British Actor Colin Firth

DATE November 14, 2003 ACCOUNT NUMBER N/A
TIME 12:00 Noon-1:00 PM AUDIENCE N/A
NETWORK NPR
PROGRAM Fresh Air

Interview: Actor Colin Firth talks about his life and acting
career
BARBARA BOGAEV, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Barbara Bogaev in for Terry Gross.

Colin Firth is now co-starring in the film, "Love Actually," along with Hugh
Grant, Liam Neeson, Emma Thompson and a host of other celebrities. Firth
plays a writer who goes to the south of France to escape his failed marriage
and work on his next book. He ends up falling in love with his Portuguese
maid there. In this scene, he's trying to overcome the language barrier
between them.

(Soundbite of "Love Actually")

Ms. SIENNA GUILLORY: (As Jamie's Girlfriend) (Foreign language spoken)

Mr. COLIN FIRTH: (As Jamie): Ah, ah, yes. It's waa, waa, waa.

Ms. GUILLORY: (Foreign language spoken)

Mr. FIRTH: Yeah. Si, crime. Crime. Murder.

Ms. GUILLORY: (Foreign language spoken)

Mr. FIRTH: Scary? Yes, sometimes scary, and sometimes no. Mainly scary how
bad the writing is.

BOGAEV: "Love Actually" marks the directorial debut of Richard Curtis, who
also wrote the screenplay. Curtis' other writing credits include "Notting
Hill," "Four Weddings and a Funeral" and "Bridget Jones's Diary," which also
starred Firth. Author Helen Fielding wanted him for the part. In her novel,
which the film is based on, Bridget develops a crush on Firth, as she watches
him star in the BBC adaptation of "Pride and Prejudice." Firth's character in
"Bridget Jones," Mark Darcy, is an homage to his portrayal of Mr. Darcy in
"Pride and Prejudice." Firth's other films include "The English Patient,"
"Shakespeare in Love", "The Importance of Being Earnest," "Circle of Friends"
and the upcoming "Girl with a Pearl Earring."

Terry spoke with him in 2001.

Let's start with a scene from "Bridget Jones's Diary." Here Bridget has
overheard Mark Darcy making sarcastic comments about her, and she's not happy
about it.

(Soundbite from "Bridget Jones's Diary")

Ms. RENEE ZELLWEGER (Bridget Jones): I mean, you seem to go out of your way
to try to make me feel like a complete idiot every time I see you. And you
really needn't bother. I already feel like an idiot most of the time anyway,
with or without a fireman's pole.

Mr. FIRTH (Mark Darcy): Look, I'm sorry if I've been...

Ms. ZELLWEGER: What?

Mr. FIRTH: I don't think you're an idiot at all. I know there are elements
of the ridiculous about you. Your mother's pretty interesting. And you
really are an appallingly bad public speaker, and you tend to let whatever's
in your head come out of your mouth without much consideration of the
consequences. I realize that when I met you at the turkey curry buffet that I
was unforgivably rude and wearing a reindeer jumper that my mother had given
me the day before. But the thing is--what I'm trying to say, very
inarticulately, is that, in fact, perhaps, despite appearances, I like you
very much.

Ms. ZELLWEGER: Ah, apart from the smoking and the drinking and the vulgar
mother and the verbal diarrhea.

Mr. FIRTH: No. I like you very much just as you are.

TERRY GROSS, host:

Colin Firth, welcome to FRESH AIR. In a lot of your earlier interviews, you
talk about how you really wanted to put Mr. Darcy in "Pride and Prejudice"
behind you. So what was your reaction when Helen Fielding asked you to play a
part that was an homage to your portrayal of Darcy in "Pride and Prejudice,"
thus continuing the whole thing?

Mr. FIRTH: I suppose I did it in the spirit of `if you can't beat them, join
them.' I wasn't strenuously trying to put it behind me. I think this
creates--the impression has been created to some extent. And, you know, I
found that the Darcy tag didn't really touch me unless I was speaking to a
journalist. So it really wasn't something that was disturbing me. If there
was any curse on it at all, I felt somehow, instinctively, that doing this
other thing called Mr. Darcy--I don't know if it was some bizarre, negative
psychology attached to it, but I felt it might take that curse off. And, in
fact, it's been very interesting seeing my name being used--my actual name
being used in articles now, rather than the Darcy name. So I think, at the
moment, to some extent, it seems to have worked.

GROSS: What was your reaction when "The Diary of Bridget Jones" was
published, knowing that the character in the book had a crush on you?

