Please note some of the translations are awkward, but the gist is there.
 

Prigioniero di Darcy?

Colin Firth con Annarita Caroli

C. I was one of the few English actors who had never played Wilde-not even in the theater. I knew him well but never acted in one of his plays.

I: Why?

C: I don't know. I was offered a chance to do one in the theater, but I didn't accept-it seemed a bit boring to me.

I: How does a film actor go about getting the rhythm and spirit of Wilde?

C: It was a challenge for me. The chance of doing it in a new, different way interested me.

I: You're an eclectic actor, going from one role to another without radically changing your image. How do you do it?

C: There are few actors who transform themselves to interpret a particular role: perhaps De Niro and a few others. I read the part and do what helps to serve the role, how to make others see it. I never decide a priori how to undertake a character. But I always put some of myself into the interpretation. It's impossible to act well without using some of yourself.

I use a part of myself, but never the same. In Wessex (the character that Firth played in Shakespeare in Love), for example, I saw a rich, boring, rather ignorant person, one lacking in poetry and I tried to find some of these qualities in myself. Even if I played the role of an assassin I would have to find the cruelty in myself, such as that which you use to kill a fly.

I: More than 20 films, TV series, some theater fame came with Darcy. First that of Jane Austen in Pride and Prejudice and then that of Helen Fielding in Bridget Jones.

C: Yes, and even in Italy I'm not really famous. That pleases me because I spend a lot of time in Rome and Umbria. No one recognizes me and I can live a peaceful life. I've never been an international star-and for me that's perfect. You have to be crazy to want fame. It's wonderful, for sure, to be loved, respected, well paid, but fame, no-it's isn't normal.

Some think that success brings work and particularly freedom of choice. But the irony of fate is that it isn't always like that. Now I'm making a film-American girl-a remake of a comedy in which I play another Darcy. I refused many roles that I didn't like and finally I accepted this one: it's a good job and it's pleases me. But the success of Bridget Jones has taken me in a particular direction. Many job offers, but all of a certain kind.

I: Is it true that you didn't want to play the hero of P&P because, according to you, Jane Austen created
splendid female characters while the masculine ones were less well developed?

C:  Jane Austen never explains the reasons for the actions of the male characters, perhaps she didn't
understand them. She was honest, she didn't write about what she didn't understand. In her novels, there is no scene in which the male characters have a conversation without women being present. But Austen had a great instinct and her men are believable, described with great acumen. I had to imagine what was in the mind of Darcy, apparently arrogant, but in reality a bit shy.

I: British film is experiencing a golden age, prolific and rich in ideas . ..

C: Try to tell that to English critics. They write articles about the crisis of the cinema that complain about an untenable situation. They talk about crap films and a cancer on the cinema.

I: What cancer?

C: Four weddings and a funeral, Fully Monty, my Fever Pitch.

I: What is needed to produce a good cinema?

C: You have to know how to take the risks. Talent always exists but it has to be activated. Perhaps social conflicts aids it. In Italy after Fascism and the war you created the most beautiful cinema in the world. Also in Spain after Francoism in Barcelona something stirred it up. In England after Thatcher-with the necessary differences, given that Thatcherism was not a dictatorship-something different began to come into being. Who knows what will happen now with the right center government of Berlusconi? I really like Gabriele Muccino among Italian directors.

I: You wrote a story for children in a collection edited by Nick Hornby, a book that sold many copies with the proceeds going to benefit autistic children. Do you like to write and will you continue to do so?

C: I like to write and I would like to do it more often but I don't have time unfortunately.

I:  How about writing a film?

C: I am not thinking about it. The discipline that is needed to write for film is too close to what is needed to act. What I like about writing literary pieces is that it something completely different from what I usually do. I like to escape.

I: You are very attuned to what is going on, you work to obtain residency permits for immigrants to Great Britain, and you have led appeals to defend intellectuals. Have you obtained any positive results?

C: Oh, yes. It's funny because I'm not an expert in that area. Once I was at a protest for immigrants in front of Parliament. They were clerics, political activists, social workers: all people who work in the field, but the press only wrote about me. They even said that my participation was a little pretentious since in the final analysis I am only an actor.

I told that them that they were addressing their questions only to me instead of talking to the experts who were there. Fame is useless, it only serves to get a good table at a restaurant. I don't like protests of that type, to talk to the press embarrasses me, and it doesn't grab me to get the background on the topic in question. But when I read about something unjust, I have a duty to intervene. My popularity makes it possible for me to be listened to more than others.

In P&P you undertook the role that Olivier interpreted in 1940 with Greer Garson. Which actor has influenced you most in your career?

Surely not Oliver. He's not the type of actor I prefer. Spencer Tracey captured my attention when I was little, but the actor that I learned from was Paul Scofield. I worked with him at the start of my career, I acted his character when he was young in 1919-a small film on a psychiatric case of Sigmund Freud. It was a great pleasure.b

(c) 2002 Nationwide News Proprietary Ltd
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