[Advanced] Colin Firth on Stardom (1)

An interview with Colin Firth and Jeremy Irvine as they discuss their chosen career

When it comes to mentors, you could do a lot worse than eloquent, elegant and cinematically agile Colin Firth. Yet he's the last person who'll bombard anyone with bombastic bits of wisdom.

But what's the most sage bit of advice the British Oscar winner can share with Jeremy Irvine, 24, who plays the younger version of the actor in The Railway Man?

"I can't think of anything," demurs Firth, 53. "" But wait, interjects Irvine, "'You did the other day. You said, 'Treat it like a romp.'''

Firth nods. He recalls something a friend once shared with him years back about never taking himself all that seriously. And given his mastery of self-deprecation, it's a lesson Firth took to heart.

"All we do is what we like. We put on costumes and pretend, which is very similar to what I was doing when I was 5." says Firth.

'Treat your work with respect'
And yet, says Firth, treat your work, and those who do it with you, with respect. "Every so often, you get brought up short that you had a brush with something important. This story is important and you're entrusted with that," he says of his and Irvine's film, about a tortured World War II prisoner who forgives his tormentors.

Firth and Irvine have a pretty solid connection.

Firth still makes ladies swoon for his portrayal of dreamy Mr. Darcy in the 1995 British TV adaptation of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, and won a best-actor Oscar for playing a stuttering monarch in 2010's The King's Speech. And Irvine carried Steven Spielberg's 2011 epic War Horse before being hand-picked by Firth to play the youthful version of train engineer turned POW Eric Lomax in The Railway Man.


Vocabulary Focus
eloquent adj.
able to express your ideas and opinions well, especially in a way that influences people:

bombard v.
to do something too often or too much, for example criticizing or questioning someone, or giving too much information:
- They bombarded him with questions.

bombastic adj.
using long and difficult words, usually to make people think you know more than you do

romp n.
a funny and energetic situation

demur v.
to express disagreement or refusal to do something

self-deprecation n.
the act of making yourself, your abilities or your achievements seem less important

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