Mr. FIRTH: Well, that's--and you can't not be enormously flattered to
have--to start with, you know, to have made it into fiction--into popular
fiction feels like quite an achievement. In fact, it's one of the biggest
accolades, I think, modern society can accord you is that you have now become,
you know, part of the general canon of popular reference points. And it was
delightful. It didn't happen suddenly because this had been growing as a
diary column for some time. But I was absolutely thrilled; I felt
immortalized.

GROSS: Now "Pride and Prejudice" is set in an earlier century. Your language
and attire are more formal. I'm going to ask you to compare your acting style
in each film; you know, like a literary adaptation vs. a contemporary comedy.
But first, let's hear a scene from "Pride and Prejudice." And in this scene
you first confess your love to the character of Elizabeth Bennet, played by
Jennifer Ehle.

(Soundbite from "Pride and Prejudice")

Mr. FIRTH (Mr. Darcy): In vain, I have struggled. It will not do. My
feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I
admire and love you. In declaring myself thus, I am fully aware that I will
be going expressly against the wishes of my family, my friends and, I hardly
knead out, my own better judgment. The relative situation of our families is
such that any alliance between us must be regarded as a highly reprehensible
connection. Indeed, as a rational man, I cannot but regard it as such myself,
but it cannot be helped. Almost from the earliest moments of our
acquaintance, I have come to feel for you a passionate admiration and regard,
which, despite all my struggles, has overcome every rational objection. And,
I beg you most fervently to relieve my suffering and consent to be my wife.

Ms. JENNIFER EHLE (Elizabeth Bennet): In such cases as these, I believe the
established mode is to express a sense of obligation. I cannot. I have never
desired your good opinion, and you have certainly bestowed it most
unwillingly. I'm sorry to cause pain to anyone, but it was most unconsciously
done and, I hope, will be of short duration.

GROSS: Let me ask you to compare your approach to contemporary romantic
comedy, "Bridget Jones," and dramatic, literary adaptation, "Pride and
Prejudice." You can talk about your physical carriage, your accent, the speed
you speak at. I mean, the speech is so much more formal in "Pride and
Prejudice."

Mr. FIRTH: It is. I think one just somehow instinctively adapts to the
requirements. You can't say, you know, `Can I have a light?' in a formal
Victorian way. You can't say, `Let me--allow me to tell you how ardently I
admire and love you' very easily in--you know, in a kind of Bronx accent or a
cockney accent of the year 2001. So I think, if--you know, as an actor, it's
essential that you're sensitive to language. And I think that the language
actually informs the rest of it. I think that--I certainly find that this is
my starting point. My walk can change because of the way I speak. And the
way I speak will be informed by the rhythms on the page. So it's a process
which happens, I think, without much calculation.

I think--and this is--the "Bridget Jones"-"Pride and Prejudice" case is quite
a singular one, I think, because Mark Darcy, is, in fact, very much a
fugitive, I think, from another century. I mean, he's--I think this is part
of his problem. Mr. Darcy is very much a man of his time. He's isolated by
other factors, but Mark Darcy, I think, is not typical; is not, certainly,
typical of the Englishman of his age that I know. And I think that he comes
from a rather archaic family, and I think that he's someone whose personality
is crippling him, in some way.

GROSS: I'm wondering how the clothes affect you. Like, in "Pride and
Prejudice" you're wearing frilled, high-collared shirts and in "Bridget
Jones," in the first scene that you appear in, your mother just gave you a
really silly sweater with a large moose head on it and, so, you know...

Mr. FIRTH: Yes. They affect you enormously. And I had a bit more of a
challenge, obviously, with Mark Darcy because I had to put on a ridiculous
sweater with a moose head on it and pretend that I was standing in a frilly
shirt and a frock coat. So I couldn't allow that costume to dictate the way I
was holding myself. I had to play against the clothes, in that case, and
therein lay the comic act.

GROSS: Just a question about your most famous scene from "Pride and
Prejudice." It's the famous pond scene. At the end of the story, you take
off your jacket and, with your shirt and pants on, you dive into a pond. And
although it sounds pretty inhibited to dive in with shirt and pants, for your
character, it's a sign of feeling more liberated and expressive. When you
walk out of the pond with your wet clothes clinging to you, you became a
heartthrob. Did you understand that?

Mr. FIRTH: Not really. It was so--that happened as a series of haphazard
decisions. I mean, it was almost an accident, really, that led to the whole
wet-shirt business. And I think probably if anyone had connived at a
phenomenon like that, they would have failed miserably. There was--if I
remember the original script, it was--had it down that Darcy dives in
completely naked. And, you know, I suppose he might well have done that. And
he's on his own property and it's a hot day. And--but the BBC didn't consider
that acceptable. And then there was some talk of underwear. And then the--we
heard that nobody wore underwear in those days. And then I think there was an
attempt to create underwear; the kind of--if they had worn underwear, would
they have looked like this? And I went to be fitted with those and there was
no way on Earth--and I can tell you now, had I worn those, there would have
been no heartthrob, you know, effect.

