Actor Colin Firth usually smoulders as the thinking woman’s sex symbol. In his latest film he
proves he’s no mere pin-up.

Colin Firth is on a roll. Fresh from the success of Richard Curtis’s feel good hit, Love Actually, co-starring
actors such as Hugh Grant and Emma Thompson, he appears this month in the moving Girl With A Pearl
Earring, co-starring Lost In Translation’s It Girl, Scarlett Johansson.

Girl With A Pearl Earring is a compelling account of the life of Griet, a 16-year-old girl (Johansson) who
appears in Johannes Vermeer’s painting of the same title. Set in the Netherlands in the 17th century, Griet
is employed by Vermeer (Firth) as a housemaid to care for his six children, his jealous pregnant wife and
his uncommunicative mother-in-law. Tensions arise when Vermeer’s wife suspects intimacy between the
two, and reach a peak when she discovers that Griet borrowed her pearl earrings to sit for the portrait.
We asked Firth about making the movie.

How much did you paint in the film?
I was going off in a little room in the studio when I had free time, and I would paint. I didn’t want to be
some guy who’d never been near a canvas. It helps to get used to sitting there in front of this thing hour
after hour. And I did do that, and it meant that it was second nature by the time we were shooting the
film.

How did you research life in the 17th century?
I went to Amsterdam and I stayed in the old hotels, just thinking and trying to imagine myself in his world.
I tried to imagine his talent and environment. He grew up in a pub and was surrounded by immense noise
and haste. His father was dealing in art, so he would have grown up with art.

What would you have done in those times?
I don’t know if anyone had any need for my skills in the 17th century. I would imagine I’d have probably
ended up a criminal!

What about the hair, is it real?
It was record-speed hair growing. No, it was provided by someone else. It’s probably walking around on
top of Johnny Depp or somebody now.

How did the set design influence filming?
Normally you walk up the stairs and it’s a dead end, and the actual upstairs bedroom is a mile away
somewhere. And this was, for the same reason, a cohesive unit. I actually don’t know why they did this,
because you don’t really have to do it. They built three floors, so it had the geographic wholeness that
the real house would have. Even the cellar in which Griet sleeps was built as a real cellar. I remember them
cursing it at the time, thinking ‘why have we done this, there’s no room to move down here’, you know?
It’s a nice idea poetically, but it was not that practical. But it was a very concentrated environment,
because we were in a big square ex-factory, and we were in Luxembourg. The whole experience was very
film-friendly, because it was quiet and we were undisturbed and there were no distractions. Very rarely
has the tone of a film so closely resembled the tone of the making the film.

Were you and Johansson silent between takes?
No, not at all. We would shoot a scene and as soon as someone said “cut” we would start talking ten to
the dozen, because we both are like that as people. It’s quite ironic that such a quiet and wordless film is
made by such loquacious people.

Do you feel there is more emphasis on the acting when there’s less dialogue between characters?
Very much so. And if you take away the words you’re taking away one more piece of the artifice which
doesn’t belong to us. It’s a very pure feeling. We specialise in gesture and nuance, the way people express
themselves outside words. When you’re speaking someone else’s lines, people focus on the dialogue almost
as if they were your words.

Was it difficult to portray a famous painter?
Everything has its own specific difficulties. But there are certain things that make this easier. I didn’t have
to conform to any physical conception of this man, because there isn’t one. There are no portraits at all.
Having said that, the fact that we’re talking about a genius looms large. You know, it’s not going to work if
we cannot believe that this man’s sensibilities could lead to these masterpieces. All you can play is
something that’s absolutely flesh and blood, knowing it has to read as something perhaps a little bit more.
He is a mysterious figure, the paintings are mysterious, and the book portrayed him as mysterious. I
wanted to portray his mystery but also make him come to life for the audience.

The ambiguity of his feelings towards Griet is interesting.
I’m glad it’s left ambiguous. I think it would certainly diminish something if it weren’t. I feel that he got in
over his head and felt very strongly for her. I don’t think that was his intention, I think that he--not out of
cruelty and not out of arrogance, but rather from the single-minded, inevitable egoism of creative
people--was quite prepared to move on once something else got his passion. Vermeer sacrificed people
and I think it could have happened to Griet too, had she gotten under his skin.

It must be wonderful to work with Johansson, who is just coming into her own as an actress.
Well, seeing her work I was pretty convinced it wouldn’t take long before everybody noticed her. She can
keep very still and an awful lot comes across. The next person can keep still and there’s absolutely nothing. 
I think at the heart of what we call beautiful or charming and magnetic is to do with paradox.
Some people have one particular quality. It’s easy to define and move on. But people who have some sort
of contradiction mixed in them are riveting. She’s full of those. She has the child and the adult in her, she
is beautiful but not conventionally beautiful. She can look ordinary or she can look stunning, which is an
amazing asset for an actress to have. She can be aggressive and fearless and she can be extremely fragile
and vulnerable; those are rare and powerful combinations.

