Colin Firth Career Timeline

As a child Colin travelled the world: at two weeks old, his parents took him to Nigeria, where Colin spent his early years. From a radio interview 2001:

Let me ask you about your coming of age. I know your parents were both academics. Were they college teachers?

Colin: Yes, they're still doing it now. They endlessly study and teach various courses. They're just relentlessly curious people.

And your grandparents were missionaries in India, I believe? What denomination were they?

Well, again, I think that has changed through the years. My mother's parents were both Congregationalist ministers. That's my grandmother as well; she was ordained in the 1930s when it was not that conventional in any church. My father's father in the end was an Anglican minister. All three of them belonged to the Church of South India for a while. My maternal grandfather rebelled against the Church of South India over certain things and I think that's when he went Congregationalist. He became a doctor, in fact. He went out there as a church missionary (this is my maternal grandfather) and at the age of 38 he decided that he would be of better use in that country as a doctor, so he decided to get medical training. The only country in the world that would train a man of that age was the United States. So he took his family to the United States and went through medical school in Iowa for seven years, and then went back to India and set up practice there in osteopathic medicine.

Did your parents practice religion and did you grow up in a religious household?

Yes, I think the word religion was always treated with a little bit of caution in my household. The short answer is definitely yes. My mother's interest has always been very much in alternative comparative religions. She's very pantheistic. She has a lot of mystical interests. And the subject of her fairly recent Ph.D. was death and bereavement in a Gujarati community in Southampton for which she learned Hindi. She takes enormous interest in a large variety of religions and tends to see merit in all of them. My father keeps it much more close to his chest: I think it's something very personal to him.

One more thing about religion. When you were growing up, did you find this kind of cross-cultural exposure to religion interesting or too kooky for you?

No, I found it fascinating. It was there from the start. It was never kooky to me. In fact, I found it much more difficult to adapt I think to a school environment where I was listening to prejudices against those sorts of things. My first four years of my life were in Nigeria& "not that one remembers a lot about the first four years of one's life& "but it did make an impression on me not least because people we'd known there continued to be in our lives as visitors. There were constantly people from India (both my parents were born and raised in India) and so there was an immense cultural diversity under my own roof throughout my entire upbringing, and I consider that to be absolutely nothing but a privilege! And so, to me I supposed it was the norm and so I found any kind of racists remarks or any kind of religious prejudices among my own peers very, very difficult to take.

What brought your parents to Nigeria?

My father was teaching. It was just curiosity. He took an overseas teaching post in his job as a history teacher, I think, in what was an equivalent of a high school.

And where else did you live while you were growing up?

Mostly around England after that. We came back and we traveled around the English provinces. My father took a job at another school (at high school level) for three or four years and then at a college, so that led to a couple - two or three - moves I think. Then we were a year in the United States, in St. Louis. I was in junior high. Then back to England, so most of my upbringing has taken place in England.

Junior high is a tough time to change environments because I think most junior high school students have so many hormones raging out of control that they don't know what they're doing, and often do really inappropriate things. It's a tough period. Was it a tough time for you?

I'd been bumped up a year because the English start school a year earlier than the Americans. We go into first grade (the equivalent of first grade) when Americans go into kindergarten. So the reasoning was that I should be put in a class of kids a year older than me. It was a bit of a shock attached to that, because I was an elementary (what we call a primary) school boy, and I found the kids around me at this high school much, much more sophisticated. So it was a difficult adjustment to make. I have to say though, that some of the teaching I had that year is the best teaching I've ever had. I still remember very clearly, particularly my English teacher, my history teacher, my science teacher, and I sometimes look back over my school years and wonder if I really learned anything at all. But [?] despite the fact that it was a mixed experience, I think it's one of the years I can single out as having specifically remembered what I learned. [Freshair radio interview 2001]

Colin showed early signs of being an entertainer. Banned from watching TV, he took up piano lessons and kept his sister Kate and brother Jonathan amused with jokes and impressions. Colin's dad David says: "Colin always had a very vivid imagination. He loved dressing up and really liked Batman." [the Mirror 2001]

Colin was successful already at the age of five: dressed for a school production of Jack Frost in white satin trousers, blue sash and polystyrene crown, he brought the house down. "I remember doing some sort of dance which amused everybody, and I remember getting a lot of praise." [Premiere Mag 1997]

"My grandmother did a lot of amateur acting. And I liked performing - it got me a lot of attention. But it didn't immediately enter into my head that I'd actually try it as a career. All I knew about it was that it was impossible and no one gets any work". [Mail on Sunday, 1999]

