Exclusive Interview with Kingsman: Mr. Colin Firth

we gonna stand around here all day or are we going to fight mr. colin firth welcome to dialog or some describe the Kingsman the Secret Service as that I quote of kick-ass meas James Bond by way of men in black with a little dash of Star Wars is that a precise description I think that's fair absolutely what the director Matthew Vaughn likes to do is to use the popular culture that he fell in love with as when he was growing up that we all fell in love with and processed them in his own way you know he's he he says you love action I'm gonna give you action and I'm gonna make it my kind of action and in some ways I think he's he's paying he's paying on Mars he's quoting from other things in in in popular culture but by the time he's finished with it it's it's entirely his because it's not men in black it's not Bond it's not kick-ass but it's you can recognize elements of those things that you love but he he he gives you things that you're familiar with and then he likes to subvert them he likes to create a surprise maybe make them more intense or a little crazier or funnier than you would expect so he was playing games with those things and people cannot help but compare the character of Harry Hart to James Bond cool in your opinion what are the differences between these two characters well James Bond isn't just one thing of course he's evolved over the years you know he began as a literary figure then he became a cinematic phenomenon and in the years since it started which is a year I was born I'm the same age as James Bond there's a cinema figure and we've seen him go through these different incarnations the James Bond of the that we have today is not the same as the James Bond of the 1970s it has certain things in common but we've seen this evolution from from the book even through the old Casino Royale which was a comedy with David Niven who I think Ian Fleming rather liked as an idea for Bond very much the English gentleman Sean Connery who was not an English gentleman he was a Scottish man he was rough around the edges through Roger Moore where it became extremely playful didn't take itself very seriously veered towards the camp in a good way which I think we've done to through more serious incarnations I've loved them all and now we have a bond who I think is tougher darker perhaps a little more serious and you know it's quite got edgy action-based bond who has inner torment people who have seen a movie the preview of the movie already compared James Bond to Harry Hart in a wave of the differences between the British culture and the American Hollywood kind of style of culture and jeans yeah and James Bond really represents some American dreams or American character deep inside but Harry Hart is really a gentleman in bridge style well the gentleman Spy is is is a part of literary and cinematic heritage you know it almost goes back to Sherlock Holmes in a way or perhaps beyond that there were Victorian figures who either the detective or the spy the the the man with all the secrets and there's something about the stereotypical British persona which is conducive to the spy because there's a reserve there's an implacable 'ti the inscrutable man or woman who's not easily shaken you know and can keep secrets and his there's an association with the intellect and with a brilliance of solving problems you know and Sherlock Holmes is impeccably dressed but he he can dispatch somebody with his cane in a very elegant way so I think it has its roots in that sort of thing and it goes all the way through the writings of Graham Greene John le carré and bond and it's a very broad spectrum but I think yes I think it is something we suits the the archetypal character that our perception of Britishness it is really interesting to see how Britons are are really into the character of gentleman spy is there a thing or a cultural thing inside yes it's partly fantasy I mean like anywhere we have our our archetypes and stereotypes and our perceptions but if you actually go and walk the streets of an English city you're not going to see very many people who look like James Bond or who even look like gentlemen necessarily you know it's some we have a broad counterculture we have Punk we have rock and roll you know but I think within all that this this thread perceives persists and I think it's partly fantasy I think that the john lecarre a spy of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Russia career you know this spy who came in from the cold are more to do with the real world of spying and espionage but I think this is more of something with a myth and I don't mean a Miss as and it's not true I mean a myth that society expresses itself through its myths we create mythologies as a an expression of our desire to be a certain way or a way of interpreting ourselves I don't really know what's at the bottom of that but I think this idea that you know we can deal with our problems elegantly it's an aspiration right and someone also described the current cultural status quo in in Britain and in UK and also in Europe as as a pass of the era of gentlemen and the good old days of the European days are long gone and with the sinking of Titanic after world war 1 or the world war 2 every generation thinks that something beautiful has been lost you know because I think it's very that's partly because we have a resistance to embracing the vertical present you know there are virtues that the present in the future but they're much more difficult I think as we get older to embrace those things and recognize them as virtues so I remember my grandparents saying our children today are you you know they don't have respect anymore the days of tea now I'm sure their grandparents were saying something similar and there were people behaving very very badly a hundred years ago 200 years ago 300 years ago so I'm not sure it's really true that there was this ideal thing happening once which has been lost I think that I think it's nostalgia you know I think we're creating it when we look at the past and you are of course the best choice to play such a character of gentlemen are you really into this character are you deep inside you think yourself is truly a gentleman or there's the other side of you no that's definitely another story you know I I think I you know being a gentleman it's not it doesn't define me it's I understand that to some extent the character has taken a you know I've grown into a public perception but that's only because of characters I've played and because if I go out