Colin Firth

Presenter0:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in two thousand and five, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:29

My castaway this week is an actor. He's never been out of work since he left drama school twenty-five years ago. A familiar figure on television, in the theatre, and in film, he was popular with producers and audiences alike for his ability to play character parts with distinction and care. And then he became a star, albeit in a most unlikely way, he thinks, as the reticent hero Mr. Darcy in the BBC's adaptation of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. All I did, he says, was put on a costume and act. But whatever he did, he's now a sex symbol as well as an actor. He played Rene Zellweger's lover, ironically called Mark Darcy, in the Bridget Jones films. And we can see him next in a Hollywood murder mystery called Where the Truth Lies. I've always been a chameleon, he says. The more problems a character has, the more I like it. He is Colin Firth. If it's problems you like, then Colin, Vince Collins, I mean the affable Englishman out front, but I mean a dark and mysterious character underneath. I mean he was music to your ears when he came along, wasn't he?

Colin Firth1:32

Well, yes, and it was also an opportunity to play with the perception of me that I tend to carry around, which is the buttoned up Englishman, well educated, formerly charming sort of chap.

Colin Firth1:44

None of

Presenter1:45

None of which you are.

Colin Firth1:46

Not at all. No, no, no, I'm a rather sort of ropey, shabby individual.

Presenter1:50

Yeah, but this guy's what he's violent, he's sex obsessed, he pops pills.

Colin Firth1:54

What you see on stage, because I'm a stage entertainer, is what you might expect to see, which is that educated Englishman. So when I walk off stage and beat people to pulp or behave in, you know, with sexual excess and take too many drugs, then it's it's more of a shock.

Presenter2:07

The violent scene is particularly shocking. As you say, you've been on stage, you're one half of her duo, aren't you? In Hollywood in the fifties, and Kevin Bacon's the other half. You walk off stage with a member of the audience.

Colin Firth2:08

Uh

Presenter2:19

Ostensibly because you're going to persuade him to help you with the act, and suddenly you're kind of beating his face into the ground. It's it's a real sit-up moment.

Colin Firth2:28

Yes, and uh a lot of people have asked me about the sex scenes in the film.

Presenter2:32

Uh

Colin Firth2:32

And um actually I think it is it's more

Presenter2:32

Uh

Colin Firth2:35

difficult, more upsetting in a way to act violence than it is to act sex. Um it can it can leave you feeling a bit shaken. You know, you whatever your approach to acting, that is an uncomfortable

Speaker 12:44

Yeah.

Colin Firth2:48

Place to go.

Presenter2:48

Yeah.

Colin Firth2:49

This is more than just a fight in this film, this is a a a rather psychotic bit of behaviour.

Presenter2:55

Indeed it is. We have never seen Colin Firth the psychotic and we've never seen Colin Firth the kind of

Colin Firth3:01

Sexually depraved.

Presenter3:03

Exactly. But your argument presumably is that these are the kinds of roles you would always have relished. Darcy Mania was just something that hijacked you along the way.

Colin Firth3:13

Yes, it was just another role at the time, and it was, if anything, a bit of a stretch. I'm not like mister Darcy, I'm much more animated, I talk too much, and I don't own the half of Derbyshire.

Presenter3:23

And your friends howled with laughter, apparently, at the idea that you might be exceptional in matinee eye.

Colin Firth3:26

Exactly. It was a big, big leap of the imagination for everybody concerned.

Presenter3:31

Are you pleased that someone else has now taken on his mantle, Matthew McFadden, in the the the new film version?

Colin Firth3:36

I am delighted, I've heard he's wonderful, and I am delighted that an extremely good actor has taken on.

Presenter3:41

Isn't there a tiny bit of you that feels a bit possessive about him at the end of the day?

Colin Firth3:45

Yes, there might be a tiny bit, but it's I think it's eleven years have now gone by since I did it. And I've heard enough about it, really. I mean, if I I need any reassurance that I got it right on the day, then I think I've had it.

