Colin Firth on love, loss and playing gay
Colin Firth is already reaping acclaim and early awards buzz for his portrayal of the lead character in A Single Man. (He has already been honored with the Best Actor Award at the Venice Film Festival for his performance in fashion designer Tom Ford’s directorial debut.) Based on Christopher Isherwood’s book, Firth plays George, a gay professor in the 1960s coping with the loss of his partner, Jim. Firth is not gay himself but leapt at the opportunity to portray a character who needed a voice.
"Whenever I embark on a project, it’s an opportunity to plunge into a particular world, or a different perception, to learn about a time or a place I don’t know as much about," Firth said. "Love is love. I don’t feel there’s anything different to play because the partner happens to be male. The person I’ll be playing opposite is unlikely to be my lover anyway. It’s the job description. You find these emotions from somewhere."
Love is love
Even in reading the Isherwood book, Firth felt it was not a "gay story" per se. "I think one of the things I appreciate greatly about Isherwood’s writing is that he doesn’t make the sexuality an assailing feature. I mean, sexual love is part of it. He was writing at a time when other writers were covering that up. Isherwood didn’t feel a need to do that. His characters just happened to be gay. I don’t really define myself by my sexuality, either. George struggles with many things, but one of those things is not his sexuality. I think he’s fairly happy with who he is in that respect."
Portraying a gay character as a universal protagonist is a huge step in society treating gays as equal. However, the rarity of gay protagonists in film also makes A Single Man special.
"The sexuality’s there because part of the love that he experiences is sexual. There’s sex running through the whole movie, which I think is strengthened by the fact that we don’t see anybody humping. We don’t need to go through all the body functions. What’s interesting about sex is its implications, the barriers that are broken down on the way to it. I mean, all these sorts of things are there in the film. The possibilities of it, the ambiguity, the relationship with Kenny, how sexual is it, does Kenny have sexual feelings, the fact that it’s forbidden, the fact that George is homosexual in 1960 might add to his isolation, the speech on fear to his students definitely references that, although I don’t think it’s dependent on it. The character’s not taking this on as an issue, it’s not his war with his sexuality or the war with prejudice, or it’s not the assailing feature of the film. I think the fact that he is comfortably open about the fact that he is gay is definitely significant, otherwise, why bother to feature it at all?"
