Man of the Moment: Colin Firth 

Mr Darcy's breeches turned him into a heart-throb, and he's notorious for falling in love on set. So what happened when he worked with Gwyneth Paltrow in his latest film? 

There's no doubt that if Colin Firth had been a lesser actor or a greater conformist, he could have spent the rest of his days playing romantic heroes. If he'd been interested in his bank balance alone, he could have dialled in Mr Darcy-type performances from his dressing room, barely bothering to step out of his doe-skin breeches between roles. Let's face it, if he'd wanted to, he could have dined out for ever at the best restaurant tables on the Pride and Prejudice role that rocketed him to fame three years ago. Others would have. 

But it's a mark of the man and of his talent that he resisted the temptation to abandon what he's best at - which is acting, in all its variety. " That's where the fun lies," he says. "To play a romantic hero for the rest of my life just because people liked me as Darcy would have been a kind of death." 

So in his latest role he plays Lord Wessex - the very antithesis of a romantic hero - in the highly acclaimed movie 'Shakespeare in Love'. The film, scripted by Tom Stoppard, is a comic Elizabethan love story in which Firth, who could easily have played the infatuated Bard himself, is instead a foppish and black-hearted aristocrat who comes between Will (Joseph Fiennes) and hsi young mistress Viola (Gwyneth Paltrow). 

"Wessex plans to marry Viola and absolve himself of financial difficulties with her large dowry," he says. "It's like Dallas with frocks on. All the characters are climbing over each other fot their own advancement, and Wessex intends to be king of the pile. But there's this snivelling upstart of a writer who's getting in his way, so it's inderstandable that he wants to slit Will's throat. I feel sympathy for the man. I couldn't play him otherwise. Though, obviously, I don't expect the audience to like him." 

And how did he find Gwyneth? "What can I say about her that hasn't already been said?" asks Firth. "She's a damn fine actress. She's only played English three times, but you can't fault that accent, can you?" 

Today Firth is dressed casually in jeans and jacket. The look is one of ordinariness. It's almost as if, off screen, he deliberately reverts to blank canvas mode - his face and body awaiting the imprint of his next character. Taken individually, of course, the physical features are good. Curly hair, strong jaw, broad shoulders. You can see why Darcy did to women what he did. 

"But so much of Darcy's appeal was simply to do with the costumes. Any reasonably fit man would look good in skin-tight breeches. When I wore football shorts in 'Fever Pitch', for example, I think everyone could see that I was nothing out of the ordinary. My legs and arse didn't have the same effect on women at all. Quite the reverse, I imagine." 

His starring role in Nick Hornby's tale of football fanaticism converted him to the sport in real life. "I wasn't an Arsenal fan before. But I am now. I'm a shameless nouveau convert, at a time when there's a kind of nauseating gentrification of the game going on. But I didn't become a fan because it was fashionable. While making the film, the whole thing started to go way beyond the research stage. I was kind of sucked into a family. Now I'm at Highbury whenever I get the chance. 

"What I gained from 'Fever Pitch' was the feeling of camaraderie when you share moments of sheer exhilaration with a crowd. It gave me a sense of belonging that I'd never properly experienced before." 

This is a telling remark from the 37-year-old actor who has always suffered from a kind of "outsider syndrome". There are various causes. His family background, for example. His parents, David and Shirley, are both university lecturers, but Colin failed his 11-plus and found himself at the secondary modern Montgomery of Alamain school in Winchester. "It was an incredibly pompous name for the most unimaginably awful school." he says. I was bullied and abused which probably doesn't help your sense of belonging." 

There was also a certain rootlessness about the Firth family. His parents were born in India , although Colin and his younger brother, Jonathan, who is also an actor, were born in England, their little sister, Kate, was born in Nigeria. "We lived for a while in the States as well, and as a result I've always wanted to travel and have found myself drawn to people who aren't English." 

This was, no doubt, part of the attraction when he met his wife, Italian-born Livia Giuggioli. It was in 1997, and he was on location in South America working on the TV epic 'Nostromo', when he first encountred the beautiful 27-year-old student, who was working as a producer's assistant in the summer holiday. After filming, he moved her into his Hackney flat and within a year they were married. Firth is reluctant to discuss his marriage and protective of his new wife. "The poor girl met me before the Darcy thing happened, and she hadn't heard of me. She's Italian and my name doesn't mean a diddly-squat in Italy. She just thought she had a fairly normal boyfriend, and then all that stuff happened." 

Just before they married, however, Firth was more forthcoming about being with Livia, who is nine years his junior. "She's so much more mature than I am," he said. "She's settled and rooted. And she's not an actress, so she's not nearly as fucked up as I am. She's very special." 

It was not the first time love had blossomed on set. During the making of 'Pride and Prejudice', Firth, who had been friends with his co-star Jennifer Ehle for some years, embarked on an affair with her. "It lasted just under a year," he says, "It was over by the time 'Pride and Prejudice' came out." 

But his most enduring love affair was with another co-star, Meg Tilly. In 1989 they worked together on the Milos Forman film 'Valmont', and afterwards retreated to a log cabin in Canada. They lived there for six years and had a son, Will, who is now 7. "In the end we separated not because there was animosity between us, but because one of us wanted to live one way, and the other did not," he says. " But it's hard to walk away when you don't actively dislike someone. It's also hard to miss the important milestones in your son's life, like the first time he swims or rides a bike." 

Firth remains a dedicated father, travelling frequently to Los Angeles, where Meg and Will now live. "I love being with my son. I appreciate the fact that he's Will and there's no one else like him. You think you know yourself, and then you have a child and discover a whole new set of values. You find out about your patience and your passion in a way that's completely unfamiliar to you. You forget what people without children do, and you forget what's important to them. There are probably no practical arguments in favour of having a child, yet Will is more important to me than anything else." 

More important, he says, than the career that has occupied him since he and his siblings attended Saturday morning classes at the Bridge Theatre Company in Yorkshire as teenagers. "From then on I don't think there was ever much doubt in my mind about what I wanted to do," he says. 

After leaving school, he spent a year working in the costume department of London's Shaw Theatre before winning a place at the London Drama Centre. His first big break came when he appeared in the film version of 'Another Country', and he consolidated his success with a number of roles. In 'Tumbledown' he played a Falklands veteran; in 'Lost Empires', a Lothario; in the 'English Patient', the cuckolded husband. He is rarely out of work. 

Such are Firth's acting talents that he's often confused with the characters he plays. Many of them have been upper-class. "Therefore, according to the public, I'm upper-class. But that's wrong. I'm lower-middle class. My parents were both teachers. I went to a secondary modern school. So the public-school perception is totally wrong, but I've been up against it most of my life. 

"When I went to drama school I found that if you appeared to come from a working-class background your credentials where much higher, and I hated the assumption that, because of my accent, I didn't qualify. I was left wing, but was made to feel I didn't have the damn right to say anything, which really pissed me off. There's no way I was personally responsible for the slave trade or the public school system. It was absolute bullshit. But I was pigeon-holed. 

"The irony is that someone like Nick Hornby - who I now list among my friends - has a pronounced London accent so people think he's working class. In fact, he's from Maidenhead. He went to a grammar school and to Cambridge. But no one says: 'Nick you don't have the right to speak. Shut up.'" 

Perhaps for Firth, acting is the ultimate way of being heard, the perfect antidote to his feeling of having been denied a voice. Perhaps the playing of myriad characters, each one different, is his way if breaking out of the pigeonholes. 

"To keep on moving and constantly accept new challenges is what the game is all about," he says. And it is, of course, a game that he's winning. 

'Shakespeare in Love' *is released on January 29*.