	Colin's biography based on radio interviews and magazine & newspaper articles 1960 British actor Colin Firth was born 10 September 1960 in Grayshott, Hants, England. He is married and has two sons.
	As a child Colin travelled the world: at two weeks old, his parents took him to Nigeria, where Colin spent his early years. From a radio interview 2001: Let me ask you about your coming of age. I know your parents were both academics. Were they college teachers? Colin: Yes, they're still doing it now. They endlessly study and teach various courses. They're just relentlessly curious people. And your grandparents were missionaries in India, I believe? What denomination were they? Well, again, I think that has changed through the years. My mother's parents were both Congregationalist ministers. That's my grandmother as well; she was ordained in the 1930s when it was not that conventional in any church. My father's father in the end was an Anglican minister. All three of them belonged to the Church of South India for a while. My maternal grandfather rebelled against the Church of South India over certain things and I think that's when he went Congregationalist. He became a doctor, in fact. He went out there as a church missionary (this is my maternal grandfather) and at the age of 38 he decided that he would be of better use in that country as a doctor, so he decided to get medical training. The only country in the world that would train a man of that age was the United States. So he took his family to the United States and went through medical school in Iowa for seven years, and then went back to India and set up practice there in osteopathic medicine. Did your parents practice religion and did you grow up in a religious household? Yes, I think the word religion was always treated with a little bit of caution in my household. The short answer is definitely yes. My mother's interest has always been very much in alternative comparative religions. She's very pantheistic. She has a lot of mystical interests. And the subject of her fairly recent Ph.D. was death and bereavement in a Gujarati community in Southampton for which she learned Hindi. She takes enormous interest in a large variety of religions and tends to see merit in all of them. My father keeps it much more close to his chest: I think it's something very personal to him. One more thing about religion. When you were growing up, did you find this kind of cross-cultural exposure to religion interesting or too kooky for you? No, I found it fascinating. It was there from the start. It was never kooky to me. In fact, I found it much more difficult to adapt I think to a school environment where I was listening to prejudices against those sorts of things. My first four years of my life were in Nigeria& "not that one remembers a lot about the first four years of one's life& "but it did make an impression on me not least because people we'd known there continued to be in our lives as visitors. There were constantly people from India (both my parents were born and raised in India) and so there was an immense cultural diversity under my own roof throughout my entire upbringing, and I consider that to be absolutely nothing but a privilege! And so, to me I supposed it was the norm and so I found any kind of racists remarks or any kind of religious prejudices among my own peers very, very difficult to take. What brought your parents to Nigeria? My father was teaching. It was just curiosity. He took an overseas teaching post in his job as a history teacher, I think, in what was an equivalent of a high school. And where else did you live while you were growing up? Mostly around England after that. We came back and we traveled around the English provinces. My father took a job at another school (at high school level) for three or four years and then at a college, so that led to a couple - two or three - moves I think. Then we were a year in the United States, in St. Louis. I was in junior high. Then back to England, so most of my upbringing has taken place in England. Junior high is a tough time to change environments because I think most junior high school students have so many hormones raging out of control that they don't know what they're doing, and often do really inappropriate things. It's a tough period. Was it a tough time for you? I'd been bumped up a year because the English start school a year earlier than the Americans. We go into first grade (the equivalent of first grade) when Americans go into kindergarten. So the reasoning was that I should be put in a class of kids a year older than me. It was a bit of a shock attached to that, because I was an elementary (what we call a primary) school boy, and I found the kids around me at this high school much, much more sophisticated. So it was a difficult adjustment to make. I have to say though, that some of the teaching I had that year is the best teaching I've ever had. I still remember very clearly, particularly my English teacher, my history teacher, my science teacher, and I sometimes look back over my school years and wonder if I really learned anything at all. But [?] despite the fact that it was a mixed experience, I think it's one of the years I can single out as having specifically remembered what I learned. [Freshair radio interview 2001] Why did he become an actor? Colin showed early signs of being an entertainer. Banned from watching TV, he took up piano lessons and kept his sister Kate and brother Jonathan amused with jokes and impressions. Colin's dad David says: "Colin always had a very vivid imagination. He loved dressing up and really liked Batman." [the Mirror 2001] Colin was successful already at the age of five: dressed for a school production of Jack Frost in white satin trousers, blue sash and polystyrene crown, he brought the house down. "I remember doing some sort of dance which amused everybody, and I remember getting a lot of praise." [Premiere Mag 1997] "My grandmother did a lot of amateur acting. And I liked performing - it got me a lot of attention. But it didn't immediately enter into my head that I'd actually try it as a career. All I knew about it was that it was impossible and no one gets any work". [Mail on Sunday, 1999]
