Catching Up With Colin Firth

so this is such a treat for me how are you have you been for me I'm fine I guess the last time I saw you was last year I got to chat you off at the Met we were all mad that's right which was really exciting your friendly face yeah you've been so busy Colin doing so many different films we're gonna talk about that in a moment but as I was reading about your your background which I'm surprised I haven't memorized by now I didn't realize that you actually lived in st. Louis for a time when you were 12 years old because you spent most of your childhood in England I was in Nigeria for four years mostly in England yeah those st. Louis was a year I was in eighth grade and what was that like uh it was actually the best year of my life it was it was a difficult year because that is an age in which you desperately want to conform you know if you're 12 going into 13 you don't well I didn't really want to stand out very much and as a Brit in an inner suburb of st. Louis I did you did yeah where the kids mean to you nice to you uh there was a mix I noticed the ones who Amin more than the ones who are nice uh-huh have you called him and said Ann and Ann Ann I've looked for them I'm still scouring the earth your parents were academic lecturers is that right so what did what so obviously was a teachers exchange uh-huh yeah you can just volunteer that this is why the all the travel happened my father decided to take a job in Nigeria teaching and then he thought it'd be interesting to go to America and so we swapped with the family we you know we took over their house wherever their schools were and all that sort of thing just for you so you grew up in a very very academic environment you had some trouble in school early on or during periods of your life yes I was the I was the disappointment in that regard really yes I mean my father went to Cambridge and my mother went to Nottingham University and we came from a long line of people who were high achievers my sister was the the model of following the family line in that respect and no I wasn't I wasn't doing any of it and I wasn't even one of those rather sort of active and you know rebels that you can tell exciting stories about I just was rather lamely not wanting to play along with anything it you know I wasn't um you know there were there was a one crowd who studied and with the you know achieving things and the other crowd we were off sort of hot-wiring cars and taking drugs and so you were sort of fell in the middle yeah yeah I didn't impress either group and so when you decided to pursue a career in acting where your parents supportive yes they didn't um they were alarmed because nobody my family had ever met an actor and you know the received wisdom is fairly directly that you don't have a good chance at it you know the statistics are not good and and we just had them you know my mother used to show when we were watching a movie on TV you see all this people walking in the street in that scene in the city they're all actors they're all that's what you'll be doing you'll be the guy you know over there sort of getting out of the cab walking to and and I believed her but I thought even that is preferable to a life which feels like these this classroom you know that I mean that I I was I hated my math class so much that I thought I'd rather be flipping burgers dreaming of being an actor than sitting at a desk doing all that stuff but it obviously worked out when you look back at the trajectory of your career I guess your first big break was on the London stage right Colin I mean and and when you look back how one thing led to another to another to another I mean you must feel incredibly fortunate nutmeg suck yeah there's so many people out there and clearly you're very gifted and talented but there are a lot of people who are gifted and talented that never get anywhere right Oh starting with my own class at drama school I mean I didn't I didn't even think I was the standout actor in that group of 30 people and so that it seems like a profound injustice in my favor it's quite interesting you know people say why me a lot but they very rarely say why me when it's good fortune right you know yeah and you know I really so little misfortune has hit my life professionally that I still don't quite and I'm still waiting for the catch but now one piece of good like actually just leads to another and it is self propelling you know I had to get through a big cattle market audition for my for the first play something like ten thousand boys auditioning for that one and there was a lot of rather fortuitous things led to my getting noticed there it wasn't just that I knocked my audition out of the park but um once that happened you're in I got notice I know that in a way even though playing mr. Darcy and Mark Darcy has led to some other great opportunities in a way they felt a little bit like an albatross around your neck at one point and and were you happy to hear that in her latest novel Helen Helen Fielding has actually knocked him off he's died I don't really believe it until he's buried at a crossroads at midnight with a stake through his heart right I was so shocked when I read that that bit that she was offing him does that mean there is no sequel with with Colin Firth is Mark Darcy or did he count on it yeah do you think he might appear and then uh listen you can do whatever you like in a movie yeah Tarantino can have her adult Hitler killed in a cinema somewhere and we all know that didn't happen and you can place the movie anywhere in time so no I wouldn't count him out well you know as you know Colin and as I've told my staff and most of my friends you you were one of my favorite people to interview because I've just enjoyed talking to you so much but some of my friends got a little concerned when they looked around my house and saw the way it was decorated are you aware of that yes well aware and slightly concerned though I'm just gonna see where you're going all right well then let's take a look this is a picture of my boyfriend Colin Furze that we've been dating for about four