An Actor’s Actor – Colin Firth is A Single Man

By Bill Biss

 

 

Colin Firth: I watched a very beautiful film about Chris and Don. I watched it twice. The film was called Chris & Don: A Love Story. I don’t know if it helped me. It was of interest to me. Whenever I embark on a project, it’s an opportunity to plunge into a particular world, a different perception, to learn about a time and a place that I didn’t know much about.

 

You know…love is love. I don’t really feel that there is anything different to play because the partner happens to be male. The person I’ll be playing opposite is unlikely to be my lover anyway. So, it’s the job description. These emotions, you find them from somewhere. It’s the job.

 

I think one of the things I appreciate greatly about Isherwood’s writing is that he doesn’t make the sexuality a salient feature, sexual love is part of it but he was writing at a time when there were a lot of writers covering that up. There’s no question about it. Terrance Rattigan was writing relationships that were clearly about relationships between men, which he had to disguise as relationships between a man and a woman.

 

Isherwood didn’t feel the need to do that. His characters just happened to be gay. They’re not…I don’t really define myself by my sexuality either. I think it’s one of the things that “George” is not struggling with (laughter) is his sexuality. He’s struggling with a lot of things but he’s not struggling with being gay or not. I think he’s fairly happy with who he is in that respect.

CF: He has a great gift. You know, he’s never made a film before but it didn’t feel like working with a man who was a novice…at all. There were a couple of little pieces of film parlance that he was unfamiliar with, but it didn’t seem to matter. He would just add them to his vocabulary and carry on. People treated him with the utmost respect. There was such a strong sense that he could be trusted in terms of his taste and his judgment that it actually relaxed people.

 

A film set can be a very neurotic place. It can be rampant with insecurity. People are frightened of falling short, frightened of failure, frightened of miscommunication…there are all kinds of complications. A good director smoothes that out and unites the set creating a unity of vision which everybody wants to fulfill.

 

He has that gift and I think he’s learned that over many, many years working in fashion. He’s always felt that fashion has something to say. It may not be a very popular thing to hear…even if it’s “I must make this woman wear this dress!” and he has to get that across in a few seconds on the runway, you’re still using your creativity and sharing a vision and you’re still working towards an impact. This time, it’s narrative drama and it’s something very different for him.

 

It was very clear to me that this was not a vanity project. Just his choice of material indicated to me that this was not just a chance for him to show off his spring collection. Yes, the clothes are beautiful and it’s wonderfully designed but it’s very, very much at the service of the story.

CF: As far as I was concerned, the way “George” dresses so fastidiously is a sign of his desperation actually. It’s very clear at the beginning of the film that it takes a lot of time to become “George.” You get the feeling that if he took off his cufflinks, he’d fall apart. That he’s actually getting his body on wrong that he’s hanging on by his fingernails. It’s only his exterior world that he has any control over, that is ordered because inside, it’s all a mess.

 

To me, that was the purpose of the costumes. It wasn’t to have a great silhouette because you’re in a Tom Ford film.

CF: It was the same to do with that…the house told me about him, the bedroom, the way everything was designed. I walk into Charlie’s (Julianne Moore) house and you understand a lot about her with all that pink, orange and gold. He didn’t give us a lot of verbal instructions so a lot of the film was things being explained to us through the senses.

 

CF: I love a scene without dialogue. When you first get a script…a blank page is a blank page, so you’re not sure what that is going to be. But, you know that is going to come from the sensibility of your director or whatever he’s going to allow you to do. One of the most depressing things I think that can happen for an actor is when the material is terribly coherent and arrogant and you feel inspired by it and you don’t want to go through a series of hugely demonstrative gestures.

 

Particularly when you believe in the power of just thinking things onto the screen. I love that kind of cinema, where people like [Ingmar] Bergman can spend a very long time on someone’s face. For me, that’s the most interesting thing you can find in cinema is the human face. There’s a lot of beauty in cinema but the thing that interests me most is that. Sometimes a director tries to get a certain effect in a shot but Tom just let you do things.

 

The script was clear to me. By the time we were there and by the time I saw the way he set things up, it was eloquent already. We were free. Everybody in the film seems to be at the top of his or her game.

CF: When I close my eyes and think of the film, I tend to see Nic Hoult’s face looking back at me. It’s very hard to forget the eyes. I remember doing the film more than I remember seeing it. I see it looking back at me if you see what I mean. There is something very truthful and “in the moment” about what everybody was doing. The people I was watching. I’d never had such an easy time of it, as when I was working with Julianne [Moore]. That relationship felt real to me.

 

I wasn’t sure about it on the page but the minute I met her, it was there. It’s exactly the same with Matthew [Goode] and that scene on the sofa. There are moments of familiarity. If all of those things are happening…it’s got to be something to do with your director. He’s cultivated an atmosphere where he’s not going to fuss around.

 

He’s going to let people connect with each other or if there’s nobody else around (there wasn’t at times in my case) let your imagination take hold and just go.

 

CF: The sexuality is there because part of the love he experiences is sexual. There’s sex running all the way through the movie, which I think is strengthened by the fact we don’t end up seeing anybody humping. It’s great. We don’t need to go into the territory of body functions. What’s interesting about sex is its implications, the barriers that are broken down on the way to it, all these sorts of things are there in the film.

 

The possibilities of it…the ambiguity, the relationship with Kenny [Nicholas Hoult], how sexual is it? Does Kenny have sexual feelings? The fact that it’s forbidden. The fact that George’s homosexuality in 1962, might add to his isolation. His speech on fear to his students is definitely referencing that. I don’t think it’s dependent on it. Because the character is not taking this on as an “issue,” it’s not his war with his sexuality or the war on prejudice…it’s not the salient feature of the film. I think the fact that he is comfortably open about the fact that he is gay is definitely significant. Otherwise, why bother to feature it at all?

 

Tom [Ford] said recently that he doesn’t define himself by his sexuality. As I said before, it is about love, it’s about regret, and it’s about losing your love of life. What I like about it is it’s absolutely, unashamedly and unassumingly there. I think that if more of a feature were made of it, then it would seem as if I was struggling with it or had something to prove. This is homosexuality simply as sexuality just like any other sexuality.