explains, "He's severely emotionally disabled because he's never had to fight for anything. As the richest man in England, he's never had any trouble appealing to women. A woman's survival at that time depended on marrying well, so it never occurred to him that anyone would say no to him. He gets a considerable shock with Elizabeth does." Despite modern audiences' nostalgic affection for Austen and the elegant world we imagine was hers, "there's a really ugly side that is overlooked," notes Firth. "When we were filming Pride and Prejudice somebody said to me, 'What a shame that we've lost all this graciousness.' And I thought, 'Well, yes, but we've also lost the kind of slavery women were put into.' There was rampant social injustice in England then. Austen convinces us to despise Lydia Bennet for choosing who she wants to marry and running away to have an adventure. Now we're expected to have [Lydia's] values. We marry who we damn well choose." Eager to explore other worlds after Pride and Prejudice, Firth traveled to Tunisia to star in The English Patient, based on Michael Ondaatje's Booker Prize-winning novel. He also tackled Joseph Conrad's Nostromo in a BBC series and appeared in the film Fever Pitch, a romantic comedy. At press time he was ensconced in rural Illinois with a dialogue coach helping him trade his clipped British accent for a Midwestern twang to play Jess in the movie 1,000 Acres, based on Jane Smiley's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. His co-stars include Jessica Lange, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Jason Robards.  Although it's exhilarating to see so much of the world, Firth's idea of the perfect vacation has become a quiet respite at home in London. "Traveling so much makes it very difficult to keep your life consistent,' acknowledges Firth, who is single but has a five-year-old-son with actress Meg Tilly. He visits the child in LA as much as he can and, when possible, brings him on location.
One question people (at least journalists) ask Firth a lot these days is how he feels about being "on the brink of stardom." He pauses. "It's nice to have recognition, but at the same time, I have to resist being associated with Pride and Prejudice forever." On the other hand, "A lot of people have asked me if I'm afraid of being trapped in roles [like Darcy]. Actually, I'm more afraid of being so worried about the trap that I'd never do it again. There are tremendous stories written around that period in history; it would be silly to say they're out of bounds."
"The first actor who really blew me away was Paul Scofield in [the movie] A Man for All Seasons," he says. "I'd never seen such integrity in acting, and it struck me as a fascinating paradox because acting is artifice. It can be argued to be entirely false. I thought, how can an actor suggest such truth?" Is that quest to embody the truth what inspires him to endure desert heat, all-night shoots, and months of "ghastly" hotel food? No, the answer's really simpler. Firth loves to act. He still gets the same charge out of acting that he did when first discovered it as a teenager struggling over logarithms and quadratic equations in Hampshire. "We all need stories. They take us into what seems to be a completely foreign and alien universe and then at the end, we find it's not as foreign as we thought. We've opened up something new about ourselves. I love stories," he adds. "Always have." And why not? So far, the endings seems to be turning out as happily for Mr. Firth as they did for his famous Mr. Darcy. |
