Colin Firth Read online

  Colin went from the anarchic romp of St Trinian’s to some fun in the sun in Mamma Mia! Filming in Greece coincided with the low-budget Genova, which, being shot entirely in Italy, persuaded Colin to break his own rule on avoiding work during the boys’ summer holidays. The two films could not have been more different in tone. The first is a joyous star-studded love story set on a Greek island, punctuated with Abba songs, and the second the tragic tale of a grieving dad who moves his family to an Italian city in an attempt to get over the death of his wife.

  In Mamma Mia! Colin played one of three potential fathers to Meryl Streep’s daughter, played by Amanda Seyfried. In the run-up to her wedding, she invites mum Donna’s past lovers to their Aegean hideaway in an attempt to discover which one is her real dad, so that he can give her away on the day. Pierce Brosnan and Stellan Skarsgård were cast as the other two possible parents while Julie Walters and Christine Baranski jumped on board as Donna’s best pals.

  For the part of ‘Headbanger Harry’ Colin would have to sing, dance and even play his beloved guitar, and he joked that his singing voice is ‘somewhere between a drunken apology and a plumbing problem’.

  He admitted he hadn’t been required to sing seriously since he led the ‘ropey schoolboy band’ of his youth but he had no fear of being judged for his dulcet tones.

  ‘If they’d wanted Broadway-level dancers and singers they would’ve cast people like John Travolta,’ he argued. ‘They didn’t: it’s myself, Pierce Brosnan and Stellan Skarsgård.’

  The most mortifying thing, he quipped, was the Spandex suit he had to wear for the final payoff on the film. ‘There are bulges where there should not be bulges and no bulges where you wish there were.’ While filming the musical on the picturesque Greek island of Skopelos, co-star Pierce hinted at a little competition between himself and Colin.

  ‘I do a lot of singing and dancing and, yes, I’m good at it, even at my age,’ said the Bond star. ‘The knees are still good, the back is still good and the ego is fine. Colin is a lot more nimble than I am. It’s going to be a tough battle.’

  As a glam rock fan in the seventies, Colin had not been a huge fan of Abba and claimed, ‘Few straight males of my generation would have put their hands up and claimed to have been an Abba fan. If I’d had a crystal ball in 1976 and seen this is the sort of thing I’d end up doing, I would have ended it all at that moment.’

  In an appearance on US TV, he revealed that the movie was so camp ‘it will make Sex and the City look like Iron Man. It’s going to be huge.’ His prediction was spot on.

  The movie was to become his biggest box office success to date, even outstripping Bridget Jones, with a massive £365 million ($600 million) worldwide.

  Although it meant fitting in scenes around his Mamma Mia! work, Genova ticked all the right boxes. As well as shooting in Italy, Colin got to play an academic, a role that would come easily to someone who grew up around academia, and he was playing a father. It was also a small independent film using a small crew and directed by Michael Winterbottom, whom he was keen to work with.

  ‘It’s a different area emotionally from anything else Michael’s done,’ he said. ‘It’s a different tone, and he seems to be endlessly curious. He’s got no snobbery. He would do exactly what fascinated him. He’s one of the few people I can honestly say that I was dying to work with, and that’s not just the usual spiel. I think everybody would be interested in working with Michael.’

  Flitting between the big-budget Hollywood set on the beaches of Greece and the low-budget art-house film in the beautiful city of Genoa provided an interesting couple of months for the busy actor, and he felt the Genova set brought him firmly back down to earth. ‘It couldn’t be more contrasting,’ he said. ‘There were moments when I got a chill, partly because you are filming in such real circumstances. You’re in real rooms, you have a whole run of scenes and you’re staring at what you’re supposed to be staring at. So if it’s 3 a.m., dark and you’re playing a scene where you hear something, it’s sort of real …’

  While Mamma Mia! was set to be the hottest hit of the year in 2008, Genova suffered the opposite fate, with lukewarm reviews and little box office traffic. Colin, as always, had moved on by then. He was about to return to both Coward and Wilde and, as soon as he returned to London, he and Livia had a new green business venture to keep them busy.

