SCORE DRAW
by Steve Grant

Pictures: Barry J Holmes

Never one to be typecast, Colin Firth has swapped the boots and breeches of Pride and Prejudice for jeans and trainers in Fever Pitch.The man who put the arse into TV's Darcy is kicking off his sexpot imageto take a shot as football-mad Nick Hornby.

Colin Firth has a great fondness for a quote attributed to the jazz deity, Miles Davis, who advised: "Don't play what you know, play what you don't know." Music lovers will dig this sentiment in Davis, particularly during his early period when he approached the trickier trumpet solos like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid running out of the bank and realising they are not alone. Firth could quote Advise vigorously in relation to his latest foray into character acting, playing the gifted but short and bald Nick Hornby in the film version of Hornby's classic Arsenal confessional, Fever Pitch. Can it be true? Do they mean him?

Though the names have been changed to protect the guilty, there's no denying that Firth's character in the film, directed by first time feature director David Evans, is the Nick Hornby who dreams about football the way a surfer chases the big waves in their head. Firth's Paul Ashworth is not an altogether likeable character, which can be seen as either a strength or a weakness of the film, depending on your point of view - you can almost relish the sex symbol that was Mr. Darcy hoisting up his jeans and pulling on a slightly sweaty T-shirt, while he moans to himself about the problems of replacing Liam Brady; given the actor's success in the TV version of Pride and Prejudice, there was even some early publicity about a bedroom scene with girlfriend Sarah (played by Ruth Gemmell) in which Firth cavorts around his Highbury flat with a pair of Arsenal boxer shorts on display. Having seen the encounter in question, I would imagine that even firm Firth fixatees will find it as erotically stimulating as a brisk rubdown from Nora (or David) Batty.

As for playing what he doesn't know, Firth admits that when he was offered the part he'd only been to see one live football match in his life, bewilderingly a clash of titans between Hull and Southampton in 1976 when an ageing Billy Bremner 'kicked lumps' out of a vintage Mike Channon.

"I first read Fever Pitch when I was in Rome, and I got quite obsessed by it. I got a longing to be back in England, for those grey, damp, cheerless days."

Now, Firth says that he hardly ever misses an Arsenal home match when he's actually in residence in his Hackney flat and not jet-setting to his girlfriend in Italy, a film set in Colombia or his son in Los Angeles. He even turned out for a Paul Merson testimonial game last year, but admits to being conscious of one of the book's abiding themes: that being a football fan takes time and commitment, that you can't jump into it at the deep end before you've learnt to do the doggy-paddle.

"I was in Chicago filming recently and I went to this theatre and there was a black actor there who asked me where I lived and what part of London it was, and then what part of Hackney it was. It turns out that this black American actor and entertainer is a staunch Gunners fan and was trying to get a number-plate which reflected his allegiance. I hugged and embraced him like a long lost-brother, and I wasn't at all worried about being outclassed by someone like Nick Hornby anymore. There were no worries about my credentials and I felt... really great."

When I once interviewed Daniel Day-Lewis in Dublin, there was an almost palpable whiff of relief in the actor's realisation that we could talk about football and Bob Dylan, and I wasn't going to start fluttering my eyelashes at him and write that he'd made my legs turn to jelly. There's something similar with Firth, whose own cuttings reveal a staggering preponderance of women journalists panting over their notebooks and reduced on occasion to the sort of tosh that is one of the real downsides of post-feminism, such as this sick-bag gem from the Daily Express: 'When Darcy plunges into the pool on his estate for a cooling swim, wearing his shirt and underpants, there isn't a woman watching who isn't picturing what he looks like without.'

Of course, Firth, whose parents are academics and who evinces convincing distrust of his own profession as 'essentially trivial', likes to downplay his current position as an international heart-throb, a status which sneaked up on him while he was out of the country filming.

"I feel a bit of an imposter; I certainly don't get mobbed in the street and nobody's sent me their knickers yet. There is a Fans of Firth Website now, or so I've been told. And obviously I want to leave Pride and Prejudice behind and go on to other things. I think my problem is that I never really appreciate what I'm doing until a long time afterwards. It seems obvious that what happened with the Darcy character was very special, not just to me but to a lot of other people, and I feel that I must look at it all again, absorb it, understand this bewildering golden moment."
 
 

Firth's career has always carried a certain emotionalfrisson with it, given that he is one of those rare commodities: a handsome,intelligent, youngish, heterosexual film star who's as quintessentiallyEnglish as, and a lot more rugged than, Hugh Grant. When Firth made Prideand Prejudice, his off-screen romance with co-star Jennifer Ehle wasmanna from heaven to the PRs and press corps; when he filmed Valmont- Miles Forman's sadly undervalued rival to Dangerous Liaisons- he began a six year relationship with Canadian co-star Meg Tilly whichproduced son Will; and there have been persistent rumours about a pendingwedding to current squeeze and Italian beauty Livia Giuggioli. But Firthsays that even when he came to play Valmont he refused to fall backon his looks:

"I don't think I'm a steamy sexpot sort of bloke, I don't havethe eyebrows. For me, the idea of Valmont the seducer was the clawin the velvet glove. It was about duplicity and cunning, which was thesame as Forman's intention. I think he was genuinely shattered by the failureof that film; it was almost like a tragic experience for him, from whichhe's never recovered. I think that he was really too subtle for his owngood". Yeah, and too late as well.
 
