Colin Firth Career Timeline

From the Western Mail and Echo, 10 September 2002:
A NEW Hollywood blockbuster which had Cardiff in its working title has changed its name. Organisations promoting the Welsh capital say they are dismayed that the film will now be known as Hope Springs. But they hope the box office success of the movie, starring Colin Firth and Minnie Driver, may still have tenuous promotional benefits for Cardiff. They had hoped that the name link would help raise the profile of the city as Cardiff competes for the title European Capital of Culture 2008.

Hope Springs is based on the novel New Cardiff by Charles Webb, who also wrote The Graduate. /.../ Hope Springs is due to be released in November. Among the other stars are Heather Graham and Mary Steenburgen. Directed by Mark Herman, who was also responsible for Brassed Off and Little Voice, the film rights for were purchased by Buena Vista.

A romantic comedy, Hope Springs tells the story of a British artist, (Firth) who moves to New Cardiff, a small Vermont township, to mend his broken heart after being dumped by his fiance (Driver). His troubles catch the attention of the motel owner, played by Mary Steenburgen, who introduces him to a local girl (Graham) with whom he begins a redemptive affair.

From TV Week, July 2002: /.../ The quietly spoken Colin looks a little overwhelmed with all the media attention he has endured thanks to his Darcy fame, but he is no longer surprised by the fascination. "I'm used to journalists asking me about Darcy because when you're writing a story it's bound to come up, " he sighs. "But I actually just recently played a character called Colin in a film (Hope Springs) and I'm thinking of having myself billed in the credits as 'Colin played by Mr Darcy' just so people will know!"

From SAGA. September 2002: But Firth has another big moment as the lead in Hope Springs, playing Colin, a British artist who flees London to find solace in small-town America after being dumped by fiancée Vera, played by Minnie Driver. He arrives in the New England village of Hope, where an innkeeper (Mary Steenburgen), arranges a meeting with beautiful Mandy (Heather Graham). But Vera arrives to try to reclaim him. 'It was written by Charles Webb, who wrote The Graduate,' says Firth. 'I loved it and really went after it. And with two actresses like Minnie, who is playing jaded and bitchy, and Heather'eccentric and sweet'you never know. If it's half as good as The Graduate I will be more than happy.'

From Vogue magazine May 2002: /.../ I think his next movie, Hope Springs, might be The One. Just wrapped, it's based on a recent novel, New Cardiff, by Charles Webb (who wrote The Graduate). "The novel's brilliant," says Firth. "It's about a guy, an Englishman, who shows up in a tiny town in New England called Hope, in a desperate state. A couple of friends of mine had spotted it and thought of me." One of the friends was Nick Hornby. It's a torn-between-two-women love story. "The kooky girlfriend is Heather Graham; the ex is Minnie Driver," says Firth, who says he's "really thumbs-up about this one. The character's even called Colin. It did sort of feel like it was waiting for me to step into somehow." [By Vicky Woods]

From the Guardian 2 October 2001:
Brits and Americans team for transatlantic New Cardiff. British actors Colin Firth and Helena Bonham Carter are set to join US stars Heather Graham and Mary Steenburgen in the romantic drama New Cardiff, which goes into production next month. The movie will be shot by British director Mark Herman. (Brassed Off). New Cardiff promises to prove a truly transatlantic affair. It is adapted from the recent novel by Graduate author Charles Webb, an American who currently resides on the south coast of England. The tale follows the fortunes of a lovelorn British artist (Firth) who has been rejected by his fiancée (Bonham Carter) and fetches up in a small Vermont township. There he begins a love affair with a local woman who works in an old people's home (Graham). Steenburgen will play the role of the motel owner who plays cupid. The movie will be backed by Buena Vista, who purchased the rights for the Webb novel for a figure reported to be in the high six figures. The original story is set in autumnal New England, with an extended epilogue back in the UK.

From Variety, October 2, 2001:
Colin Firth, Mary Steenburgen and Heather Graham are poised to star in New Cardiff, and Helena Bonham Carter is in early talks to round out the quartet for the romantic comedy. Set in New England, the film is a fish-out-of-water story, revolving around a British artist (Firth) who is healing after being dumped by his fiancee (Bonham Carter). The spurned man holes up in New Cardiff, Vermont, staying at a motel run by Steenburgen. She sympathizes with his plight and introduces him to a local girl (Graham). Sparks commence and romance looks likely until his scheming fiancee comes looking for him. The film will be directed by Mark Herman (Little Voice), working from his adaptation of the novel by Charles Webb (The Graduate).

From the Vancouver Sun, 15 Sept. 2001:
Disney will shoot the feature New Cardiff (based on the Charles Webb novel), here beginning mid-October. It's the fairy tale-like story of a jilted English artist (played by Colin Firth) who repairs to New Cardiff, Vt., to mend his broken heart and live a simpler life, following in the footsteps of the original settlers from Wales who came in search of coal.

From Nick Hornby's book review in the London Times:
/.../ The bulk of New Cardiff, his [Charles Webb] effortlessly delightful new novel, also features lots of sitting around in rented rooms - the vast majority of the book is set in a New England motel - and Webb's hero, a London artist called Colin Ware, isn't rushed off his feet either. He turns up in the eponymous Vermont town to escape an unhappy love affair: his long-standing (and, as far as he was aware, current) girlfriend Vera has just sent him an invitation to her wedding. Distraught,
Colin gets on a plane to New York, takes a bus, sees New Cardiff's war monument, and on a whim decides to disembark.

New Cardiff is helium-light, and consists almost entirely of choppy dialogue (it may well be the shortest 354-page book ever published). There are no descriptions of any of the characters, although Webb's wife Fred - in the guise of Colin, who uses up at least some of his available time by drawing the townspeople - helpfully provides portraits of them all. And the plot can be adequately summarised thus: Colin meets someone else, Mandy, who works at the local old people's home; Vera turns up with an explanation for the wedding invitation; Colin must make a choice. There are no sub-plots.

Webb's choppy dialogue is brilliantly funny, in a strange, cumulative way. There are very good one-liners, but very few of them are quotable, simply because they very properly relate to character and context, and they are not in themselves responsible for the novel's considerable pleasures. Rather, Webb writes with a kind of disciplined and suppressed joy in his creations, and this joy quickly transfers itself to the reader. Anyone who manages to resist the charm of these quirky, tangential relationships should be regarded with deep suspicion, and will almost certainly be the sort of person who thinks that fiction should be overwritten and resolutely joke free.

From the Spectator, 5 May 2001:
Fragile Films, the owners of Ealing Studios, have already bought the rights to the new novel by Charles Webb, who wrote The Graduate. They could use New Cardiff as a shooting script. It is almost all dialogue—dialogue of such naturalistic pithiness that one seems to hear it in the mind's ear, and can even imagine the proper casting. The connective brief passages between the speeches are just enough to establish settings and move the characters about.

The whole work, now at a bookshop near you, is charmingly, uncloyingly romantic and witty. The crises are painless, there are no cruel conflicts, there is a nude scene of innocent, good-humoured eroticism, and the only bad guy is a dealer in art supplies. In ignorance or chicanery, he claims that all American drawing paper is acid-free. Some of the drawing paper isn't, but the book certainly is.

As the protagonist, Colin Ware, an English artist, observes, the story is a reversal of the traditional 19th-century American one about somebody lovelorn who goes over to Europe to mend a broken heart. When Colin's girlfriend, an intimate almost ever since they were born, pretends she is about to marry someone else, he immediately flies away to New York and takes a bus to Vermont. It is autumn (of course), the beautiful season of 'leaf peepers.' He gets off the bus when his attention is caught by a Revolutionary war memorial in a small town. Webb knows a thing or two about cinematic locales. Another good one in this novel is a funfair on the front in Brighton. New Cardiff is a fictional town founded in 1759 by Welsh mining families (mining serves a fictional purpose; there are deep springs), but Fragile Films will easily find a place as picturesque.

Although Webb's publisher says, with some justification, that the novel has a 'fairytale quality', this simple story of love lost and love found has an interesting, original, subsidiary theme about the curing of artist's block. /.../ I look forward to the film, be it ever so fragile, even though I feel I've already seen it.

From The Guardian, Saturday April 14, 2001:
New Cardiff wavers constantly between warm, homely simplicity and trite sentimentality. It gives us contours for characters and stage directions in place of prose. But in reducing his art to such self-sufficient hippy basics, the author runs the risk of leaving little but a featherweight romance that lacks dramatic punch. In its no-frills style, New Cardiff reads less like a novel and more like a screenplay. Appropriately enough, Buena Vista recently purchased the film rights for a sum reported to be in the high six figures. No doubt the cash will come in handy. As for the story, the hippy's essence is clearly just the corporation's script outline.