  CHAPTER 19

  A Singular Success

  AS COLIN WAS beavering away on the films in Italy and Greece in August 2007, Livia and her brother Nicola were drawing up the last details of their plans to launch an environmentally friendly store of their own, with the help of Colin and entrepreneur Ivo Coulson. Eco, which opened in Chiswick High Road in September 2007, is a stylish four-storey department store specializing in green, fair-trade products and described as Britain’s first ‘ecological destination store’.

  Colin modestly described himself as ‘a handy communications device’ while Livia called him ‘an essential part of the project’. And she revealed the passion behind all the projects he threw himself into, and the great meeting of minds that made their marriage work.

  Livia had also been busy working as executive producer on a movie highlighting the plight of a man who’d been on death row, after a flawed trial, for twenty-five years. Colin invested in the project, In Prison My Whole Life, which highlights flaws in the trial of Mumia Abu-Jamal, convicted of the murder of a Philadelphia policeman in 1981.

  ‘We are a political family,’ she said. ‘Colin’s one of those people who researches everything properly. He’ll get obsessed with something like the Iraq war and then wake up in the middle of the night wanting to talk about it. We’re a great match because I’m the ballbreaker and he’s the brains.’

  Livia’s little brother Nicola, who has a PhD in alternative energy, was happy to join his sister in taking charge of the project. And he remembered his childhood as being organic and eco-friendly long before it was on the political agenda. ‘Even fifteen years ago, our parents used energy-saving bulbs that took half an hour to emit light,’ he recalled. ‘We ate local, organic food. Nothing was thrown away. But that’s just how it was in Italy.’

  The store, powered by solar panels, displayed everything from environmentally friendly cleaning products to £3,000 designer chairs made from sustainable wood. In the basement, Nicola ran a consultancy service, where customers could see samples of eco-friendly flooring, tiles, pipes and radiators and get advice on building with sustainable products. ‘We want this to be a good place to meet, and enjoy, as well as learn how to improve the planet,’ said Nicola. ‘And to do that it has to be fashionable, to have things for all generations. It can’t be an eco-nutter place or it won’t work.’

  Colin, who admitted he was no ‘eco hero’, backed the family’s idea to launch the shop because he felt that, as a consumer, he was complicit in the damage that Western buying habits had on the environment and the developing countries. ‘The thing is, if you have been given the privileges we have, if you have this many perks, surely you can help out,’ he told The Times. ‘Rather than being a luvvie with a lofty opinion preaching to people, I prefer to do things, to get involved, put my money where my mouth is and learn along the way.’

  But while he was happy to help out with the publicity, the ‘unlikely shopkeeper’ was not going to be caught behind the till, having learned his limitations during stints at the coffee shop. ‘I worked in the cafe when it opened and the coffees I made were probably the worst we ever served,’ he said. And he joked that he would appear in a Darcy-like wet shirt only if it were ‘eco cotton and recyclable water. Depends how badly we need the customers. At the moment, I’ve got three films out and all anyone wants to talk about is the shop. So, hopefully, another drenching won’t be necessary.’

  The couple celebrated their tenth wedding anniversary in the summer before the opening, and Colin’s admiration for his intelligent and beautiful wife was still evident. She was the one he sought out for career advi
ce because, he said, ‘she’s the smartest woman on the planet’. And he revealed the secret of their happy marriage.

  ‘We’re very committed on a daily basis to how we deal with our family lives. But the real secret is time – we have to make sure that we spend enough time together. Every relationship in life you’re going to have to take care of, there’s a marathon factor to it.’

  Colin’s next two projects were the classic Noël Coward comedy Easy Virtue, and Dorian Gray, based on the Oscar Wilde novel A Portrait of Dorian Gray. Both were based in England and both starred up-and-coming English star Ben Barnes. For the first Ben played a young aristocratic man who brings his glamorous American bride home to the disapproval of his upper-class parents, played by Colin and his English Patient spouse Kristen Scott Thomas. Filmed at Flintham Hall in Nottinghamshire, Colin was, as a review in The Times put it, ‘curiously absent as the jaded Mr Whittaker. Firth is shabbily charming in a role that requires him to slope around in the background looking unkempt for most of the movie, only to steam into the foreground in the final fifteen minutes.’

