Submitted by:
Jolanta, original English FOF 

MR. DARCY WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?

REPORT BART MILLS 
MAIN PHOTOGRAPH MATTHEW FORD

 The shambling figure with a week's growth of beard and ginger hair in wild ringlets wearing sandals and non-descript T-shirt and jeans attracts no glances on the busy street in sunny Santa Monica, two blocks from the Pacific. The olive-skinned woman with him turns some heads though as she glides away to go window shopping, while the beach bum who is Colin Firth behind those dark glasses, sits down at pavement cafe and explains why Los Angeles is his uncomfortable second home.

 Firth has dealt with Darcy fever by being elsewhere, doing otherwise. As he always has when faced with success, after Pride and Prejudice he sought to muffle the fanfare that greeted his most romantic portrayal. His escape route into new personae was via Columbia and Tunisia to play tragic obsessives in two doom laden dramas, Nostromo and The English Patient. And he flew , every chance he had to LA. He's here not to seek roles in Hollywood action movies but to spend time with his six year old son Will. Long range fatherhood, encouraged by the boy's mother, actress Meg Tilly, who lives there now, is a measure of Firth's maturity: he's here "almost all of the time I'm not working", he says.

 His relationship with 26 (26) year old Livia Guiggioli, the Italian beauty accompanying him in Santa Monica is a measure of his continued boyishness: he's with her in Rome "a lot". And when she is not studying for her doctorate in English literature at Rome University, she, in turn, is with Colin at his L150,000 flat in Hackney, East London "a lot."

 Darcy fever never really hit home. By the time Pride and Prejudice was screened Firth was already well into filming The English Patient with Ralph Fiennes in Tunisia and completely oblivious of the nationwide fluttering of hearts in Britain. 

"I had to take my mother's word for it, that people liked it. When your mother tells you something like that you take it with a grain of salt. Anyway you can't walk around feeling thrilled indefinitely about even the biggest success, " he says. "Things get old. I've done four jobs since then. Let's be realistic. I dyed my hair and put on a costume. Darcy has been a sex symbol for nearly 200 years now without my help."

 What the nation saw in Firth during those heady days last autumn was a man whose aloofness was his attraction. Mr. Darcy hovered frowningly on the edges of Elizabeth Bennet's life awhile, as Firth put it, "convention required you withhold your sexuality right to the end".

 The smouldering of those steeply banked fires is Firth's speciality. His co-star Jennifer Ehle found it irresistible. Though, while their location romance gave a certain frisson to the series, it lasted only a matter of months and was over before it's existence was leaked by one of the production team.

 The idea of himself as an object of desire makes Firth distinctly uncomfortable as does the perfectly acceptable notion of capitalising on a success. The image of Darcy on horseback , galloping up to a woodland pond, pulling off his leather boots and diving into the cool water in his white breeches and shirt was such a strong one that a newspaper actually ran a competition to win the shirt. Firth could have played versions of the character for years as a result.

 His elusive turn of mind may actually be is most attractive quality. Trust him to say something like " You might think the risk of playing Darcy is getting typecast in English literary adaptations. Actually, the risk is never being able to do it again. My decision about what to do next is coloured by what I did last. If I'd just played a football fan in three movies, I'd not be quick to play another. If I had been asked to play Mr. Knightley in one of the Emma's that would have been like having done three football fans in a row."

 Since his initial splash in the play and film of Another Country, Firth, 36, has consistently projected himself as a searcher, not an empire builder. "I don't believe in careers," he said early on. "You can't do each job honestly if you're having a career." 

Such an attitude precludes capitalising on success. After he made the Milos Forman drama Valmont - an adaptation of Les Liaisons Dangereuses - he chose to leave his home, family and career behind him in London in order to live with Meg Tilly in near seclusion outside Vancouver for several years. Similarly Pride and Prejudice hasn't been a stepping stone to anything. 

"I don't think it hurt me", he allows. "Possibly I'm being offered more than I used to."

 As his post-Pride projects reflect an unwillingness to go for the main chance. In the BBC's production of Nostromo, he plays the decidedly un-heroic part of an Englishman who inherits a defunct silver mine in a fictional South American country called Costaguana. He determines to revive the mine because of "his belief in the power of industry to civilise the world, but as he succeeds he sacrifices his wife - and everyone else emotionally."

