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Certainly, From Where I Stand, I'm Not A Specialist In Wildly Different Walks And Voices. But I Find As Much Variation And Nuance As What Satisfies Me In What I Do. So, I Don't Find This Particularly Different. He Has His Own Peculiarities. You're Probably Talking About A Cluster Of Englishmen In Suits But I've Done Quite A Big Cluster Of Guys Not In Suits As Well, Which I've Occupied Myself With. So, I Don't Find That This Is The One That Stands Out.

-Colin Firth

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Certainly, From Where I

Colin Firth

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Certainly, From Where I Stand, I'm Not A Specialist In Wildly Different Walks And Voices. But I Find As Much Variation And Nuance As What Satisfies Me In What I Do. So, I Don't Find This Particularly Different. He Has His Own Peculiarities. You're Probably Talking About A Cluster Of Englishmen In Suits But I've Done Quite A Big Cluster Of Guys Not In Suits As Well, Which I've Occupied Myself With. So, I Don't Find That This Is The One That Stands Out.

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Most Actors Will Tell You They Have Some Sort Of Dream Of Doing Something Other Than What They're Doing.

I Think The Dictator Director Is Based Upon Stories From The Past. I Don't Think Anyone Would Put Up With It Now. There Are A Lot Of People On A Film Set With Egos. So, To Be Completely Authoritarian, You'd Probably Have To Have A Reputation Like Kurosowa Or Somebody To Get Away With It.

The Hollywood Foreign Press Have Just Given Me A Time Out From My 20-year Midlife Crisis. My Heartfelt Thanks To Them.

It Does Help To Actually Realize That However Stunning The Person Who Is, You Know, Fluttering Eyelashes At You, She Doesn't Do Anything To Match Up To Your Wife.

I Can Actually Get Involved In Getting Stories Off The Ground That No One Would Ask Me To Be In Because I'm The Wrong Age, The Wrong Sex, The Wrong Nationality, Or Whatever. I've Found It Quite Exhilarating To Have That Freedom To Tell The Stories That Aren't Just About Middle-aged White English Guys.

Sometimes To Think About Why Some Institutions Are Stable, It's Interesting To Go One Generation Back And Look At The Author Of That Stability.

But It's Interesting Being Directed By Someone Who Is A Very Good Actor. There's Nothing Like It. It Might Sound Like A Territorial Thing About What I Do, But I Don't Think You Can Understand What It Is Until You've Done It. I Know That To Be A Fact.

I'm Just The Last English Twit, Really.

And That Is A Hard Route For A Woman To Come Through. There's Still A Lot Of Roles That Have To Be Conformed To. It's Quite An Old Fashioned Environment In A Lot Of Ways.

It's Entirely To Do With Personality, I Think. There Are Good Directors Who Talk A Lot, Bad Directors Who Talk A Lot, And Good Directors Who Don't Say Much And Vice-versa. It Just Depends On Whether People Respond To That Personality And Whether People Have A Willingness To Do Something For Them.

The Great Thing About Dealing With People About Whom We Have Historical Resources, Is That If The Writing Needs Work, There's Everywhere To Go To Enrich It.

I'll Be Your Friend So Long As You're Not Crap

I Think Everyone Is Throwing Happy Stuff At You, And That's When You Come Over All Humbug. It's Happy Stuff In Your Face, Happy Stuff Is Being Sold To You.

I'm Not Patient, And Some Things Drive Me Crazy. In My Work, I Get Incredibly Upset When People Don't Get It Right Or Don't Respect Others' Needs.

If You're Playing Someone Who's Got Marital Problems, You Have To Play Someone Who's Trying Not To Have Marital Problems. So, You've Got To Get Into The Problem First.

If You're Playing Someone Who's Impeded By Fear, Or Shyness, Or Has Whatever Dysfunction Your Character Might Have, You Have To Achieve The Dysfunction First, Imaginatively, In Order To Play Someone Who Is Trying To Negotiate Their Way Out Of It.

I Do Think A Good Story In A Novel Is Fair Game And There's Nothing Wrong With Adapting That. It Sometimes Gets A Bit Facile Where They Think: "let's Get The Next Best-seller And See If We Can Turn It Into A Film."

