Colin Firth by Alison Maloney Read Free Book Online Page A

along with the crowd.’
    While sharing the earnestness of Judd, Colin claimed he was more in the mould of Bennett when it came to his own reaction against perceived injustices in the system and Montgomery of Alamein.
    ‘Kids from middle-class families were slotted into academic pursuits while those from less literate backgrounds did carpentry. I wasn’t a Communist, and when I rebelled against those assumptions, it was more as Bennett would have done. I was scruffy, I was cocky and I was trouble, but I didn’t go around voicing principles.’
    As well as launching Colin on to the film scene, Another Country afforded him a taste of the high life to come. The film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May 1984 and won the coveted award for the Best Artistic Contribution. At twenty-four, Colin was walking down the red carpet at one of the most prestigious events in the film calendar and being fêted by all those around him. Everyone except, of course, Rupert. The leading man, claimed Colin later, refused to speak at the press conference for the movie because of his co-star’s presence.
    While it was his first foray into the trappings of stardom, the young actor didn’t exactly shrug off his earnest image with his reaction. While his hedonistic and well-connected co-star was, no doubt, enjoying the parties and people that Cannes’s famous Croisette offers festival-goers, Colin took the luxuries bestowed on him with a large pinch of salt.
    ‘It’s a shock how quickly you take things for granted,’ he said. ‘How after three days of limousines, big dinners and photographs in Cannes, it stops being interesting. I certainly feel that as an actor, you have to ask yourself every day why the hell you do it.’
    Although he later admitted that sudden fame ‘blew me away’, Colin appeared sanguine about his uncertain future at the time and ready to roll with the punches. He had expected to pay his dues on leaving drama school and work his way up from the walk-on part, and his dream had been to start his own theatre company, but Another Country had already lifted him to another dimension and he confessed, rather plaintively, that ‘I’ve lost my bearings’.
    ‘My sense of ambition has been numbed completely,’ he said. ‘When I got the part in the film, I already had a joband I didn’t know how to react. On stage, you function on adrenalin, but the medium of film is very bizarre. The energy is different because the work is so detailed, so subtle. All I know is that I have to cope with what comes next in a very sober way and give myself a breathing space to sort things out.’
    While it must have felt like doors were opening in every direction, it would be a while before he would get another breakthrough role. In the meantime, he was never one to rest on his laurels, taking a variety of stage and screen roles including a tiny part as a young policeman in the screen actor’s rite of passage, Crown Court . Directly after Another Country wrapped, he resumed the Bennett role to complete the West End run. And in August 1983 he auditioned for the lead role of Armand in a TV adaptation of Camille. The costume drama, based on Alexander Dumas’s novel, is the story of a young, wealthy man whose love for a courtesan threatens to bring shame on the family. After his father begs her to leave Armand, she reluctantly agrees, only to rekindle the relationship when poverty and ill health threaten to ruin her.
    Despite his good looks, the American producers originally felt that Colin wasn’t romantic enough for the part. Called in for a screen test, he swayed them by sniffing a rose throughout the entire performance.
    The drama was to be filmed as part of a series called Hallmark Hall of Fame , and the lead character of Marguerite was played by a then unknown Greta Scacchi. Colin spent September in Paris filming with a cast of greats including John Gielgud, Denholm Elliot, Ben Kingsley and Billie Whitelaw. At twenty-three, it was a