GROSS: What was this underwear looking like?

Mr. FIRTH: They were kind of knee britches. They--I think they were cotton
or silk. They looked like sailor's pants or something from, you know, pirate.
I can't remember very well, but they came down just below the knee and they...

GROSS: Little pantaloon-y kind of things.

Mr. FIRTH: Yeah. Yeah; not flattering.

GROSS: Uh-huh.

Mr. FIRTH: And so, in the end, I thought, `Well, what's second-most
spontaneous to taking all your clothes off and diving into a pond? I suppose,
really, not taking any of them off, really; you know, maybe just jump in
and--which is, basically, how I tried to play it. The jacket comes off and
the vest comes off, while he just sort of sits there and, you know, thinks for
a minute. And then in he goes. And in no way does anybody think that that is
going to start to--you know, that that's going to become a famously remembered
image.

GROSS: Did it affect your career in a positive way?

Mr. FIRTH: I don't know. I really don't know. It's so hard to quantify
these things. I think it must have done--I think that everything you do, I
suppose, takes you in one direction or another. And I can't see that it would
have been negative.

I do--I suppose I have a inclination--I've always, as an actor, had an
inclination towards playing unhappy people; people who might be considered
society's losers and people who are unattractive. I tend to find that work,
as an actor, far more interesting. And playing Mr. Darcy kind of took me a
little bit further away from that. And I think there was a slight misreading
of what kind of actor I was, as a result of that. I think there was a feeling
that this meant that perhaps I really was a romantic leading man, when I'm
not, actually. I'm a character actor. And I think that's been confused
because I--of this fairly neutral appearance that I have. But it was
interpreted as a leading-man performance, and it wasn't. Mr. Darcy was
absolutely a piece of character work.

GROSS: In two of your romantic comedies you were in fight scenes. In
"Shakespeare in Love" you're the man Gwyneth Paltrow is supposed to marry but
doesn't want to. And you duel with the man she's really in love with. In
"Bridget Jones," you have a fist fight with Hugh Grant, who's your romantic
rival for Bridget's affections. What's the difference, do you think, between
fighting in a comedy and fighting in a drama?

Mr. FIRTH: Usually, comedy is considered, in some ways, a more difficult
form. It's considered the more serious form. Drama; you have to be
disciplined for it. You put all your intensity behind it. You think, you
know, `Kill.' You think whatever. I think these things may be things you
have to work for and are not that easily attained, but they're certainly not
that complicated. I think with comedy they are because you've got to find an
absurdity somewhere in it without looking as if you're trying to be funny. I
think that the minute any comic actor looks as if they're asking for a laugh,
they won't get one. I think that Hugh and I both had a very strong, natural
sense of the absurd. I think it was our own--hopefully, our own self mockery
that produced that fight. We didn't work very hard on it. We just thought
how would we fight? It's embarrassing to admit it, but that's probably
exactly how Hugh Grant and I would fight, if it came to that.

BOGAEV: Colin Firth speaking with Terry Gross. We'll hear more of Terry's
conversation with him after the break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

BOGAEV: If you're just joining us, we're featuring an interview Terry Gross
recorded in 2001 with actor Colin Firth. His film credits include "Four
Weddings and a Funeral," "Shakespeare in Love" and "Bridget Jones's Diary."
He co-stars in the new film "Love Actually."

GROSS: Let me ask you about your coming of age. I know your parents were
both academics. Were they college teachers?

Mr. FIRTH: Yes.

GROSS: And your grandparents were missionaries in India, I believe?

Mr. FIRTH: That's right, yeah.

GROSS: What denomination were they?

Mr. FIRTH: Well, again, I think that changed through the years. My mother's
parents were both Congregationalist ministers. That--I think that's my
grandmother, as well. And she was ordained in the 1930s, when it was not that
conventional in any church. And my father's father, in the end, was an
Anglican minister. He--they both were--well, all three of them, I should say,
belonged to the Church of South India for a while. My maternal grandfather
rebelled against the Church of South India over certain things, and I think
that's when he went Congregationalist. He became a doctor, in fact. I think
he went out there as a church missionary. This is my maternal grandfather,
and at the age of 38, he decided that he would be of better use in that
country as a doctor. So he decided to get medical training. The only country
in the world that would train a man of that age was the United States, so he
took his family to the United States and went through medical school in Iowa
for seven years and then went back to India and set up practice there in
osteopathic medicine.