	1970 When Colin was 11, the family moved to America, setting up home in St Louis, Missouri. Colin's high-school teacher Carol Welstahoff remembers: "I think it was a lonely time, but he spent a lot of it reading. He was a very conscientious, top-of-the-class student." Colin's dad David explains: "He would have found it difficult fitting in at any school - partly because of moving and partly because he wanted to go off and follow his own interests. He started a band with some friends, playing the guitar and being the lead singer." [the Mirror 2001] Back in England the family settled down in Winchester, where Colin went to Montgomery of Alamein secondary school. The teachers despised him, he believes: "I had the intelligence, but never worked out how to do exams. Arrogance got me through school." [the Mirror 2001] He didn't rebel against school authority at school in a spectacular way; like most good-boy-at-heart rebels, he simply withdrew into a world of music, fantasy and playing hooky. "I was rather a hippy, passive type. I grew my hair extremely long, pierced my ears and, you know, just wore the wrong clothes." (Attitude Mag. 1997) Picture left: In his student days, he wore flares, an orange waistcoat and dodgy rocker hairdo as he larked around with friends for the 1979 end-of-year photo at Barton Peveril sixth-form college at Eastleigh, Hants. His time at college did mark a turning-point: he took part-time jobs as a dustman and paperboy, but never seriously contemplated anything but acting. By the time he got to college, his mind was made up. He auditioned for drama schools and spent a summer working with the National Youth Theatre. Determined to make it, Colin moved to London. He worked in a series of poorly-paid jobs at the Shaw Theatre and National Theatre, eventually winning a place with a grant at the Drama Centre. [the Mirror 2001]
	1980 Colin studied drama at London's prestigious Drama Centre 1980-83. He flourished at a place that was confrontational, physical, full of ideals of struggle and change. There he was recognized, taught that "if you're under the spell of something, you can cast a spell". (New York Times 1996) He lived in a rundown bedsit in North London, and times were hard. A friend recalls: "I went to see him and he didn't have much money - he had holes in his shoes and was going to walk two miles to a play. But he was determined. I thought: 'This boy is going somewhere.' And he has. He's a lovely person. He might be a heart-throb, but he's still got his feet on the ground. He never stops talking, and he's very funny - very kind." [the Mirror 2001] It seems Colin made it through the Drama Centre relatively unscrathed. The only eyebrow raised during his three years of training was when he was cast as Hamlet. But all doubts from fellow students were quashed when young Colin proved to be a surprisingly impressive Dane. [Attitude Mag. 1997] "He was the kind of student who almost never occurs," says school founder Yat Malmgren (whose previous students included Anthony Hopkins and Sean Connery). "He had everything I expect and rarely find: imagination, intelligence, logic, common sense." Indeed, the 37-year-old institute decided to stage its first and only Hamlet just for him. "You can't do five Hamlets a year," says Malmgren. "You've got to wait until you find your Hamlet. We found ours in Colin." [People Mag. 1999] The principal Christopher Fettes says "I knew instantly that he had quite an extraordinary talent. He brought intelligence to his performances and he has a very special quality that sets him apart. He has an inner sense of culture and class and a maturity which is seen in only a few actors. When he was here we cast him as Hamlet. There are a few students actors who can carry off Hamlet but he did and he was spotted and offered a part in Another Country". (Daily Express 1995) Colin's proud father says: "We never dreamt he would be straight on to the West End stage. Then he was in the film version. It was about rebels against the system, so it was quite appropriate. Seeing him on stage was amazing, but the thing that made the biggest impact was going down the road past the Shaftesbury Theatre and seeing his portrait, huge, outside." [the Mirror 2001] Colin: "It came as an enormous surprise. I was priming myself for years of struggle just to get an audition for a repertory company. But I had an agent, I was employed, and I was a member of Equity all in a few months - I began that year not even knowing I was going to play Hamlet and I finished that year having done a film. It was a shock." [Attitude Mag. 1997] After that Colin did a string of stage and TV roles. By 1988, it looked as if Hollywood was beckoning when he won the title role in the costume drama Valmont. But the movie flopped and he was off on his travels again - this time to British Columbia with his co-star Meg Tilly. [Mail on Sunday 1996]
