Colin Firth// The Talks Interview 

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Colin Firth: “It sounds awfully spoiled, but I’ll take it”

Mr. Firth, has Hollywood and the fashion world changed the way people approach beauty?

Well, there was a time when a beautiful person was considered something fine and to be celebrated. Now a beautiful person is assumed to be shallow and flaky. If you are beautiful in today’s society, you are presumed to have no substance. I think a lot of talented and very bright people who are also physically beautiful have to work very hard if they don’t want to just lean on their looks.

Well I’m just reporting on an observation which is interesting, I don’t really have the answer to that. I think there’s resentment, there is the feeling that you can’t have it all. I think the complexities of our own urban lives mean that there are opportunities for people who are not physically beautiful. I think it is rather expected that if you want to become a professor, that you don’t look like someone from

. And I think someone that has the mind of a professor and also looks like

would just piss people off because they don’t want them to have all of that.

Being so often under the limelight, how much effort do you put into grooming and getting dressed?

Well it’s been easy so far because I have someone who has dressed me right down to my socks. I think if you know you are going to get photographed you put some thought into it, but as much as possible I like to leave the decision to someone else.

Well it used to be my wife, but then there are increasingly designers who offer you things and have great relationships with you and if you like what they do then it gets taken out of your hands.

Because you concede that they know better?

Actors are notoriously bad dressers. Between roles they don’t know how to put themselves together anymore. If you have just taken off a Victorian frock and you are about to go into the 1950s, you kind of spend most of the rest of the time in t-shirts and pajamas. So then when the events come along, if there is somebody out there who can say, “I’ve got a suit for you. Don’t worry, I know your measurements.” I know it sounds awfully spoiled, but I’ll take that. I am not very good at thinking about it or designing the look myself. There are one or two actors who seem to have this flair and I don’t know how they have it. They get out on the red carpet and they look amazing every time. I’m just getting older.

They say that youth is wasted on the young. Are there any regrets you have?

I am very bad at those questions, I’m afraid, because it means you have to go through you entire life and try to pick something and I cannot possibly do that. Because I am an Englishman I spent most of my life in a state of embarrassment, so it is not really regret. I don’t regret anything very much. Philosophically I suppose I am quite good at believing that things lead you to where you are and that’s the way it is; you live with it and what has happened in the past is unchangeable. I consider myself very lucky in my life so there is nothing I would change really – but I do have a slight tendency to cringe at some of the memories.

What are some of your goals?  Are there unexplored characters you still want to play?

So you’re not a planner, you’ve never mapped out your career?

Oh, god no. For a long time I wasn’t sure that I would even have one so there was absolutely no point in making plans.

Well, let’s be more specific. Did doing a film like

No, it hasn’t. I’m afraid this causes a lot of tension between me and the rest of the world, you know my enthusiasm for singing and the rest of the world’s enthusiasm for me

singing. I sang at my wife’s birthday the other day to cries of “less,” but I loved it.

Was it difficult to convince her Italian parents that you are the right one for her?

She brought home an Englishman. One problem right there. Nearly ten years older. Actor. I mean how many strikes do you need against you? They were very gracious to me, but it was not a good package to sell to the in-laws really. So there was a mountain to climb. I had to learn the language in order to make myself worthy.

Coming from an academic family: do your own parents still remark on what you do, or have they become used to it by now? Have they ever tried to convert you to their side?

I’d make an appalling academic. I have the attention span of a gnat. I think they quite like it when I play a role that they consider to be rather worthy of the profession, a role where calling yourself an actor isn’t an apology. It will inevitably be something Shakespearean that they consider superior as long as I don’t bugger it up. When I just prance around in

or something like that, I’m not sure how they reconcile themselves with the son they produced.

How very, very much I like that man!!! (To put it bluntly: I could gobble him up)

I think Mr. Firth might be surprised — I’d wager that there DOES exist a high degree of enthusiasm FOR his singing!

Absolument brilliant!!!! I like this man not only as an actor but as an individual. He has this magnetism about him that makes you want to talk to him and have a shot of whiskey wih him as well. He is honest and humble and he knows who he is, flaws and all.

Talking of beauty: One of the greatest writers of all times, Lev Tolstoy, once said: “It is amazing how popular and irreversible the delusion is that the beauty is a virtue”

“because I’m an Englishman, I spent most of my life in a State of embarrassment” I love that!

I think its a cliché to keep endlessly repeating that englishmen are or feel embarassed, we have been hearing it since Oscar Wilde. The punks at Kings Road in the 70s were not embarassed, neither are any of the british artists that take the lead in all areas of human art, science and knowledge. I think its just a humble remark that means exactly the opposite.

Are you British, Luis? If you are, my apologies. If you are not, how could you possibly know? I lived in England for a year. I’m from Brazil and the very opposite of embarrassed. I really felt sorry for the majority of British people I met there – specially the young ones that watched me and oversea students (how they called anyone not from England) dance, hug and kiss and have a great time without having to drink a lot or nothing at all. Now I feel sorry for your lack of empathy – not to say something rude. Just because you hear something too many times does not mean it becomes more or less true. My advice? Try to travel more. If you do travel, try to interact more. All the best.

Usually one gets dissapointed when hearing the interview of a the most favorite actor because they are not the same with the roles they play. This interview made me feel like: o God, i dont love this actor for nothing. He is exactly what he looks like. Charming man inside and outside.

BRILLIANT! I love Mr. Firth as an actor for a long time. You look at him and you cannot see how brilliant he can be in any kind of role. His family should be proud even if he’s not playing a shakespearian character. (jk)

Forget the singing in “Mamma Mia” – what about “The Importance of Being Ernest’? “Lady Come Down” ::Swooon:: The man is, seriously, the whole package. <3

So mature and clear about his point of view, makes me love you even more.

I want him to sing for me if it is no good no problem. I also wait for a new movie whit colin play in it.love that man

i’m italian and i think my parents would love to see me with a man like this!

There is an elegance about him that he brings to every role he plays and it shows in this interview. I am grateful to experience that.