GROSS: Did your parents practice religion and did you grow up in a religious
household?

Mr. FIRTH: Yes. I think the word `religion' was always treated with a little
bit of caution in my household, but the short answer is definitely yes. My
mother's interest has always been very much in alternative, comparative
religions. She's very pantheistic. She has a lot of mystical interests, and
the subject of her fairly recent PhD was death and bereavement in a Gujarati
community in Southampton, for which she learned Hindi and--but she takes an
enormous interest in a large variety of religions and tends to see merit in
all of them. My father, he keeps it much more close to his chest. I think
it's something very personal to him.

GROSS: So one more thing about religion. When you were growing up, did you
find this kind of cross-cultural exposure to religion interesting or too kooky
for you?

Mr. FIRTH: No. I found it fascinating. I mean, it was there from the start.
It was never kooky to me. In fact, the--I found it much more difficult to
adapt, I think, to a school environment where I was listening to prejudices
against those sorts of things. My first four years of my life were in
Nigeria; not that one remembers a lot about the first four years of one's
life, but it did make an impression on me, not least because the people we'd
known there continued to be in our lives as visitors, and there were
constantly people from India. Both my parents were born and raised in India.
And so there was immense cultural diversity under my own roof throughout my
entire upbringing, and I consider that to be absolutely nothing but a
privilege. And so--and, to me, I suppose, it was the norm. And so I found
any kind of racist remarks or any kind of religious prejudices among my own
peers very, very difficult to take.

GROSS: What brought your parents to Nigeria?

Mr. FIRTH: My father was teaching. He--it was just curiosity. He took an
overseas teaching post in his job as a history teacher in a--I think, a--what
would be the equivalent of a high school.

GROSS: And where else did you live when you were growing up?

Mr. FIRTH: Well, mostly around England after that. We came back and we
traveled around the English provinces. My father took a job in another school
at high school level for three or four years and then in a college. And so
that led to a couple of--two or three moves, I think. And then we were a year
in the United States in St. Louis when I was in junior high and then back to
England. And so most of my upbringing has taken place in England.

GROSS: Junior high is a tough time to change environments because I think
most junior high school students have so many hormones raging out of control
that they don't know what they're doing and often do really inappropriate
things. And it's a tough period. Was it a tough time for you?

Mr. FIRTH: I'd been bumped up a year because the English start school a year
earlier than the Americans. We go into first grade--the equivalent of first
grade when Americans go into kindergarten. So the reasoning was that I should
be put in a class of kids a year older than me. And there was a bit of a
shock attached to that because I was--you know, I was an elementary--you know,
what we call a primary schoolboy. And I found the kids around me at this high
school much, much more sophisticated. So it was a difficult adjustment to
make.

I have to say, though, that some of the teaching I had that year is the best
teaching I've ever had. I still remember very clearly my--particularly my
English teacher and my history teacher, my science teacher. And I've
sometimes looked back over my school years and wonder if I really learned
anything at all, but I do look over that year and, despite the fact that it
was a mixed experience, I think--it's one of the only years I can single out
as having specifically remembered what I learned.

BOGAEV: Actor Colin Firth. He co-stars in the new film, "Love Actually."
We'll hear more of Terry's interview with him in the second half of the show.

I'm Barbara Bogaev, and this is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

BOGAEV: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Barbara Bogaev, in for Terry Gross.

Let's get back to Terry's interview with actor Colin Firth. He's now
co-starring in the film "Love Actually." He also co-starred in "Bridget
Jones's Diary," "Shakespeare in Love," "The English Patient" and "What a Girl
Wants." Firth also writes fiction. One of his stories was included in a
collection edited by the British writer Nick Hornby, whose novel "High
Fidelity" was adapted into a film. Firth starred in the adaptation of
Hornby's earlier novel, "Fever Pitch." He played Paul, an English teacher and
high school soccer coach who is obsessed with soccer, or football, as it's
known in England. For the first time in 18 years, his team, Arsenal, has a
chance to win the football league championship, but it's falling behind. In
this scene, Paul's girlfriend, Sarah, played by Ruth Gemmell, has come to tell
him he didn't get a promotion at the school where they both teach, but Paul is
depressed about the game.

(Soundbite of "Fever Pitch")

Mr. FIRTH: (As Paul) Do you understand what today meant to me? Do you know
how long I've been waiting for this?

Ms. RUTH GEMMELL: (As Sarah) Yes, I do, actually. Eighteen years.

Mr. FIRTH: (As Paul) Yeah, 18 years. Eighteen (censored) years! I've
wanted Arsenal to win the league longer than I've wanted to do anything. And
after that stupid little interview ...(unintelligible) for about two weeks.
Don't you think I'd care about that more?