	1990 Colin and Meg set up home in a forest cabin outside Vancouver for several years and had their son William. Firth wrote fiction and developed a handy streak, but the relationship ended after five years and he returned to England. [the Mirror 2001] Looking back on this, he says "Neither Meg nor I worked a great deal in the first few years - we were more into being a family. We decided to get out for a while and only later discovered that no one miss you when you're not in the picture. We stayed in Canada because I had no ambition to work in Hollywood and she hasn't been able to base herself in England." [Mail on Sunday 1996] Colin Firth is refreshingly candid about his chosen profession and admits that he has taken highly paid roles in bad projects just to make money. Like The Playmaker which he shot in America and completed immediately before filming began on Master of the Moor. "It was a three week job and paid extremely well. It was quite a gamble but I went out there knowing that it would be complete rubbish but I had just done six months of theatre and was penniless," he laughs. "I have a child to support and you can feel quite irresponsible about committing yourself to a long, low paid theatre engagement. There is a time when you might have to make a compromise but it hasn't happened too often. I've been lucky in that most things which have come my way have been good enough to do for good reasons." [Stage and Television Today 1994] When Colin was cast as Darcy in the BBC's adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, every television in the land was tuned in to watch this man steal the show. Forget the fact that his character has comparatively little screen time. His proud, brooding presence was so strong that we felt him even when he wasn't on the screen. [Attitude Mag. 1997] Colin: "I enjoyed the recognition in some ways, but it was as if my whole career came down to that one part. It wasn't really me that everyone was crazy about - it was the character." Colin's dad David adds: "I think people are quite shocked when they meet him. They expect him to be like Darcy, but he is quite an excitable person who likes larking around. He's very noisy - the life and soul of the party. He's a very dominant personality." [the Mirror 2001] The huge success hasn't seemed to have affected Colin's day today existence. He says that he's getting more work and it's easier to get a table in a restaurant, but otherwise he hasn't really noticed the effects on the general public. [Attitude Mag. 1997] Living in London makes it easier for Colin to work on stage. When Colin 1998 played at Sam Mendes theatre, the Donmar Warehouse in London's West End, one reviewer wrote: "The force of Colin Firth's remarkable acting transcends the mere erotic appeal that on television made him the fantasy play-thing of so many women. He portrays two men who loiter on the fringes of life, brooding over how to find the key to happiness. Firth's valiantly worn dejection always rings true. Dowdily dressed in despondency, an almost thread-bare charm and a long, grey-green pull-over as Walker, and then in the role of his bespectacled, stammering and introverted father, the less brilliant architect, Firth illuminates both men's difficence and pain." [The Evening Standard]
	2000 In the fall 2000, Colin published his first short story: Department of Nothing, in Nick Hornby's anthology Speaking with the Angel. Nick Hornby: It's his first published piece. I think it was very brave. I'd known he was interested and I thought this might be something to get him started. I could see he was extremely excited to be asked and he just needed a finger, rather than two hands, to push him over the edge. I've talked to him a lot over the last few years; he's incredibly bright and I thought that he'd come up with something interesting. (London Metro 2000) Colin: "Writing has been a hobby of mine for years. I enjoy it. I love storytelling. I read, and I like to write and think things up. I've never had a huge ambition to be published, so it has remained a kind of hobby. I sometimes exchange stories with friends. I have a couple of friends who also write a little bit, and it's often been just to appeal to somebody's sense of humor as much as anything else. But, yes, I do. And Nick Hornby knew that you wrote? Yes! He was encouraging me to do it. He wanted me to for quite some time actually. He'd been giving me a little nudge every so often in the belief I could come up with something worth publishing. So I owe him a great debt actually, for making me finally, actually, put that in to action. [Freshair radio interview 2001] Colin has been getting a lot of attention for his role in Bridget Jones's Diary, but he doesn't believe the film will make him a star: "It's exhausting to have expectations all the time. And I talked myself out of that years ago. Such as they were. I mean I think that when one starts out I didn't have that sort of burning ambition to be famous. Partly because it just never entered my head it could be possible. Partly because it wasn't what interested me." [A.P. 2001]. Colin met his Italian wife, Livia Giuggiolo, on the set of the tv production, Nostromo. They married in Italy in 1997 and live in Islington, North London. Livia gave birth to their son Luca less than a week before the London premiere of Bridget Jones's Diary, April 2001. With a successful career and new baby to fuss over, it looks as if the nomadic Mr Darcy may be settling down at last. He said recently: "I've always felt stimulated by change and travel and things that are new, but as I've got older I've felt the need to put down roots." Modestly, he adds: "I never believed I had the capacity to be a star. Sometimes I can't get my head round the fact that I'm a dad and successful. It doesn't seem like my story." [the Mirror 2001]
	Apart from acting and writing, in his spare time Colin is very active supporting and acting to promote several human right issues. More on that here.