10 THINGS YOU DON’T KNOW ABOUT
COLIN FIRTH made Jane Austen fans swoon as dashing Mr. Darcy in the BBC’s Pride and Prejudice and followed that up with a string of roles in successful movie romances. Now he takes a serious turn in the new World War I drama 1917. Here are ten things you don’t know about the 59-year-old star.
1 Born in Britain, Colin moved to Nigeria with his teacher parents as an infant and lived in Africa until he was four.
2 He had a childhood crush on Doris
Day. “I loved her in By the Light of the Silvery Moon. She looked so completely in love and had that wholesome quality,” he recalls.
3 In 1989, he fell for his Valmont co-star Meg Tilly and lived with her in Canada until their breakup five years later — but is still on good terms with her and their son, William.
4 Disney’s Dumbo
cry. “The scene where he visits his mom where she’s locked in the cage and holds him in her trunk through the bars, I choke up and I’m a real mess!” he says.
5 Firth was bitten so badly by mosquitoes while filming Love Actually he required medical attention.
6 He considers 2008’s Mamma Mia! a favorite among his films because it’s
“hard to do pure escapism.”
7 He married producer Livia Giuggioli in 1997 and learned Italian to impress her family.
8 He struggled to lose the stutter he learned to play Britain’s stammering George VI in 2010’s The King’s Speech.
9 He was originally cast as the voice of the title character in 2014’s Paddington, but was replaced by Ben Whishaw because director Paul King didn’t think his voice suited the troublemaking bear.
10 In 2017, he applied for dual citizenship so he could have an Italian passport like his wife and their sons, Luca and Matteo, but insisted, “I will always be extremely British.”