Colin Firth bares all

CANNES, France

Colin Firth's name regularly appears on lists of the "most shaggable" stars, usually ranking him somewhere just below Brad Pitt and Jude Law.

And yet, despite all the sex appeal he exudes — it must be that buttery British accent — his hot-blooded fans likely wouldn't envision him as a pill-popping hedonist who enthusiastically participates in orgies.

This unseemly vision of the dapper 44-year-old British actor is currently confounding viewers of Atom Egoyan's Where the Truth Lies, a movie competing for the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival in advance of a planned fall release. 

The film is also stirring up a storm for its censor-baiting scenes of nudity and unabashed sex, as well as its casual depiction of drugs and violence.

Firth plays the unbridled Vince Collins, the straight-man of a popular 1950s comedy duo. He's teamed up with Kevin Bacon playing the clown Lanny Morris.

The fictional Collins and Morris parlay their fame into a backstage whirl of sex and drugs, with the clothing-optional Collins being the most enthusiastic of swingers. 

He also has a violent side — beating a heckler almost to death after he hurls an anti-Semitic slur at his pal Morris. The plot of the movie turns on whether Collins is also capable of the murder of a young woman who, inexplicably, turns up dead in a hotel bathtub.

Colin Firth, left, and Kevin Bacon, in Where the Truth  Lies, parlay their fame as a popular 1950s comedy  duo into a backstage orgy of sex and drugs. The film, directed by Atom Egoyan, premiered at Cannes this  month.

Latecomers to Firth's fan club, and they are in the majority, undoubtedly think of him one of two proper English heartthrobs by the name of Darcy: the reserved Mark Darcy in Bridget Jones' Diary and its sequel, and the even more reserved Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy in the TV series Pride and Prejudice, which helped launch the actor's slow ascent to shaggable-star status.

But to Firth, and to Toronto director Egoyan, the star's latter-day sex appeal obscures his lower-profile but longer-running status as an actor of power and occasional ferocity.

"The romantic comedy thing came relatively late in my life and took me by surprise," Firth said in an interview.

"I'm still rather surprised that I'm still associated with that. Roles like this (Vince Collins) are to be found if you excavate into the ancient archives of my career."

That's exactly what Toronto writer/director Egoyan did when he was searching for someone who could put over "that veneer of civilization" in public while behaving abominably in private. 

Egoyan had in mind a composite of Peter Lawford and Noel Coward, the Rat Packer and the tunesmith, and Firth fit the bill. 

He had also seen the actor in "a film (Tumbledown) he made about a Falklands soldier, and he was absolutely terrifying ... I just thought it would be great to summon that."

So did Firth, who doesn't seem the least bit worried about hurting his more huggable image — even though Egoyan conceded that Vince Collins won't go down well with Mark Darcy lovers.

"I wasn't trying to manipulate perceptions of me, really," Firth said, looking well turned out but comfortable in a striped dress shirt and sports jacket.

"I just go where I find it most interesting. I feel very comfortable in this sort of drama."

Was it hard for him to play a drug-taking, groupie-shagging, heckler-thumping party monster, even if it wasn't for real?

"A role like that is not usually a stretch for most actors," Firth deadpans, smiling a bit mischievously.

`The romantic comedy thing came relatively late in my life and took me by surprise.' Colin Firth explaining that, earlier in his career, he was known for his dark side

"You know the lord of the manor riding around Derbyshire requires a lot more research."

He wanted to go whole hog and play Vince Collins as an Italian-American crooner in the style of Dean Martin, who the character is purportedly based on.

But his crooning isn't his forte — just ask anyone who has heard him sing, he said — and he could also see the advantage of putting his British reserve to work making Collins a more interesting character.

"I was very tempted to go for this role as an American, as he is in the book, showing that I could do that. But it was irresistible that the advantages of keeping the Englishness were considerable ... a perfect English gentleman who beats the crap out of people."

Firth is such an agreeable bloke, he didn't even mention his desire to play Collins as an American until now. Egoyan expressed surprise when he heard that: "He never told me about that."

And to be sure, Firth's early career, which brought him to Cannes in 1984 with his first movie, a 1930s spy film called Another Country, made him seem set for life as a supporting character who exudes Britishness in all its forms. 

His quiet smile and serious mien have graced such quintessentially British projects as The English Patient, The Importance of Being Earnest, Shakespeare in Love and Love, Actually, to name just a few more of his dozens of screen roles.

Firth comes from educated and dignified stock, the son of parents who both lecture at universities, his father on history and his mother on religion. It's because of this upbringing that he finds it difficult coping with the rapacious real-life demands of the tabloid press, a struggle shared onscreen by Vince Collins.

"(Fame) can be hard for people close to you, who didn't choose it. This mania hits. 

"It can also be true that everyone else in your family, from siblings to friends to your parents, get weird phones calls from (the press) asking questions. And they want to be nice to absolutely everybody because that's the kind of people they are. When you ask them a question they'll answer it politely.

"And then I'll get them on the phone (and ask), `Why did you tell them about my Batman outfit when I was 19!'"

Jokes like that are part of Firth's secret weapon. He disarms with his self-deprecating humour, but he also plays a practical joke like the best of them. 

When he is joined poolside at the Martinez Hotel by his co-star, he smiles as Bacon reveals the present Firth gave him when filming of Where the Truth Lies wrapped in Toronto last year.

"He gave me silk boxers from Harrod's as a wrap present, if that gives you any kind of indication," Bacon said, eager to assist with Firth's image makeover.

"I just wanted him to wear something," Firth quipped.

"I've been through a lot on this movie, things I never want to see again."