Presenter3:57

Um

Presenter3:59

I'd like to promise I won't mention him again, but I can't. Record number one. Tell me what it is.

Colin Firth4:05

This is Curtis Mayfield, we people who are darker than blue. There's something perennial about this man's voice that makes me feel that whatever's wrong in the world, there's a voice of simple humanity, and I just find it always very reassuring to listen to him.

Speaker 44:21

We people

Speaker 44:24

Who are darker than blue?

Speaker 14:28

This ain't no time for segregatin'.

Speaker 14:31

I'm talking about brown and yellow.

Speaker 44:35

Hi yellow gal, can you tell? You're just the surface of a dog deep well.

Speaker 44:43

If your mind could really see you know your

Colin Firth4:47

Ah, it's like you must be

Presenter4:50

Curtis Mayfield and we people who are darker than blue, you've never been out of work since drama school, Colin, and that's quite a claim. You have not come up the hard way, you didn't sort of tread it out on the boards of weekly rep. Do you feel I sense there's a kind of guilt that you didn't do that? You didn't have to be aware of that.

Colin Firth5:00

The board

Colin Firth5:06

There is an unease, yes. I mean, I was brought up with a lot of Protestant values and you're you're supposed to pay your dues somewhere and uh

Presenter5:07

Yeah.

Colin Firth5:14

You know, perhaps your your soul needs a bit of hardship in order to develop, so I I do wonder when the catch has to come.

Presenter5:17

Yeah.

Presenter5:20

But tell me about I mean, you always wanted to be an actor. I think you announced to your parents when you were fourteen you were definitely going to be an actor, but you'd been acting what was the first time you ever went on the stage and felt the bars?

Colin Firth5:32

I was about five years old. Pantomime infant school is somewhere in Essex, and I was Jack Frost, and it was a pair of silver satin pants, a blue satin sash, and, portentously, a billowing white shirt.

Presenter5:50

Were you hit?

Colin Firth5:51

I was. I I don't know if I've been as big a hit since, and uh that's when I got the bug. That's where I thought where the love and attention lies.

Presenter6:01

You remember recognizing that at the end of the day?

Colin Firth6:02

Oh God, yes. I mean I there was nothing else that gave me that sort of praise, that level of approval.

Presenter6:03

I mean I

Presenter6:07

Yes.

Colin Firth6:08

I didn't take kindly to being sent to school, to being sent into this rather cold environment where you're given lots of or instructions and nobody loves you. You know, you're sort of on your own. I couldn't believe that I had to go back again the next day. I can remember that. I thought, my first day of school was over. Thank God that's over. Now I can get on with my childhood. And it was a horrible shock day too. Suddenly the environment of school warmed up around me.

Presenter6:31

But you liked the idea of storytelling as well, didn't you? You liked the business of narrative, of

Presenter6:37

It's

Colin Firth6:38

been absolutely what's driven me through life, I think. Even if you write a diary of what you did that day, suddenly your day looks different because it has narrative form. It has a kind of ending to it.

Presenter6:51

It's quite childlike, that, in a sense, though, isn't it, that enjoyment, or that suspension of disbelief.

Colin Firth6:56

It's entirely childlike, and I think that the skills an actor has to have are childlike. I think unless you have that, you can't do it.

Presenter7:03

But aren't you as an actor, particularly doing movies and particularly when you're a star, treated like a child, really? I mean, you're you're sort of told what time to come in in the morning and you're driven to work and you're put in the chin.

Colin Firth7:13

Oh, in every last detail, almost. I mean, you are an infant.

Presenter7:15

But do you like that? Or do you find it deeply tiresome?

Colin Firth7:18

Um I think it's

Colin Firth7:21

Absolutely appalling, really, in the end.

Colin Firth7:24

At forty-five you realize there's something wrong with that. And thank God I've got kids because you go home and the roles are reversed immediately. You can't say to your child, you behave yourself, I'm going to call my agent.

Presenter7:34

Yeah.

