DIRECTOR: Hugh Hudson (Chariots of Fire, Graystroke)

SCREENWRITER: Simon Donalds, based on the veteran British TV chief Sir Denis Forman's childhood memoirs "Son of Adam", 1990

MUSIC: Howard Blake [Great! Blake is one of my favourite film music composers. He also did the music for Colin's film A Month in the Country]

PRODUCER: Steve Norris and David Puttnam [Chariots of Fire, The Mission and The Killing Fields] / Enigma Productions, for Miramax and the Scottish Arts Council National Lottery Fund

EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS: Harvey Weinstein, Bob Weinstein, Paul Webster

PRINCIPAL CAST: Colin Firth [Edward Pettigrew], Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio [Moira Pettigrew], Rosemary Harris [Gamma], Irène Jacob [Heloise], Malcolm McDowell [Uncle Morris], Robert Norman [Fraser], Tcheky Karyo [Gabriel Chenoux], Kelly MacDonald [Elspeth], Roddy McDonald [Rollo], Daniel Baird [Finlay], Jennifer Fergie [Brenda], Kirsten Smith [Meg], Sean Scanlan [Andrew Burns]. Moray Hunter [Jim Skelly] et al

Filming took place at Ardkinglass House on the banks of Loch Fyne, at Loch Eck, Argyll and other places in Scotland 1997 [Shooting period: 21/04-30/06]

ABOUT THE FILM: In My Life so Far, Colin Firth plays an anti-hero, an eccentric gentleman who comes close to betraying his wife through his lust for another woman.... Though Colin's Edward has his flaws, albeit the sort of blemishes that any red-blooded Scot might be expected to possess, his is the sort of dad we all wish we'd had.

My Life so Far tells the story of a exquisitely eccentric Scottish upper middle class family, seen through the eyes of an adventurous ten-year old; Fraser Pettigrew. In this period of time - the late 1920s and early 1930s - there were rumblings of war in Europe, but the Pettigrews were still living in their own little joyous world in the misty Scottish Highlands.

Though the child and animal-filled grand loch-side estate is kept remotely sane by both Fraser's domineering Gamma and beautiful mother Moira, it is spiritually headed by Fraser's madcap father Edward [Colin Firth], a Beethoven lover, rebel, moralist, brilliant inventor, charmer, philanderer and living contradiction.

To others, Edward is a crackpot, but to Fraser, who adores his irrepressibly romantic father, Edward is a force beyond comprehension. Life with father on the estate is a fairy tale, a series of one remarkable occurrence after another, filled with ingenious contraptions and amazing figments of the imagination. Then, reality strikes in the person of Uncle Morris, the sole heir to Gamma's estate and a hard-nosed businessman who has had his fill of Edward's harebrained schemes and moss factory. Morris brings with him to Harewood an enchanting outsider: his alluring French fiancee Heloise who will alter the family's relations and fate forever.

Everyone falls madly in love with Heloise, including Fraser. But as the fearless Fraser watches the way Heloise takes Harewood by storm, he begins to see the world - and his incorrigibly boyish father - through newly adult eyes.

From filming in Scotland:
Colin Firth, clad in striped one-piece 1920s-style swimsuit, runs along the lake shore to a small wooden jetty with three young boys, white towels 'round their waists, in pursuit. Firth jumps into the bitterly chill water (estimated temperature 4-degrees Celsius), but the boys skid to a halt at the jetty's end. Teeth chattering and breathless with cold, he vainly urges them to join him.

When he emerges from the freezing lake to a hearty round of applause from director Hugh Hudson and his crew. "You've earned your money today, Colin," says one.

Firth nods mutely. He's been hearing about this scene all day in series of jokes from crew members. It's not only that Firth would have to brave the bitter cold of the icy loch; the other source of mirth is that he became a major name in Britain partly as result of another scene in which he got soaked... [The Los Angeles Times, August 10, 1997]

This is how this scene is described in Denis Forman's autobiography Son of Adam : My father was a very clean man. /.../ His spotless record of cleanliness was all the more odd because he never took a hot bath, believing as he did it destroyed the thin film of body oils that lubricated and kept wholesome the surface of the skin. Instead, each morning he would run three hundred yards down to the loch with two or three shivering boys at his heels, cast off his towelling and plunge into the water stark naked.
[Pictures on these pages courtesy of Miramax. Snappies by Dolores.]

a bonnie good show!
Film review from EOnline /Moviefinder, July 1999:
So Far, so good. Charming and funny true-life memoir of a lad (Norman) growing up in the 1920s at his family's baronial manor in the Scottish highlands. Norman's dad (Firth) is an inventor and as eccentric as they come. His million-dollar idea is to harvest peat moss found on the estate for use in stanching bloody wounds. Mumsy Mastrantonio and grandmother Harris tend to more practical household matters. The fine family balance is upset when rich Uncle Morris (McDowell) and his hubba-hubba fiancée Heloise (Jacob) drop in for a visit. Although a trifle slow in spots, the ensemble cast is way above par. That, and magnificent on-location camerawork, make for a bonnie good show!