Posts tagged colin firth
Colin Firth Interview For The King’s Speech
Sep 21st
Colin Firth is one of Britain’s most recognisable and finest actors. He’s best known to my Mum and pretty much every woman over 40 as Mr Darcy! He hasn’t stopped there though, he’s also starred in The English Patient, Fever Pitch, Shakespeare In Love, Bridget Jones’ Diary, Girl With A Pearl Earring, Love Actually, Nanny McPhee, When Did You Last See Your Father?, St Trinian’s, Mamma Mia and last years A Single Man which has been his most acclaimed role to date. Now it looks like he’s topped that role in Tom Hooper’s upcoming movie The King’s Speech as King George VI. At the films premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival it was met with a standing ovation. The film went on to win the Cadillac People’s Choice Award at the festival and Oscar buzz surrounding Firth’s performance ensued!
The King’s Speech tells the story of the man who became King George VI, the father of Queen Elizabeth II. After his brother abdicates, George (‘Bertie’) reluctantly assumes the throne. Plagued by a dreaded stutter and considered unfit to be king, Bertie engages the help of an unorthodox speech therapist named Lionel Logue. Through a set of unexpected techniques, and as a result of an unlikely friendship, Bertie is able to find his voice and boldly lead the country into war.
Did you work with a speech therapist at all?
Colin Firth: Not really no, I consulted with several people. I had a dialogue coach because in a way the discovery of the stammer had to be quite personal and it had to be quite specific to this individual. It had to come from some visceral place but it also had to be very carefully monitored for the sake of the drama because if it takes 20 minutes to get a word out it will affect the pace of the film (laughs). So you have to find something which is not only authentic and expressive, but which is also very specific to this person and what he’s going through. You also have to find something that doesn’t alienate the audience, that doesn’t slide into some sort of pastiche, that isn’t painful in a way that people resist it. This is where I had to work very very closely with Tom (Director Tom Hooper). This was one of his early concerns with how to pace it and how to score it if you like. How bad it has to be here, in order for it to get to here? When are the relapses? How much can we afford to dwell in painful silences? Having established them can we perhaps afford to pick up the pace because of the humour in the film? I know there’s a jokey reference that timing wasn’t his strong suite, but you do have to tread a very careful line between not throwing away the humour without throwing away the stammer. Tom was very closely involved in how that would be laid out.
Having said that we did have a speech therapist come by during rehearsal who gave us very good advice in the forms it can take. My sister is a voice therapist so she was extremely helpful in terms of the exercises that can be done. For example in the montage sequence, ost of those came from her consultations. But I think the best consultant I had was David Seidler the screenwriter, he was so compelling about the experience and what you do in life to negotiate around the speech problems that you have. The fact that it has a profound affect on your identity, because you don’t do what you want to do, you do what you can do in a lot of cases, maybe you can’t order Beef at a restaurant because you can’t get the B out so you have to order the Fish. You make choices according to these limitations. That insight and what my sister gave me were definitely the most useful help I got.
What do you think was the turning point for your character King George VI to start trusting Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush)?
Colin Firth: I think what I admired most about the structure of this piece is that it doesn’t pivot on one moment. Like any credible relationship portrayal it ebbs and it flows, it has breaking points, it’s cyclical, it’s like a marriage. You see that trust being tussled over the whole time.
What themes attracted you to this film?
Colin Firth: One of the themes that interested me most about the whole thing is that if you wanna dig a little under what the stammer is expressing and why we’re using the business of royal protocol as a convention, it’s about the possibilities or impossibility’s of one human being reaching another one. Are we ever capable of doing that, you can’t, even with your own children you can’t fully, you’d love to be able to reach in and take someone’s pain away but you can’t. You can do everything else and so you use language for that, you use all kinds of means of expression and for me the film is about Logue’s pursuit of that. The fact that the man is a member of the royal family means the challenges are very explicit in a way. The fact that his first gesture is to move the chair away underlines that Logue’s dealing with a man who has an exclusion zone around him. You can’t even call him by his first name, you’ve got to plough through a bunch of titles, you have to bow and the man refuses to allow any more intimacy than that. It starts off with a complete lack of trust, but I suspect Bertie (King George) is intrigued by this mans nerve. I think the reason he stays in that room so long is because I think the mischief appeals to him. I think it’s love at first sight quite frankly (laugh). I think the trust is won and lost all the time.
The King’s Speech is in cinemas 7th January 2011
Colin Firth A Single Man Interview
Jan 27th
Colin Firth is one of Britain’s most recognisable actors, he’s know to my Mum and pretty much every woman over 40 as Mr Darcy. He hasn’t stopped there though, he’s also starred in The English Patient, Fever Pitch, Shakespeare In Love, Bridget Jones’ Diary, Girl With A Pearl Earring, Love Actually, Nanny McPhee, When Did You Last See Your Father?, St Trinian’s and Mamma Mia! A Single Man for me is his best performance, I expect to see some Oscar love. A Single Man is based on the story by Christopher Isherwood. Set in the US in 1962, Firth plays English college professor George Falconer, a man struggling to come to terms with the death of his long term lover Jim (Matthew Goode). Distracted momentarily by old friend Charley (Julianne Moore) and curious student Kenny (Nicholas Hoult), he cannot ignore the profound sense of less he feels and so resolves to do something about it.
Fear is a big theme in the film.
Colin Firth: Yes, there’s that theme of fear running through it which George talks to his students about. I think it’s very much alive today, it’s a marketing tool and a political tool. I think it’s how governments get things done. That’s what Naomi Klein talks about in The Shock Doctrine. If you frighten people enough to can get any legislation through, you can make them put with the Patriot Act, or Guantanamo or the invasion of a country that should be left alone. Or indeed giving up your civil liberties, or putting up CCTV cameras everywhere. People are prepared to accept all that if they’re frightened.
