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In Filming You're Waiting. You're Waiting For Lights. You're Waiting For People Set Things Up. And When You're Not Waiting, You're Repeating. And Neither Is Conducive To Spontaneity, You Know. Comedy Makes You Very, Very Neurotic Because You Think, I - But Did I Nail It?

-Colin Firth

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In Filming You're Waiting.

Colin Firth

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In Filming You're Waiting. You're Waiting For Lights. You're Waiting For People Set Things Up. And When You're Not Waiting, You're Repeating. And Neither Is Conducive To Spontaneity, You Know. Comedy Makes You Very, Very Neurotic Because You Think, I - But Did I Nail It?

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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.

The Last Thing I Would Attempt To Do Is To Buy Clothes For A Child I Didn't Know Well.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

No Matter How Much Technique You Draw On Or How Much Training You Have, Acting Is A Mystery.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

My Parents And Grandparents Have Always Been Engaged In Teaching Or The Medical Profession Or The Priesthood, So I've Sort Of Grown Up With A Sense Of Complicity In The Lives Of Other People, So There's No Virtue In That; It's The Way One Is Raised.

I Do Think I'm A Character Actor.

To Work Effectively In A Film, You Have To Repeat And Work Consistently. Basically, You Shoot A Big Master Then You Do Close-ups. You're Supposed To Be In The Same Moment, The Same 30-second Moment, For A Day.

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

Looking In The Mirror

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

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.

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.

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.

I Do Also Think It Eludes Genre A Bit - Not In Any Groundbreaking Way But You Can't Quite Call It A Comedy And You Can't Quite Call It A Romantic Anything. It's Not Quite A Drama Either Really. But It Has Elements Of All Those Things.

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 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.

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.

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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.

Whenever You Take On Playing A Villain, He Has To Cease To Be A Villain To You. If You Judge This Man By His Time, He's Doing Very Little Wrong.

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Popular Culture

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

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Perfectly Normal

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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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However Good A Communicator A Director Is, Unless They've Been Actors, It's Just Not The Same As The Shorthand You Get With Someone Who's Been An Actor.

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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.

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.

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.

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

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 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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

'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...!

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.

In Filming You're Waiting. You're Waiting For Lights. You're Waiting For People Set Things Up. And When You're Not Waiting, You're Repeating. And Neither Is Conducive To Spontaneity, You Know. Comedy Makes You Very, Very Neurotic Because You Think, I - But Did I Nail It?

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