Ms. GEMMELL: (As Sarah) No. No, no, no. Of course, not. No, I know that
you care more about whether one team scores more than another team at a
football match. You really thought I came here to comfort you about that?

Mr. FIRTH: (As Paul) I did for a moment, yeah. I credited you with some
imagination. I honestly thought you might understand how I was feeling.

Ms. GEMMELL: (As Sarah) Paul, it's only a game.

Mr. FIRTH: (As Paul) Don't say that, please! That is the worst, most stupid
thing anyone could say. But it quite clearly isn't only a game. I'm--I mean,
if it was, do you honestly think I'd care this much? Eh? Eighteen years!
Eighteen years!

Do you know what you wanted 18 years ago? Or 10, or five? Did you want to be
head of year at North London Comprehensive? I doubt it. I doubt if you'd
wanted anything for that long. And if you had, and if you'd spent three
months thinking that finally, finally you were going to get it, and just when
you think it's there, it's taken away from you. I mean, I don't care what it
is--a car, a job, an Oscar, the baby. Then you'd understand how I was feeling
tonight. But there isn't, and you don't. So...

GROSS: You have a short story that is in a collection of short stories edited
by Nick Hornby, who's best known for writing "High Fidelity," and there was a
movie adaptation that was made of that not long ago. You also starred in the
movie adaptation of "Fever Pitch," his story about someone who's just obsessed
with soccer, or football, as it's called in England. I'd like you to read an
excerpt of this story for us. And how old is the character in this story?

Mr. FIRTH: He's 11.

GROSS: And his grandmother is sick and is kind of losing her sense of
orientation, and that's, in large part, what the story's about: his reaction
to seeing this going on around him and watching his parents' reaction to his
grandmother's death. Would you read this excerpt for us?

Mr. FIRTH: `When I got home the next day, Mum and Dad were arguing about
Grandma. Mum was saying that the old lady would exhaust us into the grave and
outlive us all. I couldn't hear what Dad said. Grandma's room was getting
really stinky now. It had always been a bit stinky, but this was more toilety
now. It hadn't been irksome before, but it was now. When I went in, she
suddenly sat up in bed and said, "Where am I?" I said, "You're here in your
room, Grandma." And then she grabbed my arm and she said, "I'm over there.
I'm over there." And she pointed to her photo on the wall of her as a young
girl--Emma, in other words. And I said, "Yes, that's right. That's you."

`And then she pointed to her dressing gown on the back of the door and said,
"There, that's me. There I am." And her hand got tighter on me, which hurt.
Then she started saying my name over and over again, like, "Henry, Henry,
Henry," like that. "Henry, Henry, Henry." And I told her she was hurting me,
but she was shouting really loudly now, and she started saying nutty things,
like, "Put my voice under a walnut tree, Henry, Henry, Henry." That's when
Mum came rushing in, already all red and worked up, going, "Henry, what have
you done?" Then I got free and ran to the door.

`It's funny because then Mum's face changed, and she went over and hugged
Grandma quietly and calmed her down. She rocked her like she was two years
old. When I came out, I saw Dad had been standing at his door listening. He
shut it when he saw me. Later, in my room, Mum did the speech where she had
this patient, wise voice that she always uses for talking bollix, where it's
like, "When you're older, you'll understand that this is not bollix." She
said that Grandma needed me to let go of her, like I had to say goodbye, and
it would be like permission for her to go. I said I could see what she was up
to, and that Mum and Dad and Max and everyone might want her dead, but I
wasn't going to help her with her conspiracy.'

GROSS: Colin Firth, what inspired this story?

Mr. FIRTH: Don't know. I find it very, very difficult to answer any
questions about this. I don't know. I just made it up. Came out of my head.
There must be a better answer to this. It's a very odd thing. My own
grandmother died about two months ago, and for me, you know, to some extent it
was life imitating art rather than the other way around. The story has meant
a great deal to me from the beginning.

GROSS: In this character, your grandmother's a storyteller and tells her
stories all the time, though it's much difficult for her to do it toward the
end of her life.

Mr. FIRTH: Well, I found that interesting, too. I think that, you know, I'm
interested in the idea that, you know, one can have this passion for stories,
and the grandmother, I feel, calls herself his muse at a certain point because
he listens to her stories, and then he recounts these stories to his
schoolmates and earns a certain amount of popularity for that. And I feel
that wherever one draws inspiration, that that is not necessarily going to be
an inexhaustible spring. I think that you've often got to go and look for it
somewhere else, and I think that when the voice of your muse gets scrambled,
what happens then? And I was interested in that because I would often find--I
thought I'd found an answer here. You know, continually throughout my life, I
perhaps have solved the problem, and then you find that, no, you can't
continue using that resolution. You've got to go and find it somewhere else.

