Here is a brief overview of his career, as I see it. Reviews of some of his films can be found at my Film Reviews page, or follow the links in the text to comments on specific films.
WHAT FOLLOWS IS VERY MUCH A WORK IN PROGRESS - MORE TO COME!
Colin Firth is an actor who has achieved his greatest fame to date through the role of Mr Darcy in BBC TV'sPride and Prejudice (1995). He attributes his substantial fame from this role to the character, rather than to any specific achievement on his part. As he says, Darcy has been a 'sex symbol' for over 200 years. Even so, there is something about Firth's chemistry in the role that brought trembling sighs to the bosoms of ladies of all ages throughout the world.
He has had a comparatively low-key but artistically rewarding career since his first film role in 1983 - as Tommy Judd in Another Country . This role was particularly notable because Firth had previously played the role of Guy Bennett in the London West End production of the play by Julian Mitchell. As far as I know, he is the only actor to have played both principal roles. This is a credit to his skills as an actor, since they are very different characters - Judd the earnest young Marxist, and Bennett the "butterfly". 
Although early subsequent career moves were possibly misguided - his advisers tried to create him an image as a young romantic lead in the less than rivetting Camille (1983), he was soon back on track with what was to be his early trademark. This was a succession of roles (often set in the past) in which he was cast as a naive young man thrust into the world to learn about life and love. This phase is epitomised by films such as Dutch Girls (LWT 1984), in which he played (at the age of 23) 17 year old Neil Truelove, trembling on the brink of manhood, with a dewy-eyed innocence and the feeling that his voice might have only broken recently. Truelove is a well-observed mixture of repressed sexuality, anxiety to conform, and secret rebellion - he cheats in order to win a place on the school hockey team, and there is a nice moment when he thinks he has been caught smoking cigarettes in the bedroom of his Dutch hosts' home.
The character type was even more clearly delineated in Lost Empires (1986), an expensive seven-part series for Granada TV.
Here, Firth played the central character, Richard Herncastle, a young and inexperienced Yorkshire lad for whom fate and circumstance combine to send him, in 1913, on a tour of British music halls and theatres as part of his uncle Nick's magic act, "Ganga Dun". Richard rarely gives anything away - he observes the world, keeping his countenace, but sharing his opinions with the viewer in voice-over narrative. The consequence is that, in some respects, Richard just acts as a cipher for our views of the colourful music hall artistes with whom his life is soon inextricably entangled. A further problem is that Richard actually wants to be a painter, and it is hard to show his skill in this arena, other than the odd scene in which he is shown staring at a landscape with a paintbrush in one hand and a half-finished canvas before him. This somewhat static art form contrasts with the liveliness of Tommy Beamish's comedy act, or Ganga Dun's hokey but classy magic involving disappearing girls, dwarfs, a lot of parading about and looking moody in fake oriental garb and heavy makeup, and - eventually - a featured role for young Richard as the man who disappears from his bicycle.
Clearly determined to give himself rich and rewarding challenges as an actor, Firth took on two contrasting roles that won him praise. A Month in the Country continued the cycle of tormented young men in period settings that were becoming his speciality, but stretched him as a an actor. Tom Birkin was a young man shattered by his experiences in the trenches during World War One, and riding out a disastrous marriage. He comes to the village of Oxgodby to hide, and try to repair the damage to his mind and soul, whilst restoring a mural in the local church. He followed this role with another tortured soul, Adrian Le Duc in Apartment Zero, a story by turns funny and chilling, set in a claustrophobic apartment building in Argentina. Adrian has repressed homosexual tendencies, and an inability to communicate. His life revolves around the old movies he screens in his ill-attended cinema club, he is a social misfit. Even the act of walking down the street is a challenge for Adrian - inevitably, he steps in dog shit, and Firth plays the moment with finesse to demonstrate both the world against Adrian and his humilation at the event.
Colin Firth seemed to have established himself in parts calling for an actor who could play younger than himself (he retained a dewy, youthful look well into his late 20s), shy, sensitive, reserved, usually a virgin and naive to the ways of the world. He broke this mould with an award-winning performance in the BBC's Tumbledown (1987), in which he played real-life Falkland War hero Robert Lawrence. Whilst still playing a man several years younger than himself, he created a character who rejoiced in battle, who could yell and drink and fight and swear with the best of them, and who overcame horrific injuries to lead a "normal" life. Firth richly deserved the wide praise he received for his portrayal of Lawrence, which never descended into sentimentality, and yet kept the viewer rivetted on his determined battle for health and independance. 
Then came the role that should have made his career. Oscar-winning director Milos Forman (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Amadeus ) cast him as the lead in Valmont (1988). It should have established Firth as a major contender for Hollywood stardom. It was a big budget film with excellent production values, very much in the lavish mould of Amadeus. Firth was chosen for the role at the end of a long casting process that seemed to have auditioned every youngish male actor on two continents - Richard E. Grant and David Duchovny were considered for the role at different stages. As played by Colin Firth, Valmont is (on the surface at least) a charmer who loves women of all ages, and has an insatiable sexual appetite. He also looked remarkably fine in the range of 18th century finery he was called upon to wear. Quite incidentally, he took his first fully-clothed plunge in this role, in a scene in which he tries to seduce the virtuous Madame de Tourvel (Meg Tilly). The "pond plunge" scene as Darcy in Pride and Prejudice would linger in the memory of women all around the world, and would lead to Firth's frustration as it seemed to be the only thing considered as worth mentioning when journalists sought to define his appeal.
Although Valmont may have had limited success with Madame de Tourvel, it is a matter of record that Colin Firth and Meg Tilly fell in love and lived together for the next five years, producing a son, Will. Firth virtually gave up his serious career aspirations at this time, and films he completed are of lesser quality. He now chooses to disown Playmaker, which it would be hard to defend as high art, and in which one can sense his embarassment as a performer.
THE COMMENTS ON THIS PAGE, AND THE LINKS FROM THIS PAGE, WILL BE SIGNIFICANTLY EXTENDED, WHEN I HAVE SOME TIME TO GET AROUND TO IT!
A number of pix on this page courtesy Friends of Firth web page
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© 1997 lisaw@deepsouth.co.nz
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