The International Express (Australian version), Dec 26, 2000."Forever Darcy", by James Rampton

Forever Darcy Colin Firth knows he's synonymous with Austen's brooding hero - but please don't call him heart-throb. By James Rampton

    When Colin Firth, in Pride and Prejudice, emerged from the lake with his dripping-wet shirt and breeches sculpted on to his body, it sparked such an outbreak of " Darcymania" that politicians were moved to discuss the phenomenon on BBC1's Question Time. Bridget Jones got several chapters' worth of drooling out of it, and salivating websites with such titles as Firth Frenzy! (you're famous Carrie - Jane) sprung up. The drama proved especially popular with the, er, more mature viewer.

    Even now, some five-and-a-half years after the series was first broadcast on BBC1, if you ask any woman of a certain age about what Firth self-mockingly calls "the D-word", you are liable to induce a Jane Austen-type swooning fit.

    Imagine what the furore would have been like if, as had originally been intended, Darcy had come out of the lake wearing nothing but a furrowed brow. "That was initially supposed to be a nude scene, " Firth reveals, "but the BBC don't allow pre-watershed nudity, so I had to go into the lake clothed - hence the wet shirt." And hence millions of viewers sighing " be still my beating heart".

    So is Firth just Darcy by another name? Is the actor a strong but silent type - only with better sideburns and drier clothes? Well, I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings, but it is my duty to announce that Firth is nothing like the solemn, po-faced hero of Austen's novel.

    For a start, he appears for our interview in a central London hotel dressed down in a grey t-shirt and tousled hair - far from the immaculately turned out aristocrat of popular legend. To underline the point, Firth tells a self-effacing story about the making of Nick Hornby's Fever Pitch, in which he played Paul, a dishevelled Arsenal fan.

    "Paul's clothes were all out of date and, I'm ashamed to say, they were mine. The costume designers searched high and low for unfashionable clothes - and the only place they could be found was in my wardrobe".

    Firth is warm, articulate and - here's the big surprise for Darcyophiles - has a wicked sense of humour. "I'm not just a stiff upper lipped chinless wonder," he says with a laugh. "I've always followed the advice of the jazz musician Miles Davis - "Don't play what you know. Play what you don't know." That could be the watch word of my career. You try not to go over secure ground all the time - you try to go somewhere which makes you nervous, embarrassed and confused."

    If you don't believe him, just take a quick glance at his post Pride and Prejudice CV. He has played parts as varied as Gwyneth Patrow's unpleasant fiance in Shakespeare in Love, Kristen Scott Thomas's dim witted and cuckolded husband in the English Patient, and Julie Andrew's outrageously camp confidant in Relative Values. There's not a Darcy-alike in the lot of them.

    Now Firth is once again overturning expectations and demonstrating his versatility by playing a charismatic, if dotty, idealist in the BBC film Donovan Quick. In this touching comic update of the Don Quixote story, Quick's a mysterious figure who decides to launch a one man bus company when a ruthless multi-national firm called Windmill axes the daily service that his disabled friend Sandy (David Brown) needs to get to his day centre. Panicked when Quick's service proves hugely popular, Windmill lay on 16 buses with a 10p flat fare in a cynical attempt to force him out of business.

    Firth thinks the film will resonate because we all have a touch of the Donovan Quick's about us. "Like most powerful myths, it's universal," he says. "What I find particularly moving is something Donovan will never understand - the way his example inspires others long after he's departed.

    "And who is poorer? The man who plods through life making a little bit of money for himself and who has never seen anything outside his own environment, or the man who thinks he's on a great mission? There is something glorious about noble failure. I can't imagine anyone not having affection for the figure of Donovan. He's never going to get the girl, he's never going to defeat the dragon, but he's going to keep going anyway. Is there a better way to describe the human condition."

    For all that, it is inevitable the hero from Pride and Prejudice with which the actor is still most strongly associated. So much so that he has sportingly agreed to play a character called Darcy in the forthcoming film version of the best selling Bridget Jones' Diary.

    "I was delighted when Bridget first started obsessing about Darcy in her diary," Firth says "for any actor to make an impact like that is fantastic. Still, I did think hard before accepting the part in the film, but in the end my sense of humour kicked in and I felt it was a positive move."

    Nevertheless, wasn't Firth worried that people might think he was going over old ground. "No, because this Darcy is not the same character at all. He's a 20th century lawyer and has an entirely different style of speaking. " Also, Austen's Darcy would not have stayed for one second in the same room as Bridget Jones. If he thought the Bennet sisters were vulgar, imagine what he would think of a smoking, short-skirted, falling-down-drunk woman like Bridget. He'd be absolutely horrified by her. Throughout the film, I kept a wry eye on the original Darcy and just had fun with the whole thing."

    The irony is that Firth nearly didn't take the career-defining part in Pride and Prejudice at all. "I said no to it initially". He recalls. "I harboured doubts to begin with because I felt he was just too iconic to be played convincingly. Also, a part of me thought I was wrong for the part, and there was a large lobby among my friends who agreed. One said, 'Please, please, please don't play Darcy. You'll ruin it for me forever.' Another said; 'Darcy? Isnt he supposed to be sexy?'".

    The producer of Pride and prejudice eventually talked Firth round, and as we know, his Darcy turned out to be impossibly sexy. Even so, the intensity of the reaction to the role took the actor by surprise: "I'd been doing this job for quite a number of years and things had never gone potty like this before. I was delighted, but nervous. What could I say in response to it other than a rather limp 'gosh'? And how could I answer questions such as, what's it like to be heart-throb? "Well I wake up and have a full heart-throb breakfast. Then I walk down the street making hearts throb all over the place."

    The thing Firth found hardest to deal with was people's expectations that he would be some god-like figure in real life. "Until I played that part, I was never aware of disappointing anyone with my presence. In 35 years, I had never seen anyone's face fall when they met me. If anything, that's the answer to the question 'What's it like to be a heart-throb?' You're a walking disappointment. There is no possibility of living up to a character who has that kind of grandeur."

    Firth, who has never been out of work in the past 20 years, has no fewer than three films due out in the spring (Bridget Jones' Diary, Londinium and Meeting at Wannsee). In addition, he is happily married to the Italian film maker Livia Giuggioli, a woman who Hornby calls "Joke perfect: PhD, beautiful in that sultry Italian way, funny and vivacious".

    The actor, who turned 40 this September, is clearly content with his lot. The only thing that bugs him is the attention that comes with his profile. "There is nothing pleasurable about being recognised" he sighs. "I can't see why anybody would hanker after that. Traditionally, the vulgar aspirations of an actor are wealth and fame. Wealth, I can understand. Fame, I am less sure about.

    "There are times when you go out and you really don't want any attention at all - like if you haven't washed your hair. People's antennae always seem to be out for those in the spotlight, but I'm glad to say they don't always know who I am. For instance, I was having a quiet meal in a restaurant when someone came up to our table. I thought, 'Here we go', but what he said was "I'm sorry, but I have to ask you. Aren't you that Owen Teale?" Firth laughs heartily about being mistaken for another actor.

    "All in all, I can't complain," he concludes with a wry smile. "I'm not mobbed on the streets. Which is just as well because most of my fans are very old ladies."