Colin Firth7:35

Suddenly you're the slave and um that does help. But I think a lot of actors I know by the time they're reaching my age are trying to take control in all sorts of ways.

Presenter7:42

We'll talk some more about that, but let's have record number two. What is it?

Colin Firth7:46

Uh this is Fella Kooti, who is a bit of a hero of mine really. And Nigeria has, even though I haven't been back since I was about four, has featured very largely in my life, partly because we've been surrounded by Nigerian people through so much of of my childhood. And I don't know how to say the name of this song, because it's written in big capital letters. It's O-D-O-O and I'm going to call it O-Doo.

Speaker 48:10

Hi ya ya ya.

Speaker 18:11

Yeah.

Speaker 48:12

Yeah.

Speaker 48:15

When they want to call, when they want to call, when they want to call, Nigerian government, them G and N Fed, rallamilitary government.

Speaker 48:27

For Libya, them giant name preparational council for Liberia, them given preparing.

Presenter8:37

Fellakuti and Odu. So you spent some years in Nigeria with the fam. What was the family doing there?

Colin Firth8:45

My father's teaching at a a secondary level school.

Presenter8:48

Your mother was a teacher as well.

Colin Firth8:49

Yeah.

Presenter8:50

And your grandparents have been missionaries, so this is for you just peripatetic. It's all in the blood, huh?

Colin Firth8:54

It's all in the blanche. Several generations. I even have a great-grandfather who was a missionary in India.

Presenter8:58

Hmm.

Colin Firth8:58

And um

Presenter8:59

Again, not what we expect of you at all. We think, you know, you're sort of, as you say, middle class, well heeled, restrained, public school product. You are none of these things.

Colin Firth9:09

Yes, I mean I

Colin Firth9:11

I don't know quite where to put myself. Um I am uh those things to some extent. I mean, I you know, I I have the lingo of the middle class suburban Englishman, I suppose.

Presenter9:21

But you didn't always, did you?

Colin Firth9:23

No, I didn't. And I I've always felt a little bit rootless and I've I've I suppose I've quite enjoyed feeling that way. I spent many years in North America. I have a son there and uh I I've I've never felt I particularly belong to a place.

Presenter9:38

So as a child you went to different places as well as Nigeria. You went you went to the States then, didn't you?

Colin Firth9:42

There was one year in school in America. It was an incredibly decisive year, very important year. America absolutely blew me away. I was there from twelve to thirteen. Basically over that year we used the the holiday periods, which are very long in America, the school holidays, to travel. And we got a Volkswagen camper bus as a family and we just went west, north, back east again.

Presenter10:04

Great experience, as you say. And also, I mean, it mightn't have happened because the family was not well healed, as I was saying. It was quite a thrill. Through the school teachers.

Colin Firth10:11

Through the school teachers and uh yes, no, this wasn't based on on having lots of money. This was a teachers' exchange and we all flew out with other exchange teachers in a charter plane and we hired an old Volkswagen bus, as I said, and we slept in it on en route. And um so this was not a an expensive holiday.

Presenter10:27

But there was a an educational purpose to it. I mean, your parents were obviously quite

Presenter10:31

serious minded in the way they approached you and your upbringing and those of your siblings.

Colin Firth10:35

Yes. They were extremely keen to expose us to those sorts of experiences and to open up the world to us and not just to be focussed on one's own postal district.

Presenter10:46

Nevertheless, you were at school for that year in St. Louis, Missouri. Uh you must have been a bit of an oddity.

Colin Firth10:53

Yes, that was a difficult time. I had one or two absolutely wonderful teachers there, but it was a bit of a harsh environment.

Presenter10:59

So how w how did they treat you?

Colin Firth11:01

Just very s subtle isolating behaviour, really. They were friends, and I think the actual teaching I got there was fantastic.

Colin Firth11:12

But it only takes two or three people in your class, really, who, you know, were looking for a target.

Presenter11:17

Yeah.

Presenter11:19

But it didn't get that much better when you got back to this country, did it? You failed the eleven plus. Let us make this statement. Colin first failed the eleven plus.

