Oscar nominee Colin Firth has been a Flint area favorite during my local award season polling. Many local fans have seen him in the Oscar nominated film, ‘The King’s Speech’ and they feel like he brilliantly portrayed someone who feels frustrated and at times desperate for having a stammer and being unable to communicate. One person said, ‘Colin’s hesitation, pain and frustration over the stammer were just so real. His emotional deficiencies were also so real. I loved the friendship Bertie formed with Lionel. Both performances were incredible.’ Firth visited ‘Inside the Actor’s Studio’ Monday and talked to host James Lipton about his unforgettable roles as Mr. Darcy – twice, and his Oscar nominated role as King George VI in ‘The King’s Speech’.
Lipton sat with his huge stack of cards, winding his way through Firth’s nomadic childhood during which he lived in Nigeria, St. Louis, Missouri, and England. Firth said his teachers never really liked him in school, because he was always reading books like ‘The Odyssey’ that he wasn’t supposed to read. He also said he loved playing dress up from a small child, He was Jack Frost in his first school play and got to wear satin pants, a ‘billowy shirt’ and a crown. He joked, ‘I felt like God. I was mobbed, clawed at by members of the opposite sex. I just thought, next stop is cocaine in the back of the limo.’
Lipton said, ‘Mr. Darcy’ and the audience erupted into applause. Lipton continued that some would say it was a break out role and scene for Firth coming out of the pond in ‘Pride and Prejudice’. Lipton asked if he knew the scene was going to be that big. Firth said:
‘It’s a testament to the contortions of a viewer’s imagination that that scene is the way it is. Because I read stuff about this transparent wet shirt clinging to these chiseled contours and, I didn’t have chiseled contours. As you can see, the shirt isn’t really that transparent. It’s a trick of storytelling.’
Lipton then said he’d played another Mr. Darcy in ‘Bridget Jones’s Diary’. Firth said it was no coincidence, because in the story, Bridget referenced Mr. Darcy from ‘Pride and Prejudice’. He said because the story paralleled ‘Pride and Prejudice’, he played the second Mr. Darcy very much like he played the first Mr. Darcy.
Lipton asked how much of Colin Firth goes into every role. Firth replied, ‘If I’ve pulled it off, it has to be quite a lot.’
Next Lipton brought up the film for which Firth is nominated for an Oscar, ‘The King’s Speech’. Lipton said, ‘Your grasp of the King’s stammer is absolutely masterful. How did you do that?’ Firth replied:
‘David Seidler, our writer, struggled with a stammer through his childhood and much of his life and he was as eloquent on the subject as anybody. It wasn’t so much as what was happening technically to him, that he was able to take me through the terror and the way that your day looks to you if you feel you can’t tackle language.’
This is Firth’s 2nd Oscar nomination. The first was for Best Actor for his role as George Falconer in ‘A Single Man’. ‘The King’s Speech’ leads this year’s Oscars with the most nominations, 12 in all.
Click here to see a complete list of Oscar nominations.
You can buy ‘Bridget Jones’s Diary’ starring Colin Firth in Flint at Best Buy. Click here for a store locator.
The 83rd Annual Academy Awards air in Flint on WJRT TV ABC12 on February 27th at 8 PM EST.
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