And so I found that the whole business of language and of the loss of the use
of clarity of language was very interesting. And I think that the other
element was the relationship between the very old and the very young, and I
think that it's something that's hugely important. Our society probably
doesn't make quite enough of it. We put old people in homes. I think we're
rather afraid of seeing what happens to them. I think we have a very, very
big taboo in Western society about death. I think it's a taboo that's
arguably bigger than sex was to the Victorians.

GROSS: And in the story, though, the boy has a dream just before his
grandmother dies that her dentures are talking; her dentures not in her mouth
are talking. And I know several people who've had death dreams or death
premonitions that had to do with teeth.

Mr. FIRTH: Oh, is that right?

GROSS: Yeah.

Mr. FIRTH: Now that's interesting because this really was just some wacky
thing I made up. So I'd never heard that. So you're telling me that this has
actually come up as a bit of a syndrome?

GROSS: Well, it kind of rang true to me, I'll say that.

Mr. FIRTH: How interesting.

GROSS: Yeah.

Mr. FIRTH: I wonder what that is. I don't know whether--I mean, teeth
are--I don't know. I would hate to even try to analyze it.

GROSS: Right. So you didn't have a grandmother who was dying when you were
young?

Mr. FIRTH: No. No, I am in the extremely fortunate position of having had
all four grandparents alive still at the age--when I was 34. So, you know,
they've all gone now, but I hadn't experienced any death at all in my family
until 34. So one can carry a strange, irrational feeling inside oneself that
nobody ever dies in one's family. Of course, you know, intellectually you're
waiting for it, and you can see people getting older, but until you actually
feel it, there's a sense of immortality. And so it was--again, I say it was
the most enormous blessing in my life that I had these people around me for so
long.

I had--there have been people of my age, friends, who have died for various
reasons, and that experience goes back to childhood. You know, a very close
friend of mine died on a motorcycle when we were both teen-agers, you know.
And so it's been kind of topsy-turvy. I've lost people who are young, but not
so many people who are old.

GROSS: Well, what kind of beliefs about death were you brought up with? You
know, we talked earlier about your parents and grandparents. You had a couple
of grandparents who were missionaries. Your mother you've described as being
more pantheistic, and she wrote a dissertation recently about religion, and
you were exposed to many different religions when you were growing up. What
did your parents tell you about death?

Mr. FIRTH: Well, I think that what I'm--I suppose the views that I'm trying
to expound probably originated there. My father doesn't usually
express philosophy very much in that area. You know, he allows doubts to be
doubts, and I think I would go along with that, really. I don't think I feel
very certain about anything from a philosophical point of view. My mother has
a very strong interest in concepts of the afterlife. Again, I don't think she
has a fixed view, but she has actually done research into the whole business
of, you know, clinical death, the death that takes place on the operating
table where people come back again, where she's interviewed a lot of people
and she's actually published stuff on that.

And so, you know, I have grown up with an awareness of concepts that death is
a transition, that it leads to something else, that it's--I remember being
captivated as a child by the idea of, you know, the analogy of the caterpillar
coming out of the cocoon and becoming a butterfly, and finding out that,
apparently, the ancient Greek word for butterfly was `psyche' and that, you
know, somehow it could be a release. And I do love that idea. And as I said,
I have no certainty. This is not built into a belief or a belief system or a
practice or anything.

GROSS: Or an ideology or anything, huh?

Mr. FIRTH: No, not really. But I do find those issues quite fascinating. I
don't necessarily know that the most important view of death is about that and
how glorious an afterlife might be, but I think that it's the one great
inevitability we all face, and I think that facing it can only be a good
thing.

GROSS: Well, one more thing, and we only have about a minute left. Do you
write a lot? Was this story unusual, or have you been writing?

Mr. FIRTH: Writing's been a hobby of mine for years, and I enjoy it.
Just--as I said, I love storytelling. I read and I like to write and think
things up. I've never had a huge ambition to be published, so it has remained
a kind of hobby. I sometimes exchange stories with friends. I have a couple
of friends who also write a little bit. And it's often been just to, you
know, appeal to somebody's sense of humor as much as anything else. But, yes,
I did.

GROSS: And Nick Hornby knew that you wrote?

Mr. FIRTH: Yes. He was encouraging me to do it. He wanted me to--for quite
some time, actually, he'd been just giving me a little nudge every so often in
the belief that I could come up with something worth publishing. So I owe him
a great debt, actually, for making me finally actually put that into action.

GROSS: Well, Colin Firth, thank you so much for talking with us.

