Born one day apart, Hugh Grant and Colin Firth both turned 50 this month. From Jane Austen to Notting Hill, their careers have run in parallel, but their film characters, finds Vanessa Thorpe, tell a subtly different story.
The year 1987 was a good one for big budget American films of the kind that spawn sequels and stage shows. Three Men and a Baby, Fatal Attraction, Lethal Weapon, The Witches of Eastwick, Wall Street, Dirty Dancing and Robocop all came out in rapid succession.
But in Britain the film