How does Peter Webber work?
We spent a lot of time on preparation and art history. Sometimes Vermeer’s works are so stubbornly
reluctant to give anything away that it’s much better to look at some of his contemporaries, such as de
Hooch, de Witte and Yaanstein, who painted satirical images. [Ed note: reference is to Jan Steen,
1629-79.]

Like Vermeer, is solitude important to you?
I live in London at the moment and certainly the older I get, the more I have an inclination to retreat
frequently. Absolutely.
 

BL This film is about the painter Vermier, whom you play. Were you a fan of his work or did you know anything about him before taking on the role?
CF I am and I was, yeah. I knew more about Vermier than I knew about the book actually. I had not read the book when I got the script and it did seem somewhat consistent how I felt about him when I saw my first Vermier. I’m not a person who has a particularly sophisticated reaction to paintings and fine art. It must have been about five or six years ago, when I was on a promotion for Shakespeare in Love, and I was in the Met in New York and I saw the painting "Woman with a Water Jug" in the window and that was the one that did for me. It was a very small painting in quite a small room full of other Dutch and Flemish art, and it just blew me away.

BL Was playing him a bit of a challenge for you, because here is a guy that really existed, but we really don’t know a lot about him. There isn’t a lot of information on his background. You were pretty well working with a blank canvas so to speak.
C.F. It was easy in some ways and difficult in others when the character is an enigma like that, because it’s not like playing somebody totally familiar. If I were playing the British Prime Minister it would be an exercise in imitation as much as anything else and I’d have to work very hard to a specific model. With this, we had carte blanche. There is no portrait or physical description of him. But in another sense though, it was specific because that enigma didn’t just give me carte blanche to develop the character in any way I wanted to. The enigma was essential to the story so it was to some extent an exercise in preserving that.

BL You get to work very closely with Scarlett Johansson who is one of the brightest young up-and-coming stars to come around in a long time. What impressed you about her and how did you enjoy working with her?
CF Just about everything really, I think she’s extraordinary. She was 17 years old when she started this job and she is one of my favorite actors that I have ever worked with. One of the things that throw you slightly when you are in your early forties is to work with someone who is that young and actually probably, as experienced as you are because she’s been doing it that long. So there was a lot of the ‘old soul’ in her and she offered unbelievable energy. She was able to keep up with the workload and she had just come off a really difficult schedule and came right into this. I think I’d realized with middle age coming on, my exhaustion threshold was much lower than hers.

BL She was absolutely mesmerizing in this role I thought.
CF She was utterly committed to the project and utterly enamored with it all, and when you’ve got something like this it tends to weave a spell on all of us and puts us all on the same page.

BL You have worked with a lot of young actresses in the last few years. Amanda Bynes, Mena Suvari, Scarlett Johansson…
CF It’s been a long time since I have done a film without an American actress interestingly enough. It’s very often that American actresses come to England to work and I tend to be there when they do.

BL It’s interesting. How have you enjoyed working with these up-and-coming young women? Are they good sparring partners for you?
CF Amazing. Oh yeah, absolutely. When someone is young and brilliant it does throw down the gauntlet. It stops you from becoming stagnant and complacent and jaded. It keeps you fresh to work with brilliant young people, definitely.

BL You also just released Love Actually, which I have to say I truly loved your storyline. How much fun did you have working on that?
CF That was a walk in the park and yes, it was a very different piece for me. Girl with a Pearl Earring was not a walk in the park; I felt it was treading a very narrow line of getting it right. With Love Actually I was very fortunate where we had the beautiful location. I was the only one who got to go to the south of France and my story is set apart so it was like a mini movie and I wasn’t sprinkled around the rest of the shoot like the other actors were. So it was mine and my part of the story kicked the film off, so we started with that and it was only three weeks. I wasn’t carrying the film and it was incredibly enjoyable and I was in very good hands with Richard Curtis the director and there was nothing to it. It was just fun really and when you’ve only got three weeks to do something, you might as well have fun.

BL It’s funny, I have to admit that every time I told people that I would be interviewing you, every single person was just aflutter. I know that you have been dubbed the British sex symbol, how does that sit with you? I have to tell you, there isn’t a person in this world that wouldn’t want to meet you and be in my place right now.
CF Oh, there’re some people in the world 

BL Very few!
CF There are probably quite a few people who do know me that probably wish they didn’t. I don’t know, I have no intelligent answer to that question, really.

BL Fair enough! OK... Everyone wants to know what is happening with the sequel to Bridget Jones’ Diary. Can you tell us anything about that?
CF It’s starting very soon now. It’s a very strange beast because it existed before it existed, if you understand what I mean! It existed as an idea and even as a production before it really existed as a script, and the script has been catching up with the rest of the machine. All along the rest of us have been standing by asking, "what are we actually going to make here?" I find that there is a tremendous paradox with sequels. In some ways people want a sequel because they love the first one, so that’s why they want it. So in some ways they are looking for the first one and then they get angry if that’s what they get. So it’s got to pay homage in some extent, and then it has to develop from that. I think it’s getting there now, it’s sort of where we are. It’s going to be a long shoot and I think it does take the story forward.