Colin Firth was identified in the mid-1980s with the "Brit Pack" of rising young British actors, undertaking a challenging series of roles, including leading roles in A Month in the Country, Tumbledown and Valmont.
62 Facts About Colin Firth
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In 2009, Firth received international acclaim for his performance in Tom Ford's A Single Man, for which he won a BAFTA Award and received his first Academy Award nomination.
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Colin Firth subsequently appeared as MI6 agent Bill Haydon in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, and as secret agent Harry Hart in Kingsman: The Secret Service and its sequel Kingsman: The Golden Circle.
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Colin Firth has since appeared in the musical fantasy Mary Poppins Returns, and Sam Mendes' war film 1917, and Supernova.
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Colin Firth is known for his performances in television including the BBC film Conspiracy, and HBO's The Staircase, receiving Primetime Emmy Award nominations for each.
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Colin Firth's films have grossed more than $3 billion from 42 releases worldwide.
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Colin Firth has campaigned for the rights of indigenous tribal people and is a member of Survival International.
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Colin Firth has campaigned on issues of asylum seekers, refugees' rights and the environment.
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Colin Firth commissioned and co-authored a scientific paper on a study of the differences in brain structure between people of differing political orientations.
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Colin Firth is the recipient of various accolades, including an Academy Award, two British Academy Film Awards, a Golden Globe Award, and three Screen Actors Guild Awards.
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In 2011, Colin Firth was appointed a CBE by Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace for his services to drama.
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Colin Firth was born in the village of Grayshott, Hampshire to parents who were academics and teachers.
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Colin Firth's mother, Shirley Jean, was a comparative religion lecturer at King Alfred's College ; and his father, David Norman Lewis Firth, was a history lecturer at King Alfred's and education officer for the Nigerian Government.
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Colin Firth is the eldest of three children; his sister Kate is an actress and voice coach, and his brother Jonathan is an actor.
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Colin Firth's maternal grandparents were Congregationalist ministers and his paternal grandfather was an Anglican priest.
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Colin Firth lived in St Louis, Missouri when he was 11, which he has described as "a difficult time".
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Colin Firth was still an outsider and the target of bullying.
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Colin Firth began attending drama workshops at age 10, and by 14 had decided to be a professional actor.
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In 1984, Colin Firth made his film debut as Tommy Judd, Guy Bennett's straight, Marxist school friend in the screen adaptation of the play.
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Colin Firth starred with Sir Laurence Olivier in Lost Empires, a TV adaptation of J B Priestley's novel.
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Colin Firth portrayed real-life British soldier Robert Lawrence MC in the 1988 BBC dramatisation Tumbledown.
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Colin Firth finally became a British household name through his role as the aloof, haughty aristocrat Mr Darcy in the 1995 BBC television adaptation of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice.
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Colin Firth was, therefore, reluctant to accept similar roles and risk becoming typecast.
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Colin Firth accepted the part as he saw it as an opportunity to lampoon his Mr Darcy character.
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Colin Firth appeared in several television productions, including Donovan Quick, and had a more serious role as Dr Wilhelm Stuckart in Conspiracy, concerning the Nazi Wannsee Conference, for which he was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award.
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Colin Firth featured in the ensemble all-star cast of Richard Curtis' Love Actually, another financial success which divided critics.
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Colin Firth was given solo billing as the romantic lead in Hope Springs, but it received very poor reviews and made little box-office impact.
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Colin Firth played painter Johannes Vermeer opposite Scarlett Johansson in the 2003 release Girl with a Pearl Earring; some critics praised the film's subtlety and sumptuous visuals, whilst others found it almost restrained, tedious and bereft of emotion.
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In 2005 Colin Firth appeared in Nanny McPhee with Emma Thompson, in which he plays a struggling widowed father, it was a rare venture for him into the fantasy genre.
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Colin Firth described the experience as "a bit nerve-wracking" but believed he got off lightly by being tasked with one of the less demanding songs, Our Last Summer.
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Colin Firth starred in Genova, which premiered at the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival.
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At the 66th Venice International Film Festival in 2009, Colin Firth received the Volpi Cup for Best Actor for his role in Tom Ford's directorial debut A Single Man, as a college professor grappling with solitude after the death of his longtime partner.
