Colin interviewed on the set:
Firth hops around between takes: he is the picture of an uncomplicated Englishman of the late thirties. Firth places great store on the contrasting powers of light and dark. It takes time to see that Clifton is yet another of those particular Firth character roles - the man whose conventional shell belies the violence of his emotions. Clifton, the jolly explorer, holds his secrets - that he works for British intelligence and is capable of murderous passion.

Americans on the set miss the contradictions in Firth. They take him at face value; they call him a "nice young man."

His face is oddly neutral most of the time - it is his eyes which give meaning to the dark, flat voice and much of the time, he holds them away. What he withholds in conversation becomes, in time, as revealing as what he withholds when he acts. In this interview, each moment of letting go is followed by a day of withdrawal in which he pulls back, as distant as if we had never met. "If my confidence was challenged" he says later, "I'd withdraw."

He is not difficult to be with - not moody or hostile, as some actors are. He simply measures himself out very carefully, weighing all confidences. It is a question of waiting, of listening to the spaces between words, and then making connections. In the end, we talk for hours. Slowly, his voice becomes richer, the hands more graceful and expressive. It becomes clear that he cannot explain, even to himself, the contradictions and polarities in his life. [The Guardian, February 10, 1996. Read the full article by clicking here] [Picture based on a pic in Chaplin, 2/1997.]