Colin Firth11:25

I failed the eleven plus and that determined the rest of my schooling, yes.

Presenter11:30

So it's a a tale of unremitting misery, this school.

Colin Firth11:33

No, and I really don't I'm so sorry it's gone that way because that is absolutely not what I'm trying to do. And it was not that at all. I didn't like school. I just thought it was boring and mediocre and nothing they taught me seemed to be of any interest at all.

Presenter11:50

Wicker number three.

Colin Firth11:52

Okay, this is heart attack and find.

Colin Firth11:54

Tom Waits, I I that this sort of began for me during student bed sit or student squat period where one was quite happy to live in squalor, really.

Colin Firth12:07

I this is a period when I was actually I was homeless, not not on not on the street, but on other people's floors and uh you'd come home starving and try and find something in the fridge and it wouldn't be there, so you'd check behind the sofa, you know, and the lyrics are slightly incomprehensible, but they're satisfyingly kind of witty and rude.

Speaker 112:28

I love tales of five.

Speaker 112:33

That's me tangin' on the jail.

Speaker 412:35

Yeah.

Speaker 412:38

Ambler's real value with a long and daunted line You'll never recognize yourself or who's a technical

Presenter12:55

Tom Waits and Heart Attack and Vine and Memories for Colin Firth of Squatting in Chalk Farm. This is when you were at the Drama Centre there. This is where you blossomed, isn't it? I mean, all of a sudden you did want to know what was going on.

Colin Firth13:06

Absolutely, that's where I I got my act together, really, to the immense relief of everybody around me. I suddenly wanted to do what was required of me.

Presenter13:14

You became cooperative instead of being perverse.

Colin Firth13:17

Yes, I wasn't trying to look for ways out of what I was doing anymore.

Presenter13:21

Parents must have been disappointed you didn't go to university though.

Colin Firth13:24

They were

Colin Firth13:25

frightened because that's the route they knew. They weren't being snobbish about my desire to be an actor. I really believe that. I think they just were concerned about

Colin Firth13:37

the first member of the family ever going on that completely unknown route.

Presenter13:41

But it was the principal, wasn't it, of the drama centre, Christopher Fettis, who really had such confidence in you, I think from the off. I mean, let me embarrass you. Christopher Fettis has said since, It's very rare to have the privilege of training people for the theatre who are by nature poets, and Colin is.

Colin Firth13:56

Did you know?

Presenter13:56

Did you know you were a poet?

Colin Firth13:57

No, I didn't. I haven't heard that.

Presenter14:00

But he compared you to Paul Schofield, didn't he?

Colin Firth14:03

Did he?

Presenter14:03

Yeah.

Colin Firth14:04

No, I don't know that either. That's a huge compliment. I I I played Paul Schofield's younger self once in a small film.

Presenter14:09

And you've said you learned more from him than any other actor.

Colin Firth14:09

You said

Colin Firth14:13

It turned everything around seeing Paul Schofield. I watched a performance which made me reassess what acting was.

Colin Firth14:23

It was nothing to do with demonstration. It was nothing to do with even anything that I was conscious of in body language. It was just an expression of integrity. And there was such a paradox in that, because acting by nature is false. So, how can this man, by doing very little, exude truth and humanity and intelligence? I was so fascinated by that. It's basically the sort of thing I've tried to pursue ever since. And Christopher was very instrumental in taking us in that direction as well.

Presenter14:52

And in the end he put on a production of Hamlet, didn't he, especially for you? A Vehicle for Mr. Firth.

Colin Firth14:58

Yes, I don't believe it was a vehicle for me. What happened is he was engaged in a in a professional production of Hamlet and he um had to teach us as well, and I think it was more than he could do to to do two.

Presenter15:10

But the result was you were snapped up, weren't you? I mean the agents came, the casting directors came, you've been, as we've said, employed ever since.

Colin Firth15:11

The result was

Colin Firth15:16

Yeah, so I was taken out of drama school quite quickly after that.

