Almost every comedy you see is about people making all wrong choices and making all the errors of judgement possible. Good comedy is when it works on this scale. Because it is psychologically very real.
As much as the next person, I want to be approved of, but I'm not greedy for that stuff.
Bridget Jones is part of literary lore now and actually to be a part of it is enormously flattering.
Hollywood hasn't aggressively pursued me. Neither have I aggressively pursued Hollywood.
I can imagine the ego inviting power, respect, all those sorts of things. I'm not hugely ambitious in those directions.
I do notice that when I've been away and I come back to London. People look at you. People are ready to pick arguments.
I do think I'm a character actor.
I don't want to sound smug but I am reasonably satisfied with how it's gone. I think it's fine.
I have a kind of neutrality, physically, which has helped me. I have a face that can be made to look a lot better - or a lot worse.
I have a very long relationship with America. My mother grew up there and I felt to some extent that I partly belong there. I was schooled there briefly for about a year.
I haven't had to struggle very much. I haven't paid my dues. I think I have been lucky.
I think England has served me very well. I like living in London for the reasons I gave. I have absolutely no intentions of cutting those ties. There is absolutely no reason to do so. Certainly not, so that I can have a swimming pool and a palm tree.
I think it's quite extraordinary that people cast me as if I'm Warren Beatty: until I met my present wife, at the age of 35, you could name two girlfriends.
I think that London is very much like that. I find there's humour in the air and people are interesting. And I think that it's a place which is constantly surprising. The worst thing about it? I think it can be smug and aggressive.
I think the whole thing is about getting it wrong, and misjudging everything and screwing up. Comedy essentially is about that.
I want to say, strenuously, that although I have never considered the Darcy thing to be a problem, that is simply not going to happen.
I was not quite as gracious as Mark Darcy about wearing what my mother tried to make me wear. It tended to stop really, when I was quite young.
I would rather five people knew my work and thought it was good work than five million knew me and were indifferent.
I'd love to try my hand at something else.
I'll do Bridget Jones 2 if it's a good script. I won't be doing the Colin Firth bit though - they'll probably drop that.
If you don't mind haunting the margins, I think there is more freedom there.
In this case it appealed to me partly because it felt close to me in some ways. This is about a confused, bewildered middle class Englishman adrift in smalltown America and that has definitely been me.
It used to be that I was always paranoid or a loser or something so there's usually something that you seem to associate yourself with at one time or another.
Italy is an enormous asset in my life now. I feel it's just a privilege for me to have actually met someone who is from a country that is so fantastic. And so a lot of it is the exploration of that country, trying to learn its language, eating its food; which is probably one of my primary pursuits.
Most actors will tell you they have some sort of dream of doing something other than what they're doing.
My grandmother was a minister as well, which was not that common in the 1930s.
My looks aren't something that come dazzlingly through in everything I do. I can be made to look one way or the other fairly easily... I am still not recognised on the street that much.
My type happened to fit into a trend in the early 1980s for the public school type.
One of my grandfathers, actually, having gone out there as a minister, decided he would better serve the people as a doctor. So at a very late age - at the age of 38 in fact - he changed course and decided to become a doctor.
People have the idea of missionaries as going out with the Bible and hitting natives with it. It's not really what they were doing. They were all doing something rather different.
The English people, a lot of them, would not be able to understand a word of spoken Shakespeare. There are people who do and I'm not denying they exist. But it's a far more philistine country than people think.
The last thing I would attempt to do is to buy clothes for a child I didn't know well.
To be bothered wherever you go - it's not a rational thing to want at all.
We've always been involved with America - I have a son who lives there and it's a big part of my life.
You know, you do find though that actresses spend half their lives with people lobbying to take their clothes off and then they finally do it and they get crap for it for years. I mean people still hit Glenda Jackson with it now, still. I do think that if you do it once, no-one lets you forget it.
Colin has an obsessive need for precision.
Colin's grandparents were Congregationalist missionaries.
Colin said that when he was first offered the role of Darcy, his brother said to him: "Darcy? But isn't he supposed to be sexy?".
Colin has lost his screen wife to a member of the Fiennes family twice: to Ralph in "The English Patient" and to Joseph in "Shakespeare in Love".
Colin made his US television debut in the tv film Camille.
In 2001, Colin was nominated for Best Supporting Actor for his role in Bridget Jones's Diary at the British Academy Awards.
In the '80s, Colin was a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford Upon Avon, England. His stage credits include such works as Hamlet and King Lear.
Colin has a sister, Kate Firth, who works as a vocal coach.
Colin spent two years at the Drama Centre in Chalk Farm where he was "discovered" while playing Hamlet during his final term.
In 2006, Colin stars in two movies: The Meat Trade and The Last Legion.
In 1994, Colin dated actress Jennifer Ehle, his co-star in Pride and Prejudice.
Colin has a younger brother, Jonathan, who is also an actor, but they are not related to Peter Firth or Julian Firth.
Colin has received two BAFTA nominations, including one for his portrayal of Darcy in Pride and Prejudice.
Colin is best-known for the "Wet Shirt Scene" in the BBC version of Pride and Prejudice. It caused a huge stir and catapulted Colin to heartthrob status all over England and the world!
Colin has taken time out from acting to serve up coffees in global cafe chain Progreso (July 2005). The chain aims to solve the trade crisis that currently plagues coffee growers all over the world. Firth enjoys getting involved and whipping up a cappuccino. "People seemed to think there was nothing more normal than having me serve their cappuccinos and espressos."
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