This is the first Academy Award nomination for Colin Firth (49).
Firth is born in an academic family, both his parents are university lecturers.
He played three times a character named Darcy—in Pride and Prejudice (1995) and in the two Bridget Jones films. Helen Fielding, the author of the book Bridget Jones’s Diary said she based her character on Colin Firth (much like Margaret Mitchell based her Gone With the Wind Rhett Butler on Clark Gable).
Firth finds amusing the fact that in two different films his character loses his wife to a Fiennes brother. In The English Patient (1996) he loses his wife played by Kristin Scott Thomas to Ralph Fiennes and in Shakespeare in Love (1998) he loses his wife (Paltrow) to Joseph Fiennes. In Love Actually (2003) we see him as a writer who is betrayed by his girlfriend and falls in love with his Portuguese maid whilst in Mamma Mia! he sings and dances with Pierce Brosnan and Meryl Streep.
Firth has one son with actress Meg Tilly (whom he met while filming Valmont) and two sons (Luca and Matteo) with Italian producer Livia Giuggioli. He declares himself in love with all things Italian and regularly spends his vacations in Umbria.
In A Single Man, we see Firth in the early 1960s playing a gay English professor who, after the death of his lover must overcome and hide his grief. The film is directed by American fashion designer Tom Ford who financed the film himself.