Presenter15:20

Cabal.

Colin Firth15:20

Yeah.

Presenter15:21

Not before.

Colin Firth15:22

Uh where are we? Now, this is the Kirier from uh Mozart's Mass in C minor. I discovered this around A level time and I was trying to revise for A levels and again that resistance to the drudgery of of schoolwork was upon me and I don't know how this it took me by surprise somewhere, I don't know if it was the radio, I don't know if one of my parents put it on, but I just came out of my school book and sort of felt uh profound and spiritual and floated out of the window with it really. And I I I listen to it again now and I still think it's absolutely beautiful.

Speaker 115:58

Peace.

Speaker 416:11

Be so.

Presenter16:51

Sylvia McNair singing part of the Kyrie for Mozart C minor Mass with the Monteverde Choir and English Baroque Soloists conducted by John Elliott Gardner.

Presenter17:00

Um the drama school believed, Colin, in in the method technique of acting, the importance of creating characters who have interior lives and drawing on your own.

Presenter17:09

Experiences. Tell me how that would apply to the character of Robert Lawrence, whom you portrayed in Tumbledown in nineteen eighty seven, BBC drama about Falkland's War.

Colin Firth17:18

Well, that was the most extraordinary opportunity, in that the character that I was modelling myself on not only existed and was still alive, but was my exact age.

Presenter17:28

So he was on set, was he?

Colin Firth17:29

He was on set. I went and spent time with him at his house beforehand.

Colin Firth17:33

And

Presenter17:34

Because he'd been badly injured, hadn't he?

Colin Firth17:37

Robert was shot in the Falklands War, in the Battle of Tumbledown, on his twenty first birthday. He was shot in the head. It blew away a huge part of his brain. And he fought through, and his will and his courage were absolutely extraordinary.

Colin Firth17:54

And a weird kind of merging uh took place while we were filming.

Colin Firth18:00

Robert used to talk about the character as we. He used to look through the script and go, Oh, scene thirty nine, we're fit in this scene. And he said to me, qui and this is very, very poignant, that that

Colin Firth18:11

irrationally had come as a shock to him to realize that at the end of the film he would still be paralyzed. I would jump out of my wheelchair at the end of the day shoot. And uh, you know, because I'd felt so connected to Robert,

Colin Firth18:25

Is that

Colin Firth18:26

It was an irony that was not lost on me.

Presenter18:28

She stayed in touch.

Colin Firth18:29

We stayed in touch for a while and I I s I still feel a huge affection for him and I'd love, you know, just listening, get in touch.

Presenter18:38

You played towards the end of the eighties with Spoolon hit Valmont in Miloche Forman's film version of the callous seducer of that name in Les Liaison d'Angerus. Of course there was the John Malkovich and Glenn Close films which arguably eclipsed yours, but but no matter. Point about it is you could have used that

Presenter18:56

as your Hollywood calling card. And you didn't, did you? I mean, your attitude to Hollywood seems to be ambivalent. Have you been frightened of it?

Colin Firth19:04

I don't know. Um probably, yes. I did resist it, and I'm not sure whether that was just self-protection.

Colin Firth19:12

hiding behind a kind of

Colin Firth19:14

Snobbery about it. I talked myself into the idea that it was uh a value judgment rather than just fear.

Presenter19:20

But in fact you you did something more than not go to Hollywood. You you went off to the back end of British Columbia and became almost a recluse. This is because you d had a child with Meg Tilley, your co-star. You had William.

Colin Firth19:33

This one

Presenter19:33

Um, fifteen years ago, you're fifteen? Yeah. I mean, I I read that you were thinking of setting up drama workshops there. Were you really gonna sort of go straight out of the mainstream and

Colin Firth19:45

I I I have that tendency. I do like to withdraw from the fray. I wanted to

Presenter19:51

Take time out.

Colin Firth19:52

Take time out and

Colin Firth19:54

you get away from the you know, the the the noise and haste and get into another rhythm of life, really.

