Colin Firth: “You take the guy from Bridget Jones and you make him an action hero”

Matthew Vaughn's Agents returns to TMC.

Channel 10 will rebroadcast this evening Kingsman: Secret Servicethe spy comedy from Matthew Vaughn which was a hit at the cinema in 2015. At the time, First was pleasantly surprised by this parody of James Bond full of good ideas and met with the team to talk about its creation. Colin Firth even made the cover of the magazine. Here is his interview, published in issue 456.

Kingsman review: These English people are really strong!

First: They finally managed to enlist you in comic book action cinema. It was getting hard to escape, right?
Colin Firth: Maybe. But I never think in terms of what I have done or what I haven't done yet. I don't attach a narrative function to my career. No one had asked me until now to do one of these comic book films, or even a Bond film… Matthew Vaughn told me about Kingsman a year before filming: “Are you interested in something like that?” Physical training, that sort of thing? »…The angle “spy movie” immediately appealed to me. I have always loved spy stories, like any good self-respecting Englishman. Of all the cinema archetypes, for me it is the one that retains the greatest amount of mystique. There are several versions: the spy doped with extreme action, the version ” truth ” and low-tech way John Le Carre (where we see fewer guns), or the American dependence on “Gumshoe”from the detective to the Raymond Chandler… A kind of romantic solitude is often associated with the figure of the spy. An aura to which I am sensitive.

Matthew Vaughn: “Michael Caine, he’s our Alain Delon”

The romanticism of lost illusions was at the heart of The Mole…
And yet the film itself was not, romantic! The characters of The Mole are disappointed romantics, all of them. That was of course the subject… How much I love this film! Many people have misinterpreted it, for example telling me that they don't understand the final resolution. But that has nothing to do with that… It was a portrait of isolated men forced to confront their romantic disillusionment with their country, with the very idea of ​​loyalty and, in Smiley's case, with towards his wife. My character, the traitor, develops a romance with the Soviet system, because he is disappointed with Western ideologies…

If we add Another Country (1984, from Marek Kanievska), your very first film in front of the camera, that makes you a regular in the genre…
(Suddenly nostalgic) Oh yes, it’s true, I almost forgot about it… Another Country recounted the student life of Guy Burgess (Rupert Everetteditor’s note), one of “Cambridge Five” (group of academics who moved to the East, seduced by the communist ideal, editor’s note). The film was trying to show how spies are created. Burgess and his comrades represented England's elite, the ruling class, students at Cambridge University… Why betray the system, since they were its products? Some of them were gay and the film makes that connection clear. The need to constantly hide, manipulate those around them, etc.

The comic from which it is taken Kingsman“The Secret Service”, is a mise en abyme of pop culture in the broad sense: it begins with the kidnapping of Mark Hamill and ends on the steps of the Cannes festival… The film is located directly in an “augmented” cinema universe.
Yes, very “self-conscious”. A film that takes place in the world of films. That's what I love about Matthew: he starts with the familiar. He's not trying to reinvent the wheel. He uses the iconography of the genre in a way that becomes entirely his own. You watch the trailer and you say to yourself: “Hey, that’s very Bondian…”. It's done on purpose. In the end, yes, the film is very Bondian, very Ipcress, Immediate Dangervery Men in Blackbut once it's all digested on screen, it comes out as a pure Vaughnian creation. Behind his sophistication, Matthew has an incredible ability to put himself in the shoes of the kid who wants to be entertained. 'What do I want to see? What's exciting? Energizing?'… Like an artist who finds lost objects in the street, familiar objects, and, from that, creates an original and specific work.

You like Kick Ass ?
I adore Kick Ass ! This is my favorite Matthew movie. I love the way he subverts expectations. In Stardust, Robert DeNiro is a menacing and terrifying pirate king… who turns out to be a nice crazy lady wearing women's underwear! Scandalous… That’s a bit like what he does with me. You take the guy Bridget Jones And Mama Miaand you make him an action hero…

The class system is very marked in England. “The Lords and the Beggars”as said Kingsman…
Yes, the rich and the poor are constantly exposed to each other. I come from a middle-class family: academic education, strong language, etc. And I went to school with kids who weren't like me. It was not a very comfortable time. I hid my origins, I especially didn't want to make waves… I have been able to observe this juxtaposition for a long time. It’s profoundly English, yes.

A starting point like any other for a fun and colorful action film…
The film uses the class system as a dramatic element, rather than trying to reflect on it… Every country I know has the same class problems. But I think in England there's this idea that if you're privileged, or if you come from the East End, it's something that's deeply, genetically, ingrained in you. Nothing to do with your economic situation, or the circumstances that built you: it comes from you, that's all. It's absurd, but that's how we live. And Harry Hart, my character, speaks out against this idea.

In the cinema, today you represent the quintessence of British distinction and elegance. Does that suit you?
This is just as absurd. Believe me, this is not an image I cultivate. It's more of a cinema avatar… If I appear in public, being the good boy that I am, I dress well, yes, I try to be polite. But not to perpetuate an image of a gentleman… I don't reject the idea. I don't care, actually. I know it's linked to the roles I play… And it serves me perfectly on a film like Kingsman. But it becomes difficult to dissociate myself from it. It's not tomorrow that I will be made to play a worker in a mine in South Africa.

Interview Benjamin Rozovas

Matthew Vaughn: “Believe it or not, I don't like violent films”