in public and I do press and I will grid carpets and I make appearances I'm a well-brought-up polite middle-class English boy so I you know I put my best clothes on and try to be nice that's all it's not about being a gentleman particularly my father was well-dressed polite man and and my mother was a well-dressed polite civilized woman and this is just a bit it's it's not all I'm about and it's just you know it's just putting on appearances for the public consumption it's that's all it's it's not doesn't go very deep I don't and what's the other side of you oh I don't know I it's even if I could deconstruct that and analyze it and very unlikely to share it in an interview but no I'm I am an actor so I in common with a lot of actors I have my insecurities my neuroses my impatience my I work in a creative business that can be fraught with challenges and I don't necessarily approach every challenge like a perfect English gentleman spy you know because they are they're alarming you know we we don't keep calm on a film set all the time so you know there are there are many aspects to my personality which are not not consistent with someone like Harry Hart and do the action scenes in the movie bring out the other side of you you know a few European actors were really do action scenes in their movies the very first very few and in fact the stunt team that I was working with I mean they're led by Bradley Allen who is Jackie trans trainer he's an Australian I think he's based in this country he said he had never worked so extensively on action sequences with an actor outside of Asia you know it's I know they're American and English actors who would choose to do their own stunts but these were such long extended choreographed sequences that I was being asked to do it is very unusual and it's certainly unusual for me because I never expected to do anything like this I you know my history of athleticism is minimal I am NOT a really a sportsman I've tried to keep fit over the years but to do something as completely athletic as this was entirely new and I didn't expect it to happen at my age I had 10 guys training me every single day for three hours for six months to go from doing almost nothing to doing that was like a revolution in my life so another side of me yes it was another side of me but it was decided me I didn't even know about what was really surprising wasn't that I ended up being able to do it sufficiently it was that I loved it so much because I thought I would hate it I thought it would be too painful too embarrassing that I wouldn't be able to get it right but by the end of those six months it's really all I wanted to do in fact I found it quite boring to go back to acting and did you do work out still work out yes I do I mean I don't have to lifestyle completely changed I'm completely I'm far more interested in and being fit part because I just and didn't realize it was possible to be as fit as I got and to be able to move like that which it cost me a lot to get there you know I mean there are activities that I had never done and to be able to achieve them you know quite late in life really was such a gift I didn't want to just throw it away but I don't have to ten guys and I don't have three to three hours a day so I try my best not to let it all just slip away but yes it was a complete change I noticed in the trailer there's some very interesting in funny part is that about the dog jb is it James Bond it's a Jason Bourne and in the end is Jack Bauer I used to director making fun of the Hollywood characters in it or do you want to make a difference you want to stand out in between those fights no he's playing with familiar imagery Matthew Vaughn does not pretending that we are not referring to other things the James Bond comparison is absolutely deliberate and we talk about James Bond in the movie he wants us in this film to revive our nostalgia for a James Bond of possibly at the seventies area so that the references are deliberately popular culture quotes are saying we are filmmakers but we're fans as well it's connecting with the people who are watching because Matthew Vaughn himself is part the highly sophisticated modern filmmaker and part fan he's like a 13 year old child you know watching films the thing I want to see this I want to see this so he's being complicit with fans so yeah and yes he's being playful with them making fun of things affectionately he's saying you know we're satirizing but we're paying homage I think the audience were really relate to that I think so because he is the audience - what's your favorite literature and author this answer would change every time because literature is a passion for me and I find myself in a new passion all the time but there's never a time when I'm not in love with a particular author in terms of English writers people like Graham Greene I think my greatest passion over the years has largely been in American literature William Faulkner I've recently played a literary editor who he was the editors F scott Fitzgerald and Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe and I've developed a recent passion for Fitzgerald he you know I went through a phase where it was you know I don't read out the language as well enough but Russian literature you know I went through a period of obsession with Dostoevsky with with the French writers it's it did varies and rotates constantly it's not new for for an actor to be interested and have a passion in literature but you also have an interest in academic research tell us more about that that was that was a surprise to me too a little bit like the training I don't I can't claim to be to have academic credentials it's a little bit bogus okay what happened was I was guest editing a radio program for the BBC there's a wonderful program that runs every weekday morning in the UK called The Today program which is a three hour current affairs and news programme it's I'm devoted to it it's I think it's one of the best things in our in British media culture actually and over the Christmas period they they invite certain people to come and be the editor for one episode and you can do whatever whatever you want it's very exciting you can Commission room journalists to go and do something in a foreign country somewhere so you can Commission all kinds of things you can you can commission poetry you can get musicians on the show you can invite people to be interviewed and one of the things I wanted to investigate was a study of how politics relate to people's to make a clinical study of politics it wasn't necessarily