Presenter20:01

But the relationship didn't last anyway, and you did come back. What about Will, age fifty? Now, how much of him do you see?

Colin Firth20:08

Well, I we're com in as much contact as it's humanly possible to be with someone who lives so far away. I mean, we see each other frequently. We're it it's every holiday and then all the time in between that I can manage.

Presenter20:19

Bigger number five.

Colin Firth20:21

Ah, um yes, this is I absolutely in love with this song. It's relatively recent. Um there's something very reassuring about miserable music sometimes because it just means you can sit back and say you don't have to pretend everything's going for you and everything's all right and um you know I've got it sussed. This is actually about the moment when you realize you haven't got anything sussed at all.

Colin Firth20:48

Baby alone

Colin Firth20:52

Baby of love.

Speaker 420:57

Baby, all the love is a girl

Speaker 421:04

Tired of fighting

Speaker 421:08

Tired of fighting

Speaker 421:13

Fighting for the hours to come

Presenter21:17

That was Beck and Lost Cause and Colin you say you came across it in a gym when you were feeling melancholy. I wanted to ask you about the gym, because you said that when Mr Darcy came along and you were thirty-five I think let me quote you you were embracing the pleasures of being a middle-aged oddity and joyfully getting fat. So the question is is there a fat person in there trying to get out?

Colin Firth21:36

Yes, he's doing ever better as the days go on.

Presenter21:37

Is that

Presenter21:39

How hard do you work on him then?

Colin Firth21:41

Um, I do get regular exercise now. You know, until I was about thirty I was one of those people that j just stayed I mean, I was so thin I wouldn't even go to a swimming pool when I was about twenty, but uh it it it seemed impossible to get fat. And uh and now, yep, I've got to go for a run if I want to stay this shape.

Presenter21:58

Well, he served you well, mister Darcy, didn't he? And I suppose the question is, and it's the impossible question, is, what parts wouldn't have come your way if you hadn't played him?

Presenter22:11

How will we ever know? But I mean, you know, you did in in the wake of him, you you did Nostromo, didn't you, on the television and then you got fever pitch on the big screen, you played Femier. I mean, one could go on and on. He did change your career professionally.

Colin Firth22:24

It must have done, of course it did. Um Fever Pitch certainly I I think because I was sort of of the moment at that time. I mean the Bridget Jones thing opened up the possibilities in terms of film and that

Presenter22:31

Okay.

Colin Firth22:37

I don't even know if Bridget Jones would have been written the way it was had it not been for Pride and Prejudice, you know.

Presenter22:41

Because of the ironic Mark Darcy.

Colin Firth22:43

There was a there was something of the pastiche there.

Presenter22:46

But sending him up was absolutely the way to go.

Colin Firth22:48

That was irresistible and uh in some ways by embracing it I feel like I leapfrogged over it in some way.

Presenter22:58

Hm, hm. Are you going to do another Bridget Jones? Is there another one?

Colin Firth23:02

I really thought by doing the sequel one thing I would achieve was that this question would go away and of course it's never going to go away.

Colin Firth23:09

I didn't even know until I came home and opened up The Independent and found out something about Bridget Jones' baby, that it was still there was another series of episodes. I've never seen anybody.

Presenter23:18

You can't let anybody take that, can you?

Colin Firth23:21

Hmm?

Presenter23:21

Can't let anybody else play that.

Presenter23:24

The father of Bridget's baby?

Colin Firth23:25

Well, I don't think it's me, though.

Presenter23:27

Oh.

Colin Firth23:28

Anyway, so I mean, I think, you know, I'm I'm I'm I'm I could well just be petulant about that and and refuse to participate. But no, it was fun and it's always nice to get with those people again. And I'm sure if somebody came up with an irresistible script we'd

Colin Firth23:44

We can make all the noises we want against it, but we'd all be back.

Presenter23:47

Code number six.

Colin Firth23:48

This goes back absolutely to what was extremely important to me in nineteen seventy six. I would have been about fifteen, free.

