The Firth Division  by Nick Hornby Nick Hornby's bestselling book "Fever Pitch" was the story of his life measured out in football fixtures. When he adapted it for cinema, he never imagined that Britain's biggest heart-throb, the formaer Mr Darcy, should play his part. Here, Nick Hornby interviews Colin Firth. A couple of hours before Arsenal played Leeds at Highbury last Easter, my friend Kathy, who goes to most Arsenal home games with her partner, phoned to say that at they were going away for the remainder of the holiday weekend straight after the final whistle, so they wouldn't be coming to my place for our post-Match ritual of tea, biscuits and Sports Report.. "That's a shame. Especially today." "Why especially today?" "'Cos I'm taking Mr Darcy to the game." " Mr Darcy?" "Yep."

"Colin Firth? Are you serious." "Yep." "Why are you taking Colin Firth to see Arsenal play Leeds?" "Because he's going to be in Fever Pitch and he wanted to come to Highbury before filming starts. Anyway, have a nice time." Just after Colin and I got back - 2-1 to Arsenal, an Ian Wright winner in injury time - the doorbell rang. Kathy, it turned out, had a bit more time to spare after the game than she'd thought. Yeah, right. Suddenly, I'm 17 again - except this time around it's not a 15-year-old sister that my mates want to ogle, but a sex god off the telly. That's progress of a sort, I suppose.  I didn't know that the movie version of Fever Pitch was going to feature a sex god off the telly when 1 adapted it, of course, but Firth fans might be forgiven for thinking that he's the victim of a devilish plot: envious writer sees chance to cut sex god down to size by writing desperately unglamorous part for him. In Fever Pitch, the man famous for smouldering in a wet white shirt is forced to wear a pair of lurid Arsenal boxer shorts, shout swearwords out of windows, and do all sorts of things that might deter Elizabeth Bennet and the 12 million viewers who fell in love with Mr. Darcy. If this was my plan, then it has failed dismally: the women I know who have seen Fever Pitch remain resolutely smitten. I give up. And, of course - wouldn't you know it, and doesn't it make you sick? - Colin Firth is a genuinely nice guy; smart, funny, self-deprecating, complicated, thoughtful, good company. He even has exemplary taste in music and books. It comes as no surprise, given that he's not daft, to  learn that he was extremely hesitant about taking on Darcy.

"I just wasn't sure that Darcy was really playable," Firth says now when he contemplates his earlier reluctance. "He's a bit of a literary icon. There was a lot to live up to as a figure, and not enough to get your teeth into as a human being. There were too many people who saw him as some sort of ideal, some sort of absolute, and there were too many schoolgirls and ex-schoolgirls in love with him. There didn't seem to be anything I could do, because he doesn't do anything."

In the end, Firth was persuaded that there was more to Darcy than a pout. "I quite literally woke up one morning with a sense of him, and it was to do with his emotional inability, I think... Either you form the opinion that he's just a snob, so you can take a snobby attitude, or you can decide that this comes from a massive insecurity, and he uses the snobbery as a defence. I took the latter view, and actually everything he says bears that out. You know, Mr Bingley asks him, 'Why don't you dance?' and Darcy says, '0h, I would at some parties, but not this kind'? Well, I seem to remember saying that sort of thing myself."

Paul Ashworth, Firth's character in Fever Pitch, is every bit as emotionally disabled as Mr Darcy; you could argue, in fact, that Fever Pitch is a disability movie, like My Left Foot or Born On the Fourth of July or Rain Man, and that therefore Firth is almost bound to win an Oscar for his sympathetic, sensitive portrayal of a man who lets his love of Arsenal FC get in the way of his life. Sadly, Paul Ashworth is loosely based on me (Fever Pitch the book was autobiographical, even if the film is not) so it will be especially poignant to see Firth collect his Best Actor award. I can only hope he remembers me in his acceptance speech, before he resumes his glamorous career.

Luckily, however, Fever Pitch isn't just about Arsenal and arrested emotional development - at least, that's what the producer and director have told me to stress at every available opportunity. It's also about identity, and it is fair to say that this theme, rather than David Rocastle's sparkling form in the '88/'89 season, is the one that seems to have attracted Firth to the project. "it's so much about finding roots, and the vehemence with which you try to find roots when you haven't got them."

Firth has spent much of the last year working in exotic locations (Tunisia for The English Patient, South America for an upcoming TV adaptation of Conrad's Nostromo, and Iowa for A Thousand Acres), visiting his six-year-old son Will in Los Angeles, and hanging out in Rome with his Italian girlfriend Livia. He has spent nearly all of the last 15 years pretending to be someone else. No wonder, then, that a film about a quest for identity - particularly a film set just round the corner from his Hackney flat - should interest him.

"Particularly with being in Italy quite a lot, it's interesting to see the need the English have to invent a culture for themselves." Does he mean Marmite and all that? "Whenever I've worked with Brits abroad, they're always sending out for Marmite. I find myself wanting Maritime, and 1 haven't eaten the stuff for years. But I've never needed to feel English to feel rooted. I remember seeing Enoch Powell on a TV debate years ago, and his key question about roots was: 'Do you or do you not feel identification with the race of people who won the battle of Waterloo? 'Well, I have no problem with saying, no I don't." He does, however, feel identification with the race of people who produced the Beatles. "An Italian actor on Nostromo was talking about the English, and laughing about John Major - a lot of Italians have that perception of the English. I have to remind them that we produced John Lennon as well."

1997 is going to be a big year for Colin Firth. So far we have seen nothing new since Pride and Prejudice was shown on TV, so the post-Darcy career starts now, and he's looking forward to it. "I'm able to savour it all a bit more than I could with Pride and Prejudice; that feeling that I've got a couple of good things coming up. I just thought of Pride and Prejudice as a costume drama that might do well or might not - in fact, I was ready to run for cover in case it was scorned - so it really came as a bolt from the blue."

Whatever the merits of Fever Pitch - and both star and writer are very happy with the way it has turned out - Firth is brilliant in it. The English Patient has already attained the status of a contemporary classic, although Firth is less central to the plot - " It's about five people, and I'm not one of them." Ironically, considering all the Darcy fever, he plays a cuckold. "I found myself sitting there with this incredibly passionate love story unfolding and thinking to myself, well, I don't see what's so moving about it, it doesn't turn me on. My wife's shagging this other bloke, what's so special about him anyway?" He laughs heartily and goes to the bar to buy me a drink.

It occurs to me that this is the fifth or sixth time I have been to the pub with Colin Firth, and not once has anyone shown the slightest bit of interest. There was great excitement wherever we went while filming Fever Pitch - the week we spent in a mixed comprehensive school was particularly hectic - but people knew he was around; if nobody is expecting to see him, he goes unrecognised. Is he as famous as he wants to be.

"Oh, yeah. I think you have to be deranged to want to be famous. That isn't lack of ego, it's just that my ego works in a different way. I just want to be thought of as really very good. I want people to think, oh, Colin Firth, he's a good actor." It's hard to imagine too many people having a problem with that.