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As King George VI, with Helena Bonham Carter as his supportive wife, Queen Elizabeth, Colin Firth struggles to overcome a devastating speech impediment.

Speech! Speech!
Colin Firth’s Oscar-winning
portrayal of a tongue-tied king

By Ivor Davis

LAST YEAR, Colin Firth lost out to Jeff Bridges in the Academy Awards contest for Best Actor. This year, the tables were turned.

The British star carried off the gold statuette for his role in The King’s Speech. The low-budget movie—by Hollywood standards —has Firth playing Prince Albert Frederick Arthur George, the man who would become King George VI (the current queen of England’s father), depicted as a shy lad with a terrible stutter.

Along comes a quirky speech therapist played by Geoffrey Rush, aided and abetted by George’s wife, Elizabeth (Helena Bonham Carter), and the stuttering royal dramatically overcomes his handicap. After his father dies and his older brother abdicates the throne, Albert becomes king of England, and finds a steady voice to inspire his country as they march into World War II.

The 50-year-old Brit started out catching eyes in several romantic-comedy roles, including Mr. Darcy in the 1995 Pride and Prejudice TV miniseries and love interest Mark Darcy in the Bridget Jones movies.

Along the way he also starred in Mamma Mia opposite Meryl Streep and Pierce Brosnan, and in the very funny Love Actually. He came whisper close to winning an Oscar in 2010 for his role as the troubled gay academic in A Single Man, and he is currently shooting a big-screen version of John Le Carre’s spy novel Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.

Yours truly caught up with Firth after his Oscar win.

ID: Are you now in the prime of your
career? Have you reached your stride?

CF: Well, it’s a great moment. If I keep getting roles as good as this, I would like to think it could be a stride. This is a profession which notoriously trips you up. I felt there were moments when I had my mojo, I just didn’t have the scripts. I feel I’m at an age which is making the stories interesting. I do find it interesting to play characters where the past counts. I’ve lived long enough to actually have one now.

Ivor Davis: Can you elaborate on your
character?

Colin Firth: This happens to be a man revealed as vulnerable. It’s a story about one man trying to reach another through those barriers we put up. So let’s exaggerate those. And make him royal.

ID: Can you analyze your career and
movie choices?

CF: I love working—the collaboration and telling stories. Sometimes I’ve done movies I wouldn’t go and see. But some of them I enjoyed immensely. And some of them were “I hope this keeps me in the business long enough to get the one I really want to do.”

ID: And isn’t he isolated from real life?

CF: He literally lives behind high walls. In order to be greeted, you have to get through a whole bunch of titles before you’re even allowed to talk to the guy. He has to hold his hand out first before you get to shake his hand. So you’re building up all these protocols that we hide behind on a daily basis. Universal things that have been beefed up. And it’s a human story.

ID: How have you made the choices?

CF: It feels like luck. It’s hard to analyze. I must be doing something. C

As a foreign correspondent for the Daily Express of London in the early 1960s, Ivor Davis covered the Beatles and is the co-author of Five to Die: The Book That Helped Convict Manson.

ID: Were you familiar with the story?

CF: I knew that he existed and about the abdication crisis. I had never watched any of the dramas about it. I remember my mother telling me that she had great sympathy for him because of the stammer.

ID: So you started from scratch.

CF: Yes. I think it’s interesting to follow what history might pronounce as the minor characters offstage and see where they go. It interests me, turning an ostensibly minor character into a protagonist. Realizing they’re not that minor at all. And also, I think, different versions of heroism. I like stories that reflect on human virtues.