Mr. FIRTH: Thank you. It's been a great pleasure.

BOGAEV: Colin Firth co-stars in the new film "Love Actually" and the upcoming
film adaptation of "Girl With a Pearl Earring."

Coming up, a review of Paul Westerberg's new solo CD. This is FRESH AIR.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Review: Album "Come Feel Me Tremble" by Paul Westerberg
BARBARA BOGAEV, host:

Paul Westerberg led one of the most beloved rock bands of the '80s, The
Replacements, specializing in loose, raucous music that, among other things,
chronicled the dissolute ways of its leader. Westerberg spent the '90s
releasing occasional solo albums, but never, says rock critic Ken Tucker, one
as good as his new one, called "Come Feel Me Tremble."

(Soundbite of song)

Mr. PAUL WESTERBERG: (Singing) I'm a dirty diesel, thumping down the line.
Hear my whistle blowing and my engine whi-ine.

KEN TUCKER reporting:

`I used to be a bad boy,' howls Paul Westerberg on the song that opens "Come
Feel Me Tremble." Later on in another tune he yelps, `I'm wild and lethal,'
and then he adds a brag that sounds sweetly defensive: `I'm a mile deep,
though,' he insists. You'd think that after all the love, loyalty and
obsessiveness that Westerberg's band The Replacements has inspired, he'd be
beyond petty bragging and boasting. But it's this tough-but-sensitive side
that only furthers Westerberg's appeal and his mystique.

(Soundbite of song)

Mr. WESTERBERG: (Singing) Gonna get higher, that hillbilly junk. Gonna get
higher, that hillbilly junk. Gonna get tired of that hillbilly junk,
hillbilly punk, oh, no, no. One, two, three, take another ...(unintelligible)
Three, five, six ...(unintelligible). Gonna get higher...

TUCKER: Westerberg has had some public tussles with substances abused, so
some may wince at hearing him so lustily sing the praises of, quote,
"hillbilly junk." On another tune, he sings that he's, quote, "drinking
again," a song that starts off jauntily but peaks to ferocious self-criticism.
But it's a measure of his artistic health that he plays every instrument on
this album and still manages to sound like a one-man version of his '70s
touchstones, The Faces and that era's Rolling Stones.

(Soundbite of song)

Mr. WESTERBERG: I'm drinking once again, just to make the pills kick in.
I'm drinking once again, there ain't no doubt. Mmm. You better look out.
Drinking once again. I want to scream and shout, want to let the bad guys win
and let them out.

(Soundbite of song)

Mr. WESTERBERG: (Singing) ...(Unintelligible) knock, knockin 'em back,
knock, knockin' 'em back.

(Soundbite of song)

Mr. WESTERBERG: (Singing) Drinking once again, just to make ends...

TUCKER: Westerberg includes two versions of a song called "Crackle & Drag"
about the poet Sylvia Plath, coming up with poetic images of his own regarding
Plath's suicide. He imagines her placing a towel like a pillow for her face
as she lays her cheek down in the kitchen oven and turns on the gas. Death
also haunts the driving "Pine Box," about the demise of Westerberg's
grandfather, with its blunt, angry words about fluids in the lungs and the
ice-cold disinterest of an HMO.

(Soundbite of "Pine Box")

Mr. WESTERBERG: (Singing) Never ever call ...(unintelligible). Never ever
call ...(unintelligible). Man, I could tell by the ...(unintelligible) ...in
a pine box ...(unintelligible).

TUCKER: As one-man shows go, "Come Feel Me Tremble" is pretty wonderful:
passionate, scary and really catchy. If you don't feel Westerberg's
trembling, it may be because he's left you trembling yourself.

BOGAEV: Ken Tucker is critic at large for Entertainment Weekly.

(Soundbite of song)

Mr. WESTERBERG: (Singing) I want to breathe some new life into me, and you
know you're mine. When we were young, we'd never play. I didn't speak when
we'd only run where we felt safe. Come on and meet me down...

BOGAEV: Coming up, Russell Crowe on the high seas. This is FRESH AIR.

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Review: New Peter Weir film "Master and Commander"
BARBARA BOGAEV, host:

Peter Weir's latest film is a big-budget adaptation of Patrick O'Brian's
hugely popular 19th-century naval adventure series. "Master and Commander:
The Far Side of the World" stars Russell Crowe as Captain Jack Aubrey and Paul
Bettany as his friend and sometimes foil. David Edelstein has this review.

DAVID EDELSTEIN reporting:

The mood could hardly be more right for Peter Weir's "Master and Commander:
The Far Side of the World." It's a warship saga. It's rousing, it's
beautifully crafted, and it dispenses with so many of those modern pesky
questions about ulterior motives and civil liberties and recalcitrant
indigenous populations. Oh, to be in England, when the seas were high and the
enemy was the plundering French.