  In June filming began on Dorian Gray, which saw Colin as the hedonistic, debauched Sir Henry Wotton who derives his pleasure from corrupting the beautiful and innocent hero, played by Ben Barnes. ‘He wants to see this phenomenon of beauty tarnished in some way,’ explained Colin.

  Colin was impressed with his handsome young co-star. ‘Ben is by far the best Dorian that there’s ever been,’ he insisted. ‘He has got much more complexity, partly in what he has been given in the script, but he also has a very interesting quality. He is clearly very beautiful and he has also got these very, very dark eyes. The pupils are about as black as anyone’s I have ever seen.’

  Sadly the critics didn’t agree. While Colin’s cunning corrupter was roundly praised, Ben’s performance came in for a lot of knocks. ‘A truly handsome supporting turn from Colin Firth,’ wrote Kevin Maher in The Times. But, he added, ‘this story demands a more versatile and charismatic central player than the powerfully blank Ben Barnes’.

  While the Gothic tale of debauchery was fun to make, it almost lost Colin one of the most seminal roles of his career. Fashion designer Tom Ford was casting for his directorial debut, A Single Man, and Colin was his first choice to play the central character, a gay professor grieving over the loss of life partner. But the filming schedule for Dorian meant Colin was unavailable. ‘I remember talking to him at the Mamma Mia! premiere,’ Tom recalled. ‘It was so frustrating, because I’d had to cast another actor, and here I was, talking to my first choice. I got in the car afterwards with Richard (Buckley), my partner of twenty-three years, and I just said, “Fuck, fuck, fuck. Goddammit.” Then our shoot got pushed back, Colin became available and things magically came together. If you swear enough, you often get what you want!’

  During a joint interview with the director, Colin said he had been curious about the longing looks from Tom during the star-studded event in June 2008. ‘I think you thought I was flirting,’ joked Tom.

  ‘It wasn’t that kind of stare,’ laughed Colin. ‘It was much more enigmatic. What was great was that Tom had this personal and complex story he wanted told, and to have him put that whole thing in my hands was a chastening responsibility. It’s the sort of thing that makes you think, “OK, I’m going to have to raise my game for this.”’

  Based on a novel by Christopher Isherwood, A Single Man is set in the sixties in LA, shortly after the tragic death of George’s partner, played by Matthew Goode. As he struggles to deal with his isolation he befriends a handsome student, played by Nicholas Hoult, and rejects advances from his best friend, Julianne Moore.

  The script called for Colin to strip off once again. At forty-eight, he was becoming increasingly reluctant to show off his body. ‘I picked up the script and it said, “Naked man lies on bed” and then a few pages later it was, “Naked man jumps in ocean”,’ he told the Sunday Express. “Well,” I thought, “it’s time to get in shape.” One more push against gravity before I turn fifty and it’s all downhill.’

  In The Independent he revealed he usually chickens out if nudity is involved, unless the script is exceptional. ‘It’s my signal to run for the hills actually,’ he admitted. ‘If you really want do a film and there are necessary scenes where you are undressed, it’s one of the biggest sinking feelings an actor can have. You’re just thinking, oh yes, oh God, how much time do I have to spend in order not to disgrace myself and horrify everybody? The older you get, the harder the work and the more you’re hoping you won’t be asked to do that any more.’

  The script also called for him to passionately kiss Matthew Goode and to rebuff an attempted smooch from Julianne. It was the latter he found the hardest. ‘It never even occurred to me that there was any issue about playing gay until Julianne kissed me, and I had to resist,’ he joked. ‘She made that very difficult for that moment. Matthew is a pretty good kisser. Julianne was much better – but I wasn’t supposed to enjoy it. That was the one moment when Tom Ford really had to get on my case. “You’re supposed to be a gay man – Jesus Christ, keep your hands to yourself, and get your tongue out of her mouth!”’