Colin Firth24:00

Paul Rogers, I still think, has the best voice of any white man I've ever heard. And Paul Kossoff was quite simply my guitar hero. And I was sitting there in my maths class developing my air guitar skills. So this is what I was hearing as I looked out of the window from that maths class.

Colin Firth24:21

The Stealer.

Presenter24:22

When's down

Presenter24:24

To the center of the town.

Presenter24:27

In my feet.

Presenter24:29

Uh

Speaker 124:29

Was it burnin' and fail?

Speaker 124:31

She stole on the corner I said, Hey good love, you're coming

Presenter24:39

She said yeah.

Presenter24:44

I'm a stealer.

Presenter24:46

I'm to steal your love.

Presenter24:51

That was Free and the Stealer. Unusually, Colin, you've said that you consider the theatre easier than making films, which is not the received view among most British actors, is it? There's this the boards are the purest form of acting. Not what you think.

Colin Firth25:05

Mm-hmm.

Colin Firth25:08

I don't want to get into trouble with anybody here. It requires immense talent to do it brilliantly. And I haven't always done it brilliantly. So uh I could easily get caught out here.

Colin Firth25:19

But I resist the idea that theatre is what it's all really about in terms of acting. I don't see why that is the case. And with theatre, you're in control of the territory on stage. You are going to do it in the sequence that the writer intended it to be done. And that's up to you to take command of that and shape it as it goes.

Presenter25:42

But you're suggesting because films can be shot out of order, not not chronologically, so you've got

Colin Firth25:46

Well, let's go about it the other way. Films are not only shot out of sequence to the point which it absolute I mean it it mangles what you're trying to do. You shoot your wife at nine o'clock, marry her at eleven o'clock, and you may or may not be looking at the other actor, who may or may not be in their full costume, in tiny little pieces. Now, I think that

Colin Firth26:09

Is a far greater test of one's ability to do what we were talking about earlier, which is to go back to that childish place where you can just believe.

Presenter26:18

Hmm.

Colin Firth26:18

than standing on stage looking into the into the lights.

Presenter26:21

Having said that, actors in general, whether in film or in the theatre, get bored, don't they? And we've seen a lot of the big stars turn to other things. You know, George Clooney produces and Robert Redford and Clint Eastwood have directed Emma Thompson writes and

Colin Firth26:27

We've seen

Speaker 126:31

Yeah.

Colin Firth26:31

Yeah.

Speaker 126:32

Yeah.

Presenter26:36

Hugh Grant, I think, set up his own film company. What about you?

Colin Firth26:39

Yeah, it's I am beginning to find the itch growing to go somewhere else.

Presenter26:50

So what would you do? Would you write, direct?

Colin Firth26:53

The juice?

Colin Firth26:55

I'm toying with all of those things. But you probably have to throw away a wonderful opportunity and say, I'm not doing that, I'm going this way now.

Presenter27:05

And that's for

Colin Firth27:07

It's yes, it's something that uh one is reluctant to do. I mean it's partly because I my focus has turned family-wise a little bit at the moment and you you want to make sure everything's okay and your nest is further a little bit'cause I've got very small children just at the moment and and and it's nice to feel that you've you know you c you can protect that. But, you know, got that now and it probably is time to start looking at other possibilities.

Colin Firth27:34

I could have filled the the whole list with songs that are to do with America and traveling and being on the road. Here it's the life that I would have had in a parallel universe. This is when I'm actually a gruff, tattooed American truck driver who's smuggling drugs and Mexicans across the border. This is Little Feet, this Willie.

Speaker 127:59

I've been warped by the rain.

Speaker 128:02

Driven by the snow, I'm drunk and dirty.

Speaker 128:05

Don't you know and I'm still

Speaker 128:10

Will in.

Speaker 128:13

And I was out on the road.

Speaker 128:15

Late at night I seen my pretty Alice in every headlight, Alice.

Speaker 128:22

Dallas Alice.

