Mr Darcy becomes Mr Nasty 

Colin Firth gives up playing romantic leads for devious baddies.

Colin Firth says his days in skin-tight trousers and wet, revealing shirts are over. Never again will we see him playing the strong, silent lover. He has, he says, moved on, grown older and lost the urge. 

Colin, 37, discovered his days as a romantic lead were over last year. It was at a casting session to play William Shakespeare in the new movie Shakespeare In Love, co-starring Gwyneth Paltrow, that it hit him. 

'I suddenly realized that it wasn't to be.' he says. 'in the film, Shakespeare's a romantic who's madly in love and pursues this woman for all he's worth. As we talked, the director John Madden said he was considering giving the role to a much younger man.' 

'I suddenly thought: "He's right." I would have been terrible in the role. I've reached a point in my life when it wouldn't have worked. I couldn't be the sighing lover any more.' 

'In fact, I could have done little more than sigh in the part, Joe Fiennes was chosen instead of me, and he's robust and intelligent. It wouldn't have occurred to me to play it like that.'

But Colin is still in the film, playing the man who loses the girl to Shakespeare. And he loved every moment of being the scheming Earl of Wessex. 

'I knew he was a villain, but I had to pretend that he was doing very little wrong. Reading about people of this period is a bit like the old television series Dallas, but with different frocks. 

'They're climbing over each other for their own advancement. Wessex is just trying to marry for financial gain, which everybody of his class did. 

'There's Shakespeare, this sniveling little upstart of a writer, who's getting in the way. So it's perfectly understandable that Wessex would want to slit his throat. I enjoyed the whole experience, which I know I couldn't have done if I had played Shakespeare'. 

So Mr Darcy becomes Mr Nasty in the brilliant romantic comedy which is already being tipped as a potential Oscar-winner. 

Colin seems delighted with his change of image, in the wake of his marriage last year to beautiful Italian TV production assistant Livia Giuggioli, 28. They met in Colombia while filming the BBC's dramatization of Joseph Conrad's novel Nostromo. 

'The poor girl knew me before the Darcy thing,' he says, 'We went to Rome for Christmas shortly after we met. My name didn't mean anything in Italy, so she just thought she had a normal boyfriend. 

'Then all the fuss happened over Pride And Prejudice. I enjoyed the recognition in some ways, but it was as if my whole career came down to that one part.' 

Colin grew up in Nigeria, America and Britain and this nomadic way of life has continued. 

While making the movie Valmont, he fell in love with co-star Meg Tilly and moved to the frozen wilds of British Columbia in Canada to be with her. They have a son William, age seven. 

The relationship ended amicably and Colin moved back to London. While making Pride And Prejudice, he began an affair with co-star Jennifer Ehle. 

Although he has twice been involved with his female co-stars he says: 'I find it difficult to do a love scene with an actress I'm involved with. 

'The was particularly the case with Meg. We found it very hard to make use of our relationship on screen. You can feel invaded, with half the crew around. It's as if you're revealing something about yourself.' 

Colin very nearly did reveal all of himself in that famous scene in Pride And Prejudice where, as Darcy, he plunged into a lake and latter merged dripping wet in a see-through shirt. 

It was originally written as a naked scene,' he says, 'but I didn't want that, and neither did the BBC. So we decided to invent a pair of Regency underpants where, in reality, men in those days tucked their long shirts underneath them, like nappies.' 

'I went along for a fitting for these knee-length things, which looked ridiculous. The audience would have laughed themselves silly. So we abandoned those. 

'Then I suggested that I should do it fully clothed, since it was such an impetuous act. It worked, but the underwater scenes were done in a tank in Ealing. I hit my nose on a girder and couldn't film for a few days. It was like a farce.' 

Colin has a deadpan sense of humour about himself and work. But he's still haunted by one remark he made years ago: "Falling in love stops you from caring for so many things. I don't enjoy being overwhelmed by someone." 

He says now: 'Things said at a certain point have a way of coming back and hitting you in the face. I've gone through life worried what traps are waiting have always been cautious. Now I'm putting those things aside. I have a son I see a lot, a wife, and I'm enjoying our life together. And I have absolutely no idea what work I'm going to do next. I'm excited by the prospect of what's possible and where it will take me. It's been a matter of growing up, settling down and realizing what's important in 
life. That has been a long time coming.' 

'I've moved on and grown up,' he says. 'And many people might say: "About time, too...".' 

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