  And Colin was happy at the suggestion that the role might make him a gay icon, quipping. ‘I’m happy to be any kind of icon! I’m not getting any younger!’

  Director Tom Ford says he fell in love with Colin and his character during the filming. ‘You have to have a crush on every single one of your actors. But they’re also portraying a character – which, in this case, I wrote – so I had a crush on the characters anyway. I said to Colin, “I have such a crush on you.” Now I have a crush on Colin in real life. Who doesn’t? But that’s not the crush I was talking about. I had a crush on Colin as George. I felt the same way about Julianne. You need to love your characters.’

  Colin’s sensitive portrayal of the heartbroken professor was hailed as his finest to date. The Observer praised his ‘captivating central performance’ and Wendy Ide of The Times called the film ‘a thing of heart-stopping beauty’ and commented, ‘Colin Firth gives one of the finest, most affecting performances of his career.’

  Colin admitted he was pleased with the praise and was characteristically modest. ‘If you think you’ve done it before and no one’s noticed, there was probably something wrong. It may be because I didn’t do it adequately, or maybe it’s because all the other elements didn’t come together on that one occasion. This seems to have got through in ways that other things haven’t. One thing that is satisfying and a source of great relief is that I’ve been asked to do a great deal more. The focus is on me more than it’s probably ever been. It’s much better than having people saying they put a whole film on Firth’s shoulders, and he dropped the ball!’

  In September 2009, two days after his forty-ninth birthday, Colin had one of the proudest moments of his life when he was awarded the Best Actor prize at the Venice Film Festival. Accepting his award in Italian, he paid tribute to his in-laws for accepting this ‘very dodgy commodity’ into the family and said the gong was ‘possibly the greatest honour of my life’.

  ‘I had a particular connection with Italy, as my wife is Italian, so that added to the joy, the charm, of the moment,’ he said later. ‘Everyone in Italy knows what that award means. And I had enough of the local lingo to express how I felt; there’s no other non-English-speaking country in the world where I could have done that.’ And he told The Observer: ‘I rarely seem to come home from Italy empty-handed – wine, balsamic vinegar, wife, two children, and now a nice piece of silverware.’

  The Venice gong kicked off a rash of nominations throughout the movie award season. Best Actor nods came from the Golden Globes, the BAFTAs and finally the Academy Awards. The accolades reminded him of a previous BAFTA nomination, for Tumbledown, and the refreshingly honest star revealed his crushing disappointment when he lost out on the night.

  `You don’t quite know how much you’ve got invested in something until you get a disappointment,’ he
said during a press conference. ‘You can think you’re quite blasé about something – I’m not blasé about [the Oscar] by the way, nor do I have any expectations. Years ago, when I had a BAFTA nomination in my mid-twenties, I thought I was very blasé about that and thought awards were terribly unhealthy for our business, and I didn’t go to the BAFTAs. I was filming at the time, I wasn’t making a great statement. I wasn’t there and I thought I was very cool about it, until I found out I hadn’t won. I was absolutely shattered, and I was astonished that I was shattered.

  ‘I’m quite good at getting over these things, but I am still surprised how disappointed I was about it. If I’d won, I think I would still be under the illusion I didn’t care.’

  This time, Colin did pick up the BAFTA and, in a hilarious speech, he thanked a fridge repairman for the gong. ‘What Tom Ford doesn’t know is I have the email in my outbox telling him I could not possibly do this,’ he said. ‘I was about to send this when a man came to repair my fridge … I don’t know what’s best for me so I would like to thank the fridge guy.’ He also lavished praise on the director who ‘knows what’s best for me’. And added to have ‘an encounter with Tom Ford is to come away feeling resuscitated, a little more worldly, better groomed, more fragrant, and more nominated than one has ever been before’.

  In a bizarre postscript to the speech, Colin’s assistant tracked down the repair man who confessed he hadn’t even recognized the star during the fateful callout. ‘It was only when his personal assistant rang my work asking if the repair man who visited could attend a post-awards party that I twigged,’ Zak Marhri revealed. ‘It’s a bit embarrassing really.’