 

Firth studied at the Drama Centre where they forbadethe use of mirrors as a vanity-aid and were prone to ask the acting hopeful's"to pretend that they were a bison going up the stairs of a double-deckerbus while doing a speech from Richard III. It sounds daft, but there'sdefinitely something behind it; if there are no obstacles, then actorsstart to declaim or fall back on cliché. I was very lucky to workwith Christopher Fettes there, who is one of the most intelligent and underratedforces in British theatre. He and Harold Pinter are the two best directorsI've ever worked with on stage - very pictorial, very economical and practical,always with an answer that's simple but makes sense immediately".

Firth's career was transformed while still a student, with a much-fêtedHamlet; so powerful was his performance that he found himself inthe West End taking over from Rupert Everett in Julian Mitchell's hit play,AnotherCountry. Not playing Hamlet  for real still causeshim a certain amount of trepidation, particularly as he's now 36 yearsold, three years older than Shakespeare's tragic hero (according to thetext anyway), and at the time of this interview Kenneth Branagh was bringingout the big Helsingor guns with his own four hours-plus film version. Ironically,Firth took over Branagh's role when he played the Communist sympathiserJudd in the eventual film version of Another Country.
 
 

As you might expect, Firth is a big stickler for goodparts and worthy projects, although he says that he's not beyond temptation."I do have a son after all, and the more money I earn the moretime I have free to visit Will. That's one of the reasons I hate doingthings back-to-back. I'm not a saint." However, he does admit,"It's true I turned down the Jack Nicholson role in a very big-budgetremake of The Shining that had Stephen King's blessing, but I feltit had all been done before. And it was a three-month shoot. Still, I wouldhave loved to say: "Heeeeeere's Johnny!"'

Instead, Firth has been turning out some high-quality fare. As wellas Fever Pitch, there's his performance as Charles Gould in JosephConrad's Nostromo,which was the BBC's biggest ever costume drama which gave Firth the chanceto "ride horses and shoot guns. I know that anyone who was at schoolwith me might read this and think what a cunt! But it was a case of Firthas Clint Eastwood; one of my dreams actually came true because I got toride a horse through a South American town, ride through the old Spanishquarter caked in dirt, filthy, matted, holding a gun , with Ennio Morriconeblasting out in the background and the town burning. It was certainly,spending five months in Colombia, sweating buckets." Candidly,Firth doesn't like the book at all: "Structurally incoherent, tediouslyheavy boring. The best thing about it are the images."

Then there's a supporting role in Anthony Minghella's film of MichaelOndaatje's TheEnglish Patient, nominated for a record- breaking 12 Oscars; anda rare American job in the Midwest, filming the celluloid version of Smiley'scelebrated family saga, AThousand Acres, which allowed him to work alongside Michelle Pfeiffer,Jessica Lange and Jennifer Jason Leigh under Jocelyn Moorhouse's direction."I've never been any good in anything has been badly written,"says Firth, who is known to be highly self-critical, even of acclaimedperformances like his portrayal of wounded Falklands soldier Robert Lawrencethe award-winning television drama Tumbledown.Indeed, Firth is remarkable for having played three celebrated living characters:hostage John McCarthy, Lawrence and Hornby.

"Being honest, I didn't think too much of my performance atthe time, although a few years have passed now. You know, its that sortof part. He gets paralysed here, he stabs someone there, he cries here.It's straight drama-school fare Robert is a far more nebulous characterthan that. He's not reliant on his looks or his charisma; when you meethim you realise here's a man who's cracked by his own imagination. Thething that shocked me most about Tumbledown was I'd got so closeto Robert. Here was a guy who was at my side through the whole shoot. AndI thought: I'm really like him. I was imagining being him, and then whenthe thing came out and all those familiar facial gestures appeared, I wasphysically ill with disappointment. It took years to appreciate what I'ddone. It's just an actor and his vanity, but with Fever Pitch Ilearnt from that, I filtered out all the bullshit early on. I think that'swhy I'm a lot more like Nick in the film than some people expect. It'snot an impersonation, but it is a form of osmosis."

It's certain that Firth also learned about subtlety in his role as Darcy.Despite the moist tripe that was written in some quarters, most people accepted that what made Firth's performance special was that it was a romantic rather than a sensual depiction, one in which 'less was more'. Maybe Firth's astringent attitude to his craft is a reflection of his admitted guilt at not having followed his parents into academic life, "not having got into Cambridge or been a missionary in Africa. Mind you, my granny was pleased as punch that I'd done some Jane Austen."

Firth has mixed feelings about the Method school of approach. "It'sdifficult to asses an actor's ability. It can be a conjuring trick. It doesn't depend on internals. I remember the story about Marlon Brando being asked what was going through his head at the climax to On the Waterfront.Brando said he kept thinking I'm so glad this movie is over. Would anyone without Brando's talent have the same effect ? I doubt it."