a physiological study could have been clinical psychology of some kind surreal right wing left wing you know why people have the views that they have because I became convinced over the years that this wasn't just about persuasion rationale and argument that there was something else going on the people develop preferences through something either innate or required but it becomes almost tribal in some people you know I was listening to radio programs in America actually we're very right-wing people were very embedded in right-wing views and very liberal people seem to so embedded and nothing could persuade them to change I wondered if there was something in the personality that was not just about pure intellect or just an abstract belief system and so I wanted to could we do a study and we decided to study the brain and they found results so King's College London launched a research they'd scanned nearly a hundred brains quite recently and so they decided to do a survey of those people and ask them what their political persuasion was and to see if there were any anything that aligned with their brain structure and then they found results which was astonishing because I think we all thought this was a fishing expedition and maybe we would never come up with anything and they started to come back too soon we're finding something here this is extraordinary and they found that there was a part of Loeb there were lobes in the brain that were enlarged in people who are more conservative it's good in fact it's the amygdala I won't go into interpretations of it because it's thread on people's sensitivities but the people who consider themselves on the more liberal or left-wing side had an enlarged anterior cingulate cortex and that has certain permutations - and you can make all sorts of interpretations out of this if you want what we haven't established is whether you have this persuasion because you are born with this structure or whether your views change the brain because your brain will change according to your experiences so there now have to do a longitudinal study which means you have to study babies and then study them again 30th time so it's a long wait no but I because I don't think the study can have advanced much yet because this was a few years ago and they they weren't updated but I certainly yeah I'd love to participate and keep in touch with it but my name ended up on the paper I didn't really do much work except come up with some crazy ideas at the beginning you were born in an academic family are your parents happy with what you're doing right now they you said in a previous interview that your parents would rather see you play in this Experion at MoMA me a kind of thing no no that's not quite true of my parents now I don't think I have a had a grandfather who had those views he had very you know he he was not to accuse him of snobbery but the high brow was very important to him and he gave the only time he gave me any praise was when I played Hamlet as a student so he didn't like frivolous entertainment I think frivolous entertainment is not frivolous I think we need light material in our diet it's essential in fact I think if we only had Shakespeare I think we would be culturally impoverished no my parents are not snobs and I think they appreciate like popular material I'd say it's very very important but I think they were worried that's all you know they'd never met an actor before and they were academics and I daily hoped that I would go to Cambridge and perhaps become a scholar that I think they take what I do quite seriously and they see that there's a lot of educational potential in what I do as well for years the Chinese have been talking about the penetration of culture from Hollywood as a very leading actor a very successful Hollywood actor what do you think of the the cultural pervasiveness I don't know I think it's probably much more nuanced and complex than that perceptions would suggest I I don't think Hollywood is just one thing and I don't think it tends to be spoken of as one thing people seem to almost imagine that there's a cohesive coherent thing like a an organization a conspiracy that is Hollywood where they all agree on certain things and they have a they have a policy and a strategy it's not true it's if you and there's no it's not a place either you know obviously Los Angeles is the center of that particular entertainment industry and it gets called Hollywood but if you go there and you interact with people you'll find incredibly diverse agendas going on you'll find people conflicting creatively there's there's the independent alternative version of it which is now not even particularly alternative anymore you find extraordinary creative minds frequently who come from outside they might be from Europe they might be from Asia who have constantly contributed to it it began as a largely immigrant industry you know Hitchcock Otto Preminger you know a fred's innama great immigrant directors reformed Hollywood and I think it has a lot of that that there are some embedded attitudes there are some very lazy cynical financially driven elements to it and those are very powerful there's no question but it's not only that and I also think it's much more of a dialogue and much less of a kind of colonisation by one industry I think that America does allow itself that Hollywood allows itself to be very very much influenced doesn't happen immediately you know but it is influenced by cinema from elsewhere so I think it cuz it does go both ways part of the reason why is because Hollywood movie companies are attaching great importance to the global market and very importantly China well I'm this is I'm here now for the first time I think that you know there's a real recognition now of how important this country is both as a market and just somewhere to to start to create a creative exchange is this your first time to China or Beijing my first time how do you feel about it well I've been here for 24 hours so I'm still processing here but I am very excited I was I rarely I travel a lot in my job and sometimes however interesting the place is I'm know it's almost not ready to get on another plane and go somewhere but this time I was I've been very very excited

Channel: CGTN

Views: 18,171

Rating: 4.9541545 out of 5

Keywords: CCTVNews, News, CCTV, Breaking, politics, The Secret Service (Adaptation), Colin Firth (Film Actor), Film (Media Genre), Interview, Exclusive, Entertainment

Id: dI4-WjTAW1M

Length: 23min 41sec (1421 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 04 2015