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Colin Firth's performance earned him career-best reviews and Academy Award, Golden Globe, Screen Actors' Guild, BAFTA, and BFCA nominations; he won the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role in February 2010.
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Colin Firth appeared as senior British secret agent Bill Haydon in the 2011 adaptation of the John le Carre novel Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, directed by Tomas Alfredson and co-starring Gary Oldman, Benedict Cumberbatch, Tom Hardy, Mark Strong and John Hurt.
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Deborah Young in The Hollywood Reporter thought Colin Firth got "all the best dialogue", which he delivered "sardonically".
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Empire Kim Newman wrote, "Colin Firth starts out homaging Caine with his horn-rimmed cool but soon defaults to his usual repressed British cold mode", whilst Time Out London called his a "likeable performance", although criticised the film overall.
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In 2012, Colin Firth co-founded Raindog Films with British music industry executive and entrepreneur Ged Doherty.
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In May 2013, it was announced that Colin Firth had signed to co-star with Emma Stone in Woody Allen's romantic comedy Magic in the Moonlight, set in the 1920s and shot on the French Riviera.
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Colin Firth had been announced to voice Paddington Bear for the film Paddington, however he announced his withdrawal on 17 June 2014, saying: "It's been bittersweet to see this delightful creature take shape and come to the sad realization that he simply doesn't have my voice".
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In 2016, Colin Firth reprised his popular role as Mark Darcy in Bridget Jones's Baby, which fared much better with audiences and critics than the second in the series.
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Colin Firth portrayed American editor Max Perkins in Genius, co-starring Jude Law as author Thomas Wolfe and based on A Scott Berg's biography Max Perkins: Editor of Genius.
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Also that year, Colin Firth returned as Harry Hart in the sequel Kingsman: The Golden Circle.
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Colin Firth played British naval commander David Russell in Thomas Vinterberg's Kursk, a film about the true story of the 2000 Kursk submarine disaster, in which he starred alongside Matthias Schoenaerts.
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Colin Firth was seen as Ewen Montagu in Operation Mincemeat, in April 2022.
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Colin Firth returned to television in May 2022 starring as Michael Peterson in the HBO production The Staircase.
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Colin Firth's first published work, "The Department of Nothing", appeared in Speaking with the Angel, a collection of short stories edited by Nick Hornby and published to benefit the TreeHouse Trust to aid autistic children.
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Colin Firth met Hornby during the filming of the original Fever Pitch.
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Colin Firth contributed to the book We Are One: A Celebration of Tribal Peoples, which explores the cultures, diversity and challenges of indigenous peoples around the world.
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Colin Firth was an executive producer for the film In Prison My Whole Life, featuring Noam Chomsky and Angela Davis.
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In December 2010, Colin Firth was guest editor on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, where he commissioned research to scan the brains of volunteers to see if there were structural differences that might account for political leanings.
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In 2012, Colin Firth's audiobook recording of Graham Greene's The End of the Affair was released at Audible.
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Colin Firth has been a longstanding supporter of Survival International, a non-governmental organisation that defends the rights of tribal peoples.
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Colin Firth appeared in literature supporting changing the British electoral system from first-past-the-post to alternative vote for electing members of parliament to the House of Commons, in the unsuccessful Alternative Vote referendum in 2011.
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In 1989, Colin Firth began a relationship with Meg Tilly, his co-star in Valmont.
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Colin Firth's acting career slowed until they broke up in 1994 and he returned to the UK.
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Colin Firth was a vocal opponent of the Brexit initiative for the United Kingdom to leave the European Union.
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The Italian interior minister, Marco Minniti, announced Colin Firth's application had been approved on 22 September 2017.
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In 2011, after winning the Academy Award for his portrayal of King George VI in The King's Speech, Colin Firth suggested that he may be a republican in a CNN interview with Piers Morgan, saying that voting was "one of his favourite things" and that unelected institutions were "a problem for him".
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Colin Firth has received numerous awards, including an Academy Award, Golden Globe Award, British Academy Film Award, and Screen Actors Guild Award for his performance as King George VI in Tom Hooper's historical drama The King's Speech.
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Colin Firth received an honorary doctorate on 19 October 2007 from the University of Winchester.
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Colin Firth was made a Freeman of the City of London on 8 March 2012, and was awarded an honorary fellowship by the University of the Arts London in 2012.
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Colin Firth was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 2011 Queen's Birthday Honours for services to drama.