» Colin Firth interview
Latest 7 talks to Colin Firth about his role in the new big screen adaptation of Noel Coward’s Easy Virtue
Were you aware of the Noel Coward play before doing this movie?
No. Funnily enough I’ve done a film adaptation of a Noel Coward play before, and it was quite a similar premise.
Easy Virtue was a wonderful script, it’s gorgeous material and it’s very easy to be over reverential of it – they can be museum pieces if you’re not careful. Although, I did the film because I wanted to do a Stephan Elliot movie more than a Noel Coward play And I think that’s what we have. It’s as much Stephan’s sensibility as Coward’s.
The film does display a lot of humour around a very serious theme.
Well, I think Coward specialises in that. I think within all the politeness and wryness and wit and trivia and flippancy of Coward is immense passion. He wrote Brief Encounter. Arguably it’s up there with Casablanca as one of the great passionate love stories of cinema.
The dry, sarcastic wit the character
displays, is there a bit of yourself in that?
Yeah, could be. You know there’s always a bit of yourself. I mean I love all that.
Has your process for selecting projects changed?
No, because I never had a process.
You have gone from playing lover roles to playing the father roles, like in Mamma Mia, what do you think about that?
That’s life. That’s where I am. One of the few pleasures of the aging process, is the roles actually get more complex. I look at Ben [Barnes] and I’m reminded of certain aspects of myself at the time: you have to really look for roles that have any texture when you’re in your 20s. I found it desperately dull being 25 as an actor. A friend of mine, an older actor, said to me when I was that age, You know the hardest role in Shakespeare is not Hamlet or Lear, it’s Ferdinand in The Tempest, the earnest lover with no sense of humour. The older you get the more they let you be jaded, or witty, maybe you’re bad, maybe you’re disappointed, layers of experience. There’s more to be had, so yeah, bring them on!
Can you empathise with the father?
Yes, I think anybody could. Family is complicated. From childhood to having your own. There are times you want to hide from them and run from them and in some ways, although there’s something entertaining about Whittaker standing back and making wry comments, there’s something noble about his defending Larita from the mob, the family.
Did you have fun in Greece, filming Mamma Mia?
Oh, the time of our lives. That wasn’t hard. It was really obscene to be paid to have that much fun, it was wonderful.
Do you still get nervous as an actor?
Yes. Nerves are the enemy all the way through your working life.
What do you do to relax yourself, before a camera?
I just don’t give a s**t. I used to. I think that comes with experience. I mean, maybe it’ll come back and I’ll be terrible tomorrow, I don’t know. But it’s just there and it’s a piece of junk.