Could Isherwood’s story have been updated and put in a contemporary setting?
Colin Firth: That’s a very difficult one to answer. I don’t think LA’s changed that much, really. This character happens to be gay, but although George is struggling with a lot he’s certainly not struggling with his sexuality. Isherwood’s characters don’t seem to. So I don’t know what it would have done to the film if you’d have set it in the present. You take the Cuban Missile Crisis out and put something else there, like the fear of terrorism, it’s actually rather an interesting question. I think there’s something about the characters of George and Charley that just feels right in 1962, there’s something about their whole cultural reference points that feel of that generation. But I think you could have updated it quite easily frankly. I just wouldn’t have looked as good.
Tom Ford with his fashion experience at Gucci, makes the film look great, but also delivers strong characters within the story, doesn’t he?
Colin Firth: He used all the skills that I think he’d developed as a designer. As he’ll tell you in his other job he has to have a vision and he has to be able to communicate that , he has to be able to marshal people and inspire them to share it and do what you want them to do. Those are very much the skills that are required to direct a film too. He also he has an extraordinary instinct for picking the right people to do the jobs he wants, whether it’s a designer or a make-up person or his cast. If you have a look at him for a moment you realise it would be silly to bet against him on something like this. But I do think there was an emotional cost to him with this, he’s not just proving that he can do it. I feel there’s a lot of him in the story.
How did he relate to his actors on set?
Colin Firth: He didn’t give me any verbal instructions really, ever, it was just very clear what was required once we were up and running. When I read the script there was a lot of space to be filled in, there was a lot of stuff without words, but once we were doing it it seemed terribly clear what each moment should be about really. Tom didn’t really need to fling instructions around. I could tell by the room that we were filming in what the mood was, I could see what was on the page. I could tell something by what I was wearing. People comment on the visual beauty of it, I didn’t really notice it as beautiful particularly , it just seemed to be an inevitable part of this world really.
So things like the production design were quite organically arrived at, were they?
Colin Firth: Yes, like that beautiful house is something that Tom looked very, very hard for. He wanted it to be the place that George had chosen, because he wanted it to be cosy. But if the scene is me sitting there alone, listening to a phone ringing with a cup of coffee in front of me and the camera outside the window looking in at this lonely man – you don’t need a director to say ‘okay, this is about loneliness,’. I just think that’s brilliant directing.
Did Tom tell you of the cinematographic style he was after, with the screen warming up in moments of happiness?
Colin Firth: He might have mentioned it but it certainly wasn’t something he troubled us with. I believe he always intended to do that but some of those decisions he came to afterwards. I like the effect, if you’re talking about the interior life of a human being I think that does help narrate the thing, as does the music.
Given Tom’s reputation as a fashion stylist did you make a special effort for your first meeting with him?
Colin Firth: Do you know, you can’t get close. You can’t match him at his own game, and also I don’t think he wants to see a world of Tom Ford clones running around. I know he likes elegance rather than shabbiness. He doesn’t like things out of place. People are a bit self conscious around him, and he does have a way of making people think they’re scruffy. But you know, you can feel scruffy in your best suit and tie standing next to him, he’s so perfect. I came straight from a film set anyway, I was a bit tired, I was a bit unshaven, and in some really rough looking clothes. And I got the part.
Were you aware of his reputation going in to the film?
Colin Firth: Only very distantly. I’m not connected to that world, so I didn’t know that much about him. I knew the name, I’d met him a couple of times, I think I knew he ran a bit fashion house but I probably would have struggled to have told you which one. I knew he did glasses, but that was it. And I also knew there was supposed to be something rather extraordinary about him, that he had this ability to succeed at everything.
A SINGLE MAN will be released at cinemas across the UK on Friday 12th February 2010.
A Single Man & Nine posters
Nov 24th
Today’s been a real slow day for news, this is the best I’ve got! New poster for two possible Oscar contenders. Above is the new poster for Tom Ford’s overly stylish A Single Man which stars Colin Firth, Julianne Moore and Matthew Goode. A lot of critics have been heaping praise on this film, I myself watched it at the London Film Festival and wasn’t blown away by it. It was a bit too much style over substance for me, visually yes it was stunning, but for me it didn’t have the emotion to back it up, especially considering the story. It felt like I was watching an extended cigarette advert.
I can’t take anything away from Colin Firth though he was phenomenal and is deserving of all the praise he’s been getting. For a debut Tom Ford done brilliantly as well. The film is a very good film just not a great film in my eyes.
Fashion designer Tom Ford makes his directorial debut with this dramatic outing starring Colin Firth, Julianne Moore, and Matthew Goode. Ford and David Scearce adapted the story from a book by Christopher Isherwood, which tells the tragic tale of a professor’s loss of his longtime partner.
If you’ve read my blog you’ve probably learnt of mydeep seated hatred for musicals, I really do hate them………alot! This film looks like it could be an exception, Daniel Day Lewis is my favorite actor of the last 15 years, every performance I’ve seen him in he’s been amazing, the rest of the cast is chock full of talent, 6 Oscar winner in Marion Cotillard, Penelope Cruz, Nicole Kidman, Judi Dench, and Sofia Loren.
Nine tells the story of Guido Contini (Daniel Day-Lewis), a world famous film director as he confronts an epic mid-life crisis with both creative and personal problems. He must balance the many women of his life, including his wife (Marion Cotillard), his mistress (Penelope Cruz), his film star muse (Nicole Kidman), his confidant and costume designer (Judi Dench), an American fashion journalist (Kate Hudson), the whore from his youth (Fergie) and his mother (Sophia Loren).