Anyone who has seen the Bridget Jones films or Pride and Prejudice will know this name. Colin Firth was Mr. Darcy in Pride and Prejudice while his character in the Bridget Jones series was also named, ironically, Mr. Darcy. But there are more films and theatre work under his name than people know
I actually found this book by complete accident while searching through the Biography section on my Amazon Kindle. It sounded interesting, so I bought it and read it. It was a very good and very interesting book. I loved him in Love Actually and What a Girl Wants. He was so funny in both
He was born Colin Andrew Firth on September 10, 1960. He has two siblings named Katie and Jonathan. His parents worked as teachers while his grandparents were missionaries. He had a very nomadic childhood, spending time in Nigeria, the United States and England. He went to school for a time in the Midwest US, around Missouri. While there, he felt like an outsider and his classmates didn't improve this feeling. They, more or less, referred to him as an "English geek." Upon arrival in the UK, to attend school, he was, once again, made to feel like an outsider because of his Midwestern US accent.
As time went on, he flirted with the idea of pursuing music as a career, even forming a band with friends that only lasted a short while. He started performing in plays, his first being a Christmas panto where he played Jack Frost, and found he really enjoyed it. That prompted him to go to school for performing arts. It was during his final term at The Drama Centre at Chalk Farm that he played Hamlet and was discovered as having a talent for acting. The role that really brought his name to fame was the West End play Another Country. His first television role, however was the 1988 program Tumbledown. A role that would be both a blessing and a curse for him was the 1995 film Pride & Prejudice, based on the Jane Austen novel of the same name, where he played Mr. Darcy. Anyone who has seen this film knows of a certain scene where he fell into a pond and emerged soaking wet, able to see right through his shirt. That made him a sort of sex symbol. The reason it was a blessing and a curse is because, while Pride & Prejudice helped make his name more notable, it's also a curse because it would be hard for people to see him as anything other than Mr. Darcy. His brother Jonathan even jokingly asked "Isn't Mr. Darcy supposed to be sexy?" after hearing his brother would be playing the role
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| Tumbledown |
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| Pride & Prejudice. This scene is what made him appeal to the ladies |
As time went on, he would star in more films, most notably the Bridget Jones series. He did have a problem with the character of Bridget Jones putting two people in classes: singletons and smug marrieds. He had a problem with that, as he was happily married at the time to an Italian woman named Livia. He mentioned that for one of the Bridget Jones films, he had to be seen shirtless, so he worked extremely hard to get into perfect physical shape. It worked. In one of the Bridget Jones films, he can be seen showing rock hard six-pack abs
He was also married once before, to a woman named Meg Tilly, whose sister is actress Jennifer Tilly. With Meg, they had one child, a son named Will. Even after the marriage ended, Meg and Colin remained on good terms and Colin always made sure to maintain a good relationship with his son. He also has a good relationship with the two children she had, Emily and David. Later on, he met a woman named Livia Giuggioli. When he met her parents to announce their engagement, he impressed them with his impeccable manners and, instead of staying in the same house as his fiancee for the night, he stayed at a hotel. They married and had two children. He talked about how happy he was becoming a father and instead of being queasy at the birth of children, he loved being with his wife during the births. His most recent film was The King's Speech, about King George VII and how he overcame his speech impediment. Other films he's starred in include Love Actually, What a Girl Wants. In What a Girl Wants, he plays a politician named Henry Dashwood who is running for office and later comes to find out that his old girlfriend was pregnant and sent away by his political manager because it would be seen as bad form to have agirlfriend and a child and not be married in the proper way. In Love Actually, he plays an author who is struggling with writer's block, so he takes a retreat to Portugal and falls in love with a local woman
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| Colin and Livia |
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| Colin and Meg |
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| Love Actually |
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| What a Girl Wants |
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| The King's Speech |
Overall, Colin Firth has a down to earth, humble personality that earns him respect from a lot of people. He was actually mocked for a while for playing Mr. Darcy because people thought he came from a well to do upbringing. He stated multiple times that he was a working class kid who went to secondary-modern school. That he was not a kid who went to expensive schools. His parents were working class and advocated for human rights, a cause that Colin strongly supports to this day. He is strongly supportive of human rights. He's a humble, down to earth man with impeccable manners, a perfect gentleman and he is a good person. He maintains a good relationship with his son Will and his ex Meg Tilly and her children Emily and David and he's happily married to his wife Livia and he's even highly fluent in Italian
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