It's 1803 on the HMS Surprise, and Captain Jack Aubrey, played by a manly
Russell Crowe, is awakened by an officer who might have glimpsed a fearsome
French frigate through a fog bank. Before we see Crowe's face, we see his
boots, his epaulets, his belt buckle being snapped. Then he strides onto the
deck and peers into the fog, as stalwart a captain as any in Christendom, and
his crew knows it, too, every man Jack. We see the flash of a distant cannon
before we hear the sound, and Aubrey yells `Down!' as the ball rips through
the mizzenmast. He says, `Lay me alongside at pistol range,' and `Hold
steady, boys. Courage, now.'

And I tell you, I was with him. And, I daresay, so will you be, every man
Jack and woman Jack and little kid Jack. Weir has loosely adapted the 10th
book of the 20-part adventure series by the late Patrick O'Brian, which
friends of mine have been rhapsodizing over for the last decade. At their
prodding, I managed to get through the first volume and portions of another,
but all I seem to remember are whole pages about knots. And with my
landlubber's impatience, I had a hard time keeping hold of the narrative.

But, God's my life, I enjoyed that 19th-century seafaring patois, and so must
have Peter Weir. He and his co-screenwriter, John Collee, have kept O'Brian's
relish for antiquated English naval talk and his positive fetish for nautical
bric-a-brac. But the storytelling is now lean and shapely. It hooks you from
opening salvo to closing punch line. That salvo came from a newfangled French
supership called the Acheron, and the whole of "Master and Commander" consists
of Aubrey's Surprise alternately running away from the thing or chasing it
around Cape Horn to keep it from sinking more of His Majesty's ships.

Captain Aubrey, nicknamed `Lucky Jack,' is both lost in admiration for the
phantom French captain and nettled by the way in which the Surprise is being
constantly surprised. He says he'll go to the ends of the Earth to stop the
Acheron, and the lone check on his authority is his pal, the ship's doctor,
Stephen Maturin, played by the charismatic English actor Paul Bettany, who was
Crowe's imaginary friend in "A Beautiful Mind," but here functions as a voice
of humanist realism.

(Soundbite of "Master and Commander")

Mr. PAUL BETTANY: (As Stephen Maturin) As a friend, I would say that I have
never once doubted your abilities as a captain.

Mr. RUSSELL CROWE: (As Captain Jack Aubrey) Speak plainly, sir.

Mr. BETTANY: Perhaps we should have turned back weeks ago. The men--of
course, they would follow Lucky Jack anywhere, rightfully confident of
victory, but therein lies the problem. You're not accustomed to defeat, and
chasing this larger, faster ship with its long guns is beginning to smack of
pride.

Mr. CROWE: It's not a question of pride or anything like it. It's a question
of duty.

Mr. BETTANY: Duty?

Mr. CROWE: Right.

Mr. BETTANY: Yes, I believe I've heard it once spoken of.

Mr. CROWE: Well, you can be as satiric as you like. Viewing the world
through your microscope is your prerogative. This is a ship of war, and I
will grind whatever grist the mill requires in order to fulfill my duty.

Mr. BETTANY: Whatever the cost?

Mr. CROWE: Whatever the cost.

EDELSTEIN: That conversation leads you to believe that Aubrey is becoming an
Ahab, but he's really only mildly obsessed. These are very rational men. The
mature Dr. Maturin is a naturalist, who longs to linger in the Gallapagos to
explore, pre-Darwin, the origin of species. And while Aubrey is a
king-and-country authoritarian who counsels an unpopular officer against being
a friend to the crew, he also cautions against being a tyrant. TV audiences
will recognize these exceedingly moderate foils, who argue while they saw away
on a cello and a violin, from various incarnations of "Star Trek,"
particularly "The Next Generation." And the Trekkie in all of us will respond
to the lickety-split exchanges of damage reports and tactics, and most of all,
to the spirit of wonder on an Earth that, in the 19th century, must have
seemed as vast and unknowable as the galaxy does today.

"Master and Commander" is a great escape, but it lacks that extra measure of
uncertainty that has crept into modern tales of war and into our present
military dilemma. We grieve for the men who fall, but never doubt that this
war, or any war endorsed by elites like Aubrey and Maturin, is necessary, or,
as Aubrey puns, watching maggots on a plate of food, `the lesser of two
weevils.'

BOGAEV: David Edelstein is film critic for the online magazine Slate.

(Credits)

BOGAEV: For Terry Gross, I'm Barbara Bogaev.
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