What Infuriates Me Is That In America Violence Is Judged In Context, Whereas Language Is Not. So With Language There Is An Arithmetic That Says: One F*** Is A Pg 13, Two F***s Is An R. They Don't Say: One Bullet Through One Head Is A Pg 13, Two Bullets Through More Than Two Heads Is An R.

It's Whether They Have A Vision And Whether They're Able To Communicate It. The Best Director Is Just Someone Who Gets Over-excited About Doing It - They Don't Even Have To Know Much About Camera Or Acting.

My Looks Aren't Something That Come Dazzlingly Through In Everything I Do. I Can Be Made To Look One Way Or The Other Fairly Easily... I Am Still Not Recognised On The Street That Much.

It Was Mainly To Do With Helen Hunt, To Be Honest. That's What Drew My Attention To It. I Was Interested In The Fact That She Was Going To Be Directing. I'd Never Met Her But She Projects A Degree Of Intelligence And It Was Convincing T Me That She'd Be Able To Handle This Sort Of Material Very Well.

The Way I've Described Helen's Sort Of Rigorous Honesty I Just Think He Also Has Tremendously. It's Very Strange... He Just Has This Sort Of Way Of Making It Happen Really. You're Not Really Aware Of Being Directed, So Much As Being A Part Of This Thing.

I Absolutely Don't Care About My Looks And I'm So Used To Them That I Wouldn't Change A Thing. I Would End Up Missing My Defects.

I Always Thought The Biggest Failing Of Americans Was Their Lack Of Irony. They Are Very Serious There! Naturally, There Are Exceptions... The Jewish, Italian, And Irish Humor Of The East Coast.

Actors Are Basically Drag Queens. People Will Tell You They Act Because They Want To Heal Mankind Or, You Know, Explore The Nature Of The Human Psyche. Yes, Maybe. But Basically We Just Want To Put On A Frock And Dance.

I Can't Bring You Absolute Truth In The Detailed Factual Sense. All I Can Do Is Bring You An Interpretation As I Understand It. That's All You Can Ever Get From An Actor.

The Skill Of A Good Actor Is To Make It Always Seem Like You're In That Fantastically Spontaneous Moment. Very Often, A Stand-up Comedian Has A Different Instinct, Which Is To Reinvent. Once You've Laid Down Some Material, And Made Them Laugh, You Move On And Find Some New Material.

You Have To Be Ill If You Want To Get Better.

The English People, A Lot Of Them, Would Not Be Able To Understand A Word Of Spoken Shakespeare. There Are People Who Do And I'm Not Denying They Exist. But It's A Far More Philistine Country Than People Think.

We've Always Been Involved With America - I Have A Son Who Lives There And It's A Big Part Of My Life.

I Work With The Options I Have In Front Of Me And My Reasons For Choosing A Job Can Vary Enormously Depending On The Circumstances. Sometimes I Take A Job Because It's A Group Of People I'm Dying To Work With, And Sometimes It Can Be A Desire To Shake Things Up A Bit And Not To Take Myself Too Seriously.

On His Fight Scene With Hugh Grant In Bridget Jones: It Was A Delicious Experience.

Hollywood Hasn't Aggressively Pursued Me. Neither Have I Aggressively Pursued Hollywood.

To Be Bothered Wherever You Go - It's Not A Rational Thing To Want At All.

Comedy - Particularly The Frothy And Frivolous - Is Notoriously Neglected By Festivals And Awards. But It's Bloody Hard To Get Right.

My Primary Instinct As An Actor Is Not The Big Transformation. It's Thrilling If A Performer Can Do That Well, But That's Not Me. Often With Actors, It's A Case Of Witnessing A Big Party Piece But Wondering Afterwards, Where's The Substance?

I Have Almost No Memory Of Them [st. Trinian's Films]. I Don't Think I've Seen Them Since I Was Quite Young. I Was A Bit Frightened Of The Girls. I Fancied Them. Even Though I Was Young, I Found Them Attractive And Rather Frightening. I've Always Been Attracted To Frightening Girls! I'm Married To One!