 "He's a tricky character" Firth continues, as if all his characters weren't. "I don't think I understood him or his obsession."

 The English Patient, a film based on the Booker Prize-winning novel by Michael Ondjate, "centres on five people, of whom I'm not one", he says. "I'm a rich champagne-toting English buffoon. My wife has an affair with Ralph Fiennes's character. I discover the affair and turn out not to be a buffoon. I attempt to kill both of them and myself."

 Most recently Firth has been starring in Fever Pitch, playing a comically obsessed Arsenal supporter. He says "it's about being English, male, middle class, immature , dislocated and feeling inadequate in relations with women. It's not about Arsenal at all."

 Firth was 14 when he had the courage to "announce to myself and everyone else that I would become an actor...An entirely sane person, if there is such a thing , wouldn't make a very good actor. I have a certain amount of confidence in the sound of my own voice. I don't melt or blush easily."

 At 18, the would-be actor arrived in London and joined the National Youth Theatre. He was cast immediately as "third fairy on the centre left" in Midsummer Night's Dream. After that he stayed on, answering the stage door phone, following this with the job of tea-maker in the wardrobe department of the National Theatre. From this glamorous position he advanced to the London drama Centre. There he played Hamlet, got an agent and was on his way to Another Country.

 His career was interrupted by his romance with Meg Tilly, who played the virtuous wife he seduces in Valmont. Their relationship, which lasted four years, put him out of circulation for part of that time.

 "However much conflict arose between us, it never reached our son Will or Meg's two kids [from her prior marriage to Tim Zinneman]. We're both rigorously united in serving Will's best interests - that he have contact with both of us."

 Looking back on his time in Vancouver, he says, "Neither Meg nor I worked a great deal in the first few years of our relationship. We were more into being a family. We decided to get out for a while and only later discovered that no-one missed you when you're not in the picture. We stayed in Canada because I had no ambition to work in Hollywood and she hasn't been able to base herself in England. 

At the time, I was exhausted. I'd been doing back to back jobs for years. I was in danger of losing my love of it. I was bitterly disappointed at Valmont's lack of success. I also felt a tremendous relief that it didn't launch me to another level. You're supposed to get yourself signed onto a new job before anybody sees whether your last job was any good, but I refused even to go to the meetings before it was released. Probably people thought I was being snobbish. It has much to do with fear - fear of success as much of rejection. I'd be very frightened if I suddenly found myself famous. Yet part of you does want to sell out and be adored. Your vanity, or your dignity, keeps you from whoring out - and then you start whining that nobody loves you."

 Firth returned to his Hackney flat three years ago. He says "I felt a strange need to be in London every so often. I couldn't connect with my work properly. I missed my family and friends in England."

 Soon after he left, Meg moved to LA. Now Firth, the reluctant star, has good reason to seek a Hollywood career. Why hasn't he done so?

 "If I had anything to do with it, I would. The accent isn't a problem. I'd love to be offered a project here that I'd like."

 As for Will, "He's adapted to the situation. When I'm not here I phone a lot and send audio tapes. It's hard for both of us when I leave and intense when I come back. It's great for the ego to be idolised, but it would probably be better for him if I were a boring routine figure."

 Is being within a family again a prospect? His reply is irresolute: "I'm pursuing that. I hope...I don't know...It's difficult."

 Livia, whom he met in Colombia , where she worked on Nostromo as a personal assistant, may or may not be the answer. A question about marriage cues the mumbled response: "Who knows?" Of their supposed engagement he says coyly "So they report in the tabloids. I've never announced anything to that effect." Has he announced it to her? "That's not a public issue."

 All the above is delivered with the broadest of smiles. Firth enjoys the cat and mouse game interviews and one suspects, all human contact. Playing withdrawn, proud Darcy was an acting job, not Firth as Firth. "I'm attracted to playing neurotics, but I must resist the impulse to sympathise with those creatures," he says.

 And who could successfully attempt to be neurotic in this sunshine, with this cool breeze? Firth stretches and looks around for La Guiggioli. He smiles as he departs, shirt tail flapping and heels slapping on the pavement.