YouSaid · the spoken record

Colin Firth

lines on the record: 46
first: 2005-12-04
most recent: 2005-12-04
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“It would probably have to be my guitar, which if I were on a desert line, it would probably be an opportunity to learn to play the damn thing. And failing that, there's a wonderful thing about a guitar is even if you can't play, you can hold it for hours.”
2005-12-04 · Desert Island Discs · Colin Firth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It strikes me, rather than as a luxury, almost as a form of torture having one book that you're doomed to go over and over and over again. But I think having been given the Bible and the complete workshop of Shakespeare, I'd be in great need of a bit of levity. One of the few things that ever really made me laugh out loud when I've read it is the stories of Woody Allen. And so I think if there's a compendium of all of them, that's what I'd take.”
2005-12-04 · Desert Island Discs · Colin Firth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think If I can give a very prosaic reason, I think you get more for your money with a symphony or an orchestral movement. And so I think I'd be far less likely to tire of the mass in C minor than I would have a single song here. So I think it would have to be that if I had to survive on one.”
2005-12-04 · Desert Island Discs · Colin Firth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I couldn't. There's nothing about it that I could hack. I mean, I'd love to spend an afternoon there. I am basically an urban-minded person. So the desert island would be torture. So much developed around the period of my late teens, and this is Marla's symphony number three. I was sharing with another drama student, I was sharing a room, and he put this on. And I just found this voice absolutely haunting and mysterious. He said, that's my It's more in Forrest singing Nietzsche's midnight song from the fourth movement of Marlas III.”
2005-12-04 · Desert Island Discs · Colin Firth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, Matthias is not quite anything lingual just yet. But Luca is absolutely bilingual, yeah. I mean, the rule is when you want to bring your children up bilingual that each parent speaks their own language to the child and sticks to that. And sometimes I just find myself using bits of Italian with him because he may have spoken it and he sort of turned around and say, Daddy, you don't speak Italian.”
2005-12-04 · Desert Island Discs · Colin Firth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's yes, it's something that one is reluctant to do, and it's partly because my focus has turned family-wise a little bit at the moment, and you want to make sure everything's okay and your nest is furthered a little bit, because I got very small children just at the moment, and it's nice to feel that you've protect that. But, you know, got that now. It probably is time to start looking at other possibilities. I could have filled the whole list with songs that are to do with America and travelling and being on the road Here's the life that I would have had in a parallel universe. This is when I'm actually a gruff tattooed American truck driver who's smuggling drugs and Mexicans across the border. This is little feet, he's willing.”
2005-12-04 · Desert Island Discs · Colin Firth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm toying with all of those things. You probably have to throw away a wonderful opportunity and say, I'm not doing that, I'm going this way.”
2005-12-04 · Desert Island Discs · Colin Firth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, let's go about the other way. Films are not only shot out of sequence to the point which it absolutely, I mean, it mangles what you're trying to do. You shoot your wife at nine o'clock, marry her at 11 o'clock, and you may or may not be looking at the other actor, who may or may not be in their full costume, in tiny little pieces. Now I think that is a far greater test of one's ability to do what we were talking about earlier, which is to go back to that childish place where you can just believe than standing on stage looking into the lights.”
2005-12-04 · Desert Island Discs · Colin Firth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't want to get into trouble with anybody here. It requires immense talent to do it brilliantly. And I haven't always done it brilliantly, so I could easily get caught out here But I resist the idea that theatre is what is all really about in terms of acting. I don't see why that is the case. And with theatre, you're in control of you the territory on stage. You are going to do it in the sequence that the writer intended it to be done, and that's up to you to take command of that and shape it as it goes.”
2005-12-04 · Desert Island Discs · Colin Firth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Anyway, so I mean, I think I could well just be petulant about that and refuse to participate. But no, it was fun, and it's always nice to get with those people again, and I'm sure if somebody came up with an irresistible script, we'd make all the noises we want against it, but we'd all be back. This goes back absolutely to what was extremely important to me in nineteen seventy six. It was about 15. Free. Paul Rogers, I still think has the best voice of any white man I've ever heard. And Paul Kossov was quite simply my guitar hero. And I was sitting there in my math class developing my air guitar skills. So this is what I was hearing as I looked out of the window from that maths class.”
2005-12-04 · Desert Island Discs · Colin Firth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I really thought by doing the sequel one thing I would achieve was that this question would go away and of course it's never going to go away. I didn't even know until I came home and opened up the independent and found out something about Bridget Jones' baby, that there was another series of episodes.”
2005-12-04 · Desert Island Discs · Colin Firth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It must have done, of course it did. Fever pitch certainly, I think, because I was sort of of the moment at that time. I mean, the British Jones thing opened up the possibilities in terms of film, and that, I don't even know if Bridget Jones had been written the way it was had it not been for pride and prejudice, you know.”
2005-12-04 · Desert Island Discs · Colin Firth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I do get regular exercise now, you know, until I was about 30, I was one of those people that just stayed, I mean, I was so thin, I wouldn't even go to a swimming pool when I was about 20, but it seemed impossible to get fat. And now, yep, I've got to go for a run. If I want to stay this shape.”
2005-12-04 · Desert Island Discs · Colin Firth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, we're in as much contact as humanly possible to be with someone who lives so far away. I mean, we see each other frequently. It's every holiday and then all the time in between that I can manage. Yes, this is absolutely in love with this song. It's relatively recent. There's something very reassuring about miserable music sometimes because it just means you can sit back and say you don't have to pretend everything's going for you and everything's all right. And I've got it sused. This is actually about the moment when you realize you haven't got anything sused at all.”
2005-12-04 · Desert Island Discs · Colin Firth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I have tendency. I do like to withdraw from the fray. I wanted to Take time out and get away from the noise and haste and get into another rhythm of life, really.”
2005-12-04 · Desert Island Discs · Colin Firth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't know probably yes. I did resist it and I'm not sure whether that was just self-protection, hiding behind a kind of Snobbery about it. I talked myself into the idea that it was a value judgment rather than just fear.”
2005-12-04 · Desert Island Discs · Colin Firth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We stayed in touch for a while and I still feel a huge affection for him and I'd love, you know, listening, get in touch.”
2005-12-04 · Desert Island Discs · Colin Firth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Robert was shot in the Falklands War in the Battle of Tumbledown on his twenty first birthday. He was shot in the head, it blew away a huge part of his brain. And he fought through, and his will and his character absolutely extraordinary. And a weird kind of merging took place while we were filming. Robert used to talk about the character as we used to look through the script and go, oh, scene thirty nine, we're fit in this scene. And he said to me, and this was very, very poignant, rationally had come as a shock to him to realise that at the end of the film he would still be paralyzed. I would jump out of my wheelchair at the end of the day shoot. And because I'd felt so connected to Robert, that was an irony that was not lost on me.”
2005-12-04 · Desert Island Discs · Colin Firth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, that was the most extraordinary opportunity in that the character that I was modelling myself on not only existed and was still alive, but was my exact age.”
2005-12-04 · Desert Island Discs · Colin Firth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I was taken out of drama school quite quickly after that. Urban now this is the Kiri from Mozart's mass in C minor. I discovered this around A-level time and I was... Resistance to the drudgery of schoolwork was upon me and I don't know how this, it took me by surprise somewhere. I don't know if it was the radio. I don't know if one of my parents put it on. But I just came out of my schoolbook and sort of felt. Profound and spiritual and floated out of the window with it really. And I listened to it again now and I still think it's absolutely beautiful.”
2005-12-04 · Desert Island Discs · Colin Firth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I don't believe it was a vehicle for me. What happened as he was engaged in a professional production of Hamlet? And he had to teach us as well. And I think it was more than he could do to do two.”
2005-12-04 · Desert Island Discs · Colin Firth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It turned everything around seeing Paul Schofield. I watched a performance which made me reassess what acting was It was nothing to do with demonstration, it was nothing to do with even anything that I was conscious of in body language. It was just an expression of integrity. And there was such a paradox in that because acting by nature is false. So how can this man, by doing very little, exude truth and humanity and intelligence? I was so fascinated by that. It's basically the sort of thing I've tried to pursue ever since. And Christopher was very instrumental in taking us in that direction as well”
2005-12-04 · Desert Island Discs · Colin Firth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They were frightened because that's the route they knew. They weren't being snobbish about my desire to be an actor. I really believe that. I think they just would. were concerned about the first member of the family ever going on that completely unknown route.”
2005-12-04 · Desert Island Discs · Colin Firth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Absolutely, that's where I got my act together, really, to the immense relief of everybody around me. I suddenly wanted to do what was required of me.”
2005-12-04 · Desert Island Discs · Colin Firth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I really don't. I'm so sorry it's gone that way. because that is absolutely not what I'm trying to do. And it was not that at all. I didn't Like school I've just thought it was boring and mediocre and nothing they taught me seemed to be of any interest at all. Okay, this is heart attack and fine. Tom Weights, this sort of began for me during student bedsit or student squat period where one was quite happy to live in squalor, really. This is a period when I was actually homeless, not on the street, but on other people's floors and you'd come home starving and try and find something in the fridge and it wouldn't be there so you check behind the sofa. Lyrics are slightly incomprehensible but satisfyingly kind of witty and rude.”
2005-12-04 · Desert Island Discs · Colin Firth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Just very subtle isolating behaviour, really. There were friends, and I think the actual teaching I got there was fantastic. But it only takes two or three people in your class, really, who were looking for a target.”
2005-12-04 · Desert Island Discs · Colin Firth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, that was a difficult time. I had one or two absolutely wonderful teachers there, but it was a bit of a harsh environment”
2005-12-04 · Desert Island Discs · Colin Firth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, they were extremely keen to expose us to those sorts of experiences and to open up the world to us and not just to be focused on one's own postal district.”
2005-12-04 · Desert Island Discs · Colin Firth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“school teachers and yes no this wasn't based on having lots of money this was a teacher's exchange and we all flew out with other exchange teachers in a charter plane and we hired an old Volkswagen bus as I said and we slept in it en route and so this was not an expensive holiday”
2005-12-04 · Desert Island Discs · Colin Firth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There was one year in school in America. It was an incredibly decisive year, a very important year. America absolutely blew me away. I was there from 12 to 13. Basically over that year we used the holiday periods, which were very long in America, the school holidays, to travel, and we got a Volkswagen campaign bus as a family, and we just went west, north, back east again.”
2005-12-04 · Desert Island Discs · Colin Firth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, no, I didn't. And I've always felt a little bit ruthless. And I suppose I've quite enjoyed feeling that way. I spent many years in North America. I have a son there. And I've never felt I particularly belong to a place.”
2005-12-04 · Desert Island Discs · Colin Firth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I mean, I don't know quite where to put myself. I am those things to some extent. I mean, I have the lingo of the middle class suburban Englishman, I suppose.”
2005-12-04 · Desert Island Discs · Colin Firth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This is Fella Cooty, who is a bit of a hero of mine, really. And Nigeria has, even though I haven't been back since I was about four, has featured very largely in my life, partly because we've been surrounded by Nigerian people And I don't know how to say the name of this song because it's written in big capital letters. It's O-D-O-O, and I'm going to call it Odu.”
2005-12-04 · Desert Island Discs · Colin Firth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it's. Absolutely appalling, really, in the end. At forty five you realise there's something wrong. And thank God I've got kids because you go home and the roles are reversed immediately. You can't say to your child, you behave yourself, or I'm going to call my agent. Suddenly you're the slave, and that does help. But I think a lot of actors I know by the time they're reaching my age are trying to take control in all sorts of ways.”
2005-12-04 · Desert Island Discs · Colin Firth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's entirely childlike, and I think that the skills an actor has to have are childlike. I think unless you have that, you can't do it.”
2005-12-04 · Desert Island Discs · Colin Firth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's been absolutely what's driven me through life, I think. Even if you write a diary of what you did that day, suddenly your day looks different because it has narrative form, it has a kind of ending to it.”
2005-12-04 · Desert Island Discs · Colin Firth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, God, yes. I mean, there was nothing else that gave me that sort of praise, that level of approval. I didn't take kindly to being sent to school, to being sent into this rather cold environment where you're given lots of instructions and nobody loves you. You're sort of on your own. I couldn't believe that I had to go back again the next day. I can remember that. I thought my first day of school was earlier, thank God that's over. Now I can get on with my childhood. And it was a horrible shock day too. Suddenly the environment of school warmed up around me.”
2005-12-04 · Desert Island Discs · Colin Firth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was I don't know if I've been as big a hit since And that's when I got the bug. That's where I thought and attention lies.”
2005-12-04 · Desert Island Discs · Colin Firth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“About five years old pantomime infant school is somewhere in Essex and I was Jack Frost and it was a pair of silver satin pants, a blue satin sash and portentiously a billowing white shirt.”
2005-12-04 · Desert Island Discs · Colin Firth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There is an unease, yes. I mean, I was brought up with a lot of... Protestant values were supposed to pay your dues somewhere, and perhaps your soul needs a bit of hardship in order to develop. So I do wonder when the catch has to come.”
2005-12-04 · Desert Island Discs · Colin Firth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Cattis Mayfield, we people who are darker than blue. There's something perennial about this man's voice that makes me feel that whatever's wrong in the world, there's a voice of simple humanity. And I just find it always very reassuring to listen to.”
2005-12-04 · Desert Island Discs · Colin Firth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, there might be a tiny bit, but I think it's 11 years have now gone by since I did it. And I've heard enough about it, really. I mean, if I need any reassurance that I got it right on the day, then I think I've had it.”
2005-12-04 · Desert Island Discs · Colin Firth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, it was just another role at the time, and it was, if anything, a bit of a stretch. I'm not like Mr Darcy, I'm much more animated, I talk too much, and I don't own a half of Derbyshire.”
2005-12-04 · Desert Island Discs · Colin Firth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, and a lot of people have asked me about the sex scenes in the film. And actually, I think it's more difficult, more upsetting in a way to act violence than it is to act sex. You can leave you feeling a bit shaken. Whatever your approach to acting, that is an uncomfortable place to go. This is more than just a fight in this film. This is a rather psychotic bit of behavior.”
2005-12-04 · Desert Island Discs · Colin Firth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What you see on stage, because I'm a stage entertainer, is what you might expect to see, which is that educated Englishman, so when I walk off stage and beat people to pulp or behave with sexual excess and take too many drugs, then it's more of a shock.”
2005-12-04 · Desert Island Discs · Colin Firth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, and it was also an opportunity to play with the perception of me that I tend to carry around, which is the buttoned up Englishman well-educated, formerly charming sort of”
2005-12-04 · Desert Island Discs · Colin Firth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source