I Never Saw Myself As Mr. Ugly, But I'm Not That Handsome. I Can Sort Of Be Made To Look Quite A Lot Better Or Quite A Lot Worse.

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People Have The Idea Of Missionaries As Going Out With The Bible And Hitting Natives With It. It's Not Really What They Were Doing. They Were All Doing Something Rather Different.

If I Were To Write A Book About The Progress Of Getting To A Third Film, It Would Be A Long One.

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'la Dolce Vita' Made We Want To Go To Rome And, If Not Jump Into The Trevi Fountain, At Least Watch Someone Else Do It. Maybe That's Why I Married An Italian...!

I Was Delighted To Become A Popular-culture Reference Point. I'm Still Delighted About It Actually, And I Still Find It To Be Weird.

Popular Culture

Certainly, From Where I Stand, I'm Not A Specialist In Wildly Different Walks And Voices. But I Find As Much Variation And Nuance As What Satisfies Me In What I Do. So, I Don't Find This Particularly Different. He Has His Own Peculiarities. You're Probably Talking About A Cluster Of Englishmen In Suits But I've Done Quite A Big Cluster Of Guys Not In Suits As Well, Which I've Occupied Myself With. So, I Don't Find That This Is The One That Stands Out.

It Used To Be That I Was Always Paranoid Or A Loser Or Something So There's Usually Something That You Seem To Associate Yourself With At One Time Or Another.

I'm Fully Aware That If I Were To Change Professions Tomorrow, Become An Astronaut And Be The First Man To Land On Mars, The Headlines In The Newspapers Would Read: `mr. Darcy Lands On Mars.

I Have A Kind Of Neutrality, Physically, Which Has Helped Me. I Have A Face That Can Be Made To Look A Lot Better - Or A Lot Worse.

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They Said: "make It In This Amount Of Time And Go For It Now..." Which Is Why I Was Suddenly Ambushed And We All Found Ourselves Doing It. I Suspect This Wasn't Quite Recognisable In Its Genre To Give People The Confidence Just To Throw Money At It.

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Perfectly Normal

When I'm Really Into A Novel, I'm Seeing The World Differently During That Time— Not Just For The Hour Or So In The Day When I Get To Read. I'm Actually Walking Around In A Haze, Spellbound By The Book And Looking At Everything Through A Different Prism.

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Some People Come Up To Be Directors By Coming Through The Camera Department And There's Not A Lot Of Women In The Camera Department. The Ones That Are Have To Kind Of Prove They're One Of The Boys, I Think. I Don't Want To Get Into Trouble With Generalisations But I Think It's A Fair Observation.

Something Like Shakespeare In Love, Which Became Such An Established Hit That It Now Seems Like A Foregone Conclusion... But It Really Wasn't. The Script Was Around For A Very, Very Long Time And Had People Chickening Out All The Time.

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So, If You Haven't Picked Up Some Tips During An Apprenticeship Like That, You Shouldn't Be Directing. It Doesn't Mean You Can Do It, But It Loads You Up With Information.

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I've Actually Heard People Protesting Furiously About Straight Male Costume People As Well. It's Not Universal And There Are Examples That Break The Mould All Over The Place. In My Experience, It's More Prevalent In The Uk Than In America.

Because I Am An Englishman I Spent Most Of My Life In A State Of Embarrassment.

I Love You Even When You're Sick And Look Disgusting.

Looking In The Mirror, Staring Back At Me Isn't So Much A Face As The Expression Of A Predicament.

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It's An Unknown Quantity. It's Actually Almost A Cliché To Say It, How Hard Comedy Is. What's That Famous Quote? "dying Is Easy, Comedy's Hard." I Think The Broader It Gets, If You Miss By A Millimetre, You've Missed Completely. It's A Very Hard Thing To Do.

I Find That At Almost Every Press Junket I Get That Comment, "this Character's Different From What You Generally Play..." And That's Ok! But I Think "generally Play" Stems Back To Mr Darcy. I'm Fine With It But I Tend To Find That If It's A Departure, Which In Other People's Words It Always Is, It's Always A Departure From That.

Directors Don't Get To See Other Directors At Work - They're The Only One On The Set. I've Met Directors Who've Asked Me What Another Filmmaker Is Like. So, There's Probably Nobody Better Placed To Make All The Comparisons And To Pick Up Stuff Than An Actor.

