 For a moment in the 1990s, there can scarcely have been a woman or girlchild unaware of the minutiae of the life of TV's Mr Darcy (BAFTA-nominated). Pride and Prejudice (BBC, 1995) over with, the surlily handsome Firth has striven to reinvent himself as an actor in varied films: The English Patient (UK/US, d. Anthony Minghella, 1996) as the cuckolded husband; Fever Pitch (d. David Evans, 1997) as a fanatical Arsenal supporter; Shakespeare in Love (UK/US, d. John Madden, 1998) as an unromantic Lord Wessex; and as Julie Andrews' quizzical nephew in Relative Values (UK/US, d. Eric Styles, 2000). Maybe he is meant to be a sex symbol; the result of going in for character lurches means that major film stardom eludes him, though Bridget Jones's Diary (UK/France/US, d. Sharon Maguire, 2001) and sequel Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason (US/France/UK/Ireland, d. Beeban Kidron, 2004), as another Darcy, and Girl with a Pearl Earring (UK/Luxembourg/US, d. Peter Webber, 2003, as Vermeer) may well have done the trick. He is a very stylish Jack Worthing in The Importance of Being Earnest (UK/US, d. Oliver Parker, 2002) and an engaging bumbler in Love Actually (d. Richard Curtis, 2003). Born in Grayshott, Hampshire on 10 September 1960 to academic parents, he trained at Chalk Farm Drama Centre, made West End debut in Another Country (1982) as a Communist sixth-former, reprising the role in the film (d. Marek Kanievska, 1984). Early films also included A Month in the Country (d. Pat O'Connor, 1987), as a WW1-scarred veteran, the very quirky, Buenos Aires-set Apartment Zero (d. Martin Donovan, 1988) and Valmont (UK/France, d. Milos Forman, 1989), opposite Meg Tilly by whom he has a son. There has been some US work (A Thousand Acres, d. Jocelyn Moorhouse, 1997), a return to the stage in 1999, and some notable TV, including the post-Falklands drama Tumbledown (BBC, 1989, BAFTA-nominated) and The Deep Blue Sea (1994) as that pickled adolescent, Freddie Page. Brian McFarlane, Encyclopedia of British Film
|
FILM & TV CREDITS