Presenter28:27

That was Little Feet and Willin. So you have two more sons now, Colin, the ones you mentioned. Matteo, who's two, and Luca, who's four. That's right. Uh not surprisingly, their mother is Italian, those names. Are they bilingual?

Colin Firth28:37

Okay.

Colin Firth28:40

Well, um Mateo's not quite anything lingual just yet. Um it's uh but Luca is uh absolutely bilingual, yeah. I mean he's um I I the rule is when you want to bring your children up bilingual that each parent speaks their own language to the child and sticks to that. And uh sometimes I you know, I just find myself using bits of Italian with him because he may have spoken Italian and he'll turn round and say, Daddy, you don't speak Italian.

Presenter28:43

Okay.

Presenter29:06

Sweet. And do they live in Italy then?

Colin Firth29:08

No, they live we we basically live here. We we spend a lot of time.

Presenter29:12

Will you come and go?

Colin Firth29:13

in in Italy, but we we're we're based here.

Presenter29:16

But Italy, presumably, you can find more anonymity there, can you?

Presenter29:20

Or not.

Colin Firth29:20

No, no, no, I can. Very much so. I'd like to have that option, absolutely.

Presenter29:24

We don't particularly want

Colin Firth29:24

Mm-hmm.

Presenter29:26

All those screaming hordes that once I think didn't I read they chased you from coast to coast in the States at one point at the height of Darcy mania, waving their knickers in the air or whatever.

Colin Firth29:35

They must have been a long way behind me'cause I didn't see them doing that.

Presenter29:39

Anonymity is guaranteed on the desert island, of course. Could you hack it? Forget about the family, that's it, I'm sorry. You know, you're on your own.

Colin Firth29:46

Naukun.

Colin Firth29:48

There's nothing about it that I could hack. I mean, I I could take I'd love to spend an afternoon there. I am basically an urban minded person. So the desert island would be would be torture.

Presenter29:59

Last trick look.

Colin Firth30:00

So much of this developed around the period of my late teens and this is uh Mahler's Symphony No. 3. I was sharing with a another drama student I was sharing a room and he put this on and uh I just found this voice absolutely haunting and mysterious and he said that's my mum. It's Maureen Forrester singing Nietzsche's Midnight Song from the fourth movement of Mahler's third.

Speaker 130:37

Be still.

Speaker 130:56

If you still fail

Presenter31:17

I swear to you.

Presenter31:25

That was part of the fourth movement of Mahler's Symphony No. three in D minor, a setting of Nietzsche's Midnight Song from Alzosprach Zarathustra, sung by Maureen Forrester with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Zubin Mehta. Colin, if you could now only take one of those instead of the eight, which you've had enough trouble with anyway.

Presenter31:45

I forgot about this question.

Colin Firth31:45

I forgot about this question.

Colin Firth31:51

I think

Colin Firth31:53

I'm gonna if I can give a very prosaic reason, I think you get more for your money with a symphony or a an orchestral movement. And so I think I'd be far less likely to tire of the mass in C minor than I would of a single song here. So I think it would have to be that if I had to survive on one.

Presenter32:10

Yeah.

Presenter32:11

What about your book? We give you the complete works of Shakespeare and the Bible, as you know.

Colin Firth32:15

It strikes me rather than as a luxury, almost as a form of torture, having one book that you're doomed to go over and over and over again. But I think having been given the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare, I'd be in great need of a bit of levity. One of the few things that's ever really made me laugh out loud when I've read it is the stories of Woody Allen. And so I think I'd if there's a compendium of all of them, that's what I'd take.

Presenter32:40

And a luxury we give him.

Colin Firth32:41

Uh

Colin Firth32:42

It would probably have to be my guitar, which w if I were on a desert sign it would probably be an opportunity to learn to play the damn thing. And uh failing that, there's this wonderful thing about a guitar is even if you can't play it, you can hold it for hours.

Presenter32:56

and look good.

Colin Firth32:56

Yeah.

Presenter32:57

Colin Firth, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island is.

Colin Firth33:01

Thank you.

Presenter33:09

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Islandists archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.