So, I Think There's A Danger That Good Stuff Can Fall By The Wayside If It Doesn't Conform To Formula. But I Think It Comes Down To Money And They Just Don't Know Where It's Going If They Haven't Got Any Precedent.

Nothing Brings You Closer Together Than Blind Terror.

I Do Think I'm A Character Actor.

I Think It's Quite Extraordinary That People Cast Me As If I'm Warren Beatty: Until I Met My Present Wife, At The Age Of 35, You Could Name Two Girlfriends.

There's No Point In It Unless It's A Story That You Really Want To Tell. It's A Nebulous Job. Unless You're Doing It Well, You're Not Doing Anything. And There Are A Few Of Those. It's Perfectly Possible To Be A Passenger On A Film Set Because If Somebody Else Has Written It, You Can Make Nothing Of That Role And That's Exactly What Bad Directors Do.

I Have A Very Long Relationship With America. My Mother Grew Up There And I Felt To Some Extent That I Partly Belong There. I Was Schooled There Briefly For About A Year.

If I'd Loved My Chemistry Teacher And My Maths Teacher, Goodness Knows What Direction My Life Might Have Gone In. I Remember There Was A Primary School Teacher Who Really Woke Me Up To The Joys Of School For About One Year When I Was Ten. He Made Me Interested In Things I Would Otherwise Not Have Been Interested In - Because He Was A Brilliant Teacher. He Was Instrumental In Making Me Think Learning Was Quite Exciting.

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I Was Gearing Up For It. I Took Some Singing Lessons. And I Opened My Mouth, And Atom Promptly Said, 'that's Not Going To Happen. We Love Your Voice, But Maybe We Could Use Some Of Your English Wit.' He Had Doubts About It From Way Back. For Starters, We Weren't Going To Be Doing The Italian-american Crooning Thing.

There's A Paraphrase About Orson Welles Saying: "great Films Are Made By Great Directors And The Rest Are Made By Everyone Else." I've Been Very Lucky... Before I Start Insulting The Profession Of Directing, But I Think A Good Director Is Everything And A Bad Director Really Is Nothing At All.

I Would Rather Five People Knew My Work And Thought It Was Good Work Than Five Million Knew Me And Were Indifferent.

I'd Love To Try My Hand At Something Else.

It's A Funny Thing - The Reality Is I Have No Feelings About School. It's Long Gone. Funnily Enough, The Bad Memories - Of Which I Don't Have Any Left To Be Honest, I Can Just Remember A Sense Of Tedium - Have Faded. And Teachers That I Liked Have Remained Quite Vivid. There Are Three Or Four Left.

But This Is Where You Get All The Market Research And Things Get In Danger Of Becoming Formulaic, And Where You Depend On Brands And Getting Recognised Actors. It's The Thing That Precludes Risk Very Often, Otherwise Everyone Would Be Avant-garde All Over The Place.

I Don't Think It's Aiming At Gags, I Think The Humour Is Woven Into It. It's Part Of How The Characters Operate And How They Deal With Disaster Because They're Worldly Enough To Have A Bit Of Irony And Wryness About Their Own Circumstances. So, I Think The Humour Comes Out Of That.

Less Racist Now But It Has Been. I Don't Think It's Been Completely Stamped Out. There's A Class Element To It. And Who's Supposed To Do What. You're Very Unlikely To Get A Gay Grip.

My Grandmother Was A Minister As Well, Which Was Not That Common In The 1930s.

One Of My Grandfathers, Actually, Having Gone Out There As A Minister, Decided He Would Better Serve The People As A Doctor. So At A Very Late Age - At The Age Of 38 In Fact - He Changed Course And Decided To Become A Doctor.

I Thought I Was Managing My Expectations, But On Hearing The News I Discovered New And Unfamiliar Vocal Tones. Perhaps I Should Do Another Musical.

I Don't Know If This Qualifies As Gentle Reassurance, But Right Now This Is All That Stands Between Me And A Harley-davidson.

I Feel More Comfortable In Drama. Comedy's Is A High-wire Act. I Find It Stressful. It's A Precision Science, In A Way. And When You're Filming, The Thing Comedy Depends On Becomes A Much More Difficult Commodity. The Thing You Depend On Is Spontaneity.

I Think England Has Served Me Very Well. I Like Living In London For The Reasons I Gave. I Have Absolutely No Intentions Of Cutting Those Ties. There Is Absolutely No Reason To Do So. Certainly Not, So That I Can Have A Swimming Pool And A Palm Tree.

Forget Trying To Be Sexy. That's Just Gruesome.

I Have A Great Deal Of Respect For The Craft, I Don't Know How Much Respect It Has For Me. But It's A Precision Process. Doing It On Stage Would Be, I Think, Terrifying. Doing It On Film Has Its Own Difficulties, Because Film Is Not Conducive To Spontaneity. You Might Have A Run Through And Get A Few Chuckles At Eight O'clock In The Morning, But You Don't Keep Laughing At The Same Thing All Day Long.

When I Visited Coffee Farms In Ethiopia, The Farmers Could Not Believe We Spend A Week's Wages In Their Country On A Cup Of Coffee In Ours, Because They See So Little Of The Profits. Oxfam's Fair Trade Campaign Helps Right This Wrong.

I Think That London Is Very Much Like That. I Find There's Humour In The Air And People Are Interesting. And I Think That It's A Place Which Is Constantly Surprising. The Worst Thing About It? I Think It Can Be Smug And Aggressive.

So, You Don't Have Laughs As A Reference Point Any More, It Becomes A Bit Of A Science After That. And The Last Thing, You Would Love To Be Able To Depend On A Sense Of Spontaneity, But Hours Of Waiting And Then Hours Of Repetition Are Not Conducive To Spontaneity So Those Are Your Obstacles. On The Other Hand It's A Lot Of Fun. Plunging Into A Bit Of Physical Comedy And Abandoning All Dignity, No One Can Really Hurt You Much After You Much After That, Once You've Done It.

I Haven't Had To Struggle Very Much. I Haven't Paid My Dues. I Think I Have Been Lucky.

I Think It Helps To Get A Film Made Because People Who Put Money In Are Nervous. They Like To Have Something Recognisable Enough To Make Them Secure That There's A Pattern There - That Someone Else Put Their Money Into Something Like This And Made It Back.

Almost Every Comedy You See Is About People Making All Wrong Choices And Making All The Errors Of Judgement Possible. Good Comedy Is When It Works On This Scale. Because It Is Psychologically Very Real.

I Had Heard All Sorts Of Stories About Woody Allen's Directing - Directorial Approach. And Some Of Them Turned Out To Be Myth. But, One Of Them Was That He Doesn't Rehearse And Another Was That He Doesn't Really Direct, If He Doesn't Like It...he Cuts It Out Of The Movie, Or Even Replaces You.

I Do Notice That When I've Been Away And I Come Back To London. People Look At You. People Are Ready To Pick Arguments.

The Failure So Far Of The Governments Of So Many Of The Worlds Most Powerful Countries In The Face Of Such Egregious Unfairness ... To Make The Slightest Progress On The Issue Of Fair Trade Is Hard To Explain.

I Don't Know If There's A Problem With Original Ideas... I Think A Healthy Film Industry Should Have A Good Supply Of Good, Original Writing.

My Singing Voice Is Somewhere Between A Drunken Apology And A Plumbing Problem.

It's A Very Dangerous State. You Are Inclined To Recklessness And Kind Of Tune Out The Rest Of Your Life And Everything That's Been Important To You. It's Actually Not All That Pleasurable. I Don't Know Who The Hell Wants To Get In A Situation Where You Can't Bear An Hour Without Somebody's Company.

It Didn't Have To Be A Newfound Respect For The Craft, I Knew That It's Notoriously Difficult And Frightens A Lot Of People Off. I Don't Think Anyone Knows Quite Who To Attribute It To, But The Dying Actor Who Says: "dying Is Easy, Comedy Is Hard." I Hear It.

Maybe It's Shallow Of Me To Have A Wife That's So Beautiful, But It Makes Things Easier. To Me She's The Most Beautiful Woman In The World.

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