years now I have met Colin oh sorry was that I'm sorry it was that did I just do that hello Colin he has that Heathcliff Ian quality doesn't he he's kind of dark and brooding and I like dark and brooding because they're a challenge if you have to make them happy one of the saddest days of my life was when I saw Colin first wife because she is beautiful and it was really upsetting but I'm happy for them kind of sort of so I kept we did this as a kind of soup when I started this show and I am happy and I have met Colin's wife and she is beautiful and I'm not dark and brooding now how is how is your wife he's very very well thank you she sends her love oh good no of course I've seen that I've spent I spend a lot of time on your website there you have God I think this little bit all could that we're having to have this conversation in front of witnesses um because I think I can actually I can I cannot do you really yes I mean I think is that your house that's my house that's your house see see my mantelpiece and I it's um it's it's it's a continual running theme this is why I think if everyone could just maybe go get a coffee or something no it's a stipulation whenever I sign a contract I try to make sure I don't think I trust nobody's noticed I've tried to keep it discreet possible that is very final mission so there's a Katie Couric team that's very much alive in my in my professional and personal well thank you I'm all for clamped I have to tell you I'm blushing alright so thank you for me it's workers so let's talk about this new film that you're doing because it's called the railway man and and tell me what it was that appealed to you about this latest endeavor I was very conflicted about it when I read the script because on the one hand I thought this was is that rare thing which is a piece of history which is immense in its scale not only in the scale of the numbers of people who perished during that time but also just the the sheer brutality it's about as extreme as it gets so tell us the storyline this is the it takes place right see part of my problem is it was so big I thought I'll actually do this in 90 minutes that was the problem but also it's a big how can it not be told and there's there's a particular individual whose story this is he was a man named Erik Lomax who was captured in Singapore in 1942 along with about 50,000 Allied soldiers and it was a mass capitulation to the Japanese there was an assumption that you know the Japanese would not be capable of such an attack it was a example of hubris by Imperial Britain really colonial Britain Singapore was the jewel in the crown and people living very well there and it was considered impregnable people thought that the Japanese would be able to fly the planes adequately they couldn't do they couldn't fight in the jungle because they can't see at night those myths and then they wouldn't be they'd have to attack by sea because the peninsula's tonight all that was wrong the Japanese could fly their planes they could fight in the jungle and they were incredibly effective and it took seven days for all fifty thousand guys to basically surrender and they were then enslaved to build a railway which was a kind of mass suicidal mission they wanted to build a railway from Thailand through to Burma and probably eventually to India to keep their supply going for the domination that they had planned right the Japanese had been challenged at sea so they wanted to make this route yeah this is a route over land the British in fact in the 19th century had done a recce of the area with the thought of building a railway and as is said in the film they said no this would not only be almost impossibly be an act of incredible barbarity because building a railway costs lives you know notoriously but under those circumstances I mean more than 100,000 people died in in slavery on narrow way and the the extremes of torture were really unfathomable and so this man was I think 2021 when he was captured and he was put through extraordinary torture and he survived and came home and bottled it up for decades but of course when there's suffering on that to that degree it creates secondary casualties it'll affect your family it'll affect your children which he did in his life to a very profound extent and and when he met his wife patty she didn't know great deal about what he'd gone through but she could see the damage and it was affecting their marriage in their relationship and I think she's as much the hero of the story as anybody but she encouraged him to get help she knew that their relationship couldn't survive and that he was dying inside through the desire because he had no other intent really in his mind than vengeance he wanted to find out if any of his captors might still be alive if they were he won't go he was quite simply gonna go and kill them and he wasn't alone in this and awful lot of veterans of that experience had the same idea but Sir patty kind of urged him towards doing something about it and he discovered by the most remarkable in real life the coincidence of discovering the existence of this man is even greater than it is in our film that one of these guys was alive I guess his main tormentor if you will right the man who'd haunted him the most he was the one of the in during the interrogations who could speak English and so that he was his voice that would wake him up and he Eric would scream at night every night people who were guests couldn't stay in his house because this night times screams were too harrowing for people and so that was there was the depth of how it manifested itself so he went to find the guy

Channel: Katie Couric

Views: 149,646

Rating: 4.9303484 out of 5

Keywords: Colin Firth, The Railway Man (Film), Colin Firth (TV Actor), Television (Invention), celebrity, entertinament, actor, from TV, TV, TV show, Talk Show, Daytime, Katie, Katie Couric, Katie show, Hollywood, career, Love Actually (Film), Bridget Jones's Diary (Film), Pride And Prejudice (TV Program), Mr Darcy

Id: r4BDnRqCcuQ

Length: 12min 56sec (776 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 21 2014