Colin Firth: Good morning!
Foxy: An ongoing subject we've had this morning of... about great,
sort of, movie and TV characters and, obviously, Mr Darcy has come up as such a romantic character...
I can't believe it was nineteen years ago.
CF: Yeah, I can believe it, actually...
Foxy: Can you? CF: Yeah...
Foxy: We've done a lot since.
CF: I mean, it does feel like a long time ago. Foxy: We've done an awful lot since!
And probably, I should think, the thing that really launched you, worldwide!
CF: Well, I feel... I don't know, I can't measure those things.
I kept thinking, I've been launched and then something would happen
and everyone would say he's been launched
and it's as if what had come before had never happened.
So, that's happened episodically,
which is probably a good thing, really: get a re-launch every so often.
Foxy: Well, other people enjoy making the movies and, obviously, that's, you know,
where you've made your fantastic living from,
but they would also come back and do the west-end stage.
CF: Hm...
Foxy: We've had a lot of great actors, actually, treading the boards.
Would you do that, would you like to be back on the stage?
CF: It's... it's been too long, I think, and I would like to, yeah.
I don't really... I'd love to do the west-end, I'd love to do Broadway,
I... it could be anywhere, really. Erm, but, er...
Foxy: But what would you like to do?
CF: I don't know yet. Thoughts have come and gone.
I've had the conversations, the moment sort of slips away sometimes,
but I'm seriously thinking about it now, and I think something small probably,
I like small theatres, I like the... you know,
the places where you can still do things with a bit of intimacy.
The last play I did, which was – age ago now! – was at the Donmar Warehouse...
Foxy: OK! Such a great place!
CF: It is an absolutely wonderful place and that's...
that's the kind of venue I'd be attracted to, I think.
Foxy: OK. Well, we'll talk more in just a moment. Colin Firth's our guest, it's 'Magic Breakfast'.
Foxy: Right, Magic, we are back with Colin Firth this morning.
We are now getting into that crazy season: BAFTAs were announced this week, of course,
the BAFTA nominations were announced this week and then, of course,
Oscars come and what have you... Do you find it a silly season?
CF: There's silliness involved, there's no question about it!
It's delightful, er, it's not very, er... it's also stressful, I think,
CF: for the people involved in it... Foxy: Is it?
CF: Yeah, I mean, in both, the good and the bad.
People are excited... they sometimes get a bit too carried away and too excited.
Sometimes, I think, one of the nice parts of it is that you are...
you find you know most people involved and you run into people... and, er...
and it's quite nice, sort of, to take refuge in old friends in amongst all the silliness.
Foxy: Having won an Oscar for, obviously, 'The King's Speech', did it make life any easier,
going into it, having, sort of, at least you've got one now?
CF: Perhaps. I mean, it's... still, I haven't been to too many of them since then, yet,
so I don't really have much of a measure of it.
I mean, I wasn't going to the show, you know, the awards shows that much beforehand, really.
Erm, so, I haven't got very much to compare it to.
You're supposed to do it all again and present the year after that and I did enjoy that, actually,
because there wasn't any pressure on me: there wasn't... there were no expectations,
there was no nomination, there was no edge-of–your-seat moment,
you just, you know, you get up there and handing over the gong to someone else...
Foxy: Nice!
CF: And there's something quite nice about that.
Foxy: If you take 'The Railway Man' out of the equation and just looking at the other...
there have been a lot of great films over the last few months,
actually, who do you think is gonna end up doing well this year?
CF: It's very hard for me to say because I haven't seen enough of the films yet...
because I've got children of twelve and ten, so I can talk about 'Despicable Me 2', erm...
Foxy: Good, isn't it? CF: Yeah, it's great...
CF: You know... so, yeah, I can take you through most kids'... most of the kids' films...
Foxy: Yeah, I've got twelve, eleven and seven, so, I'm sure,
we've seen all the same movies in the last few years...
Colin: an absolute pleasure to have you in! Best of luck with this
and I did thoroughly enjoy it, but it was... a warning: if you go and see this film,
Foxy: Take some hankies, it's a weepy! CF: It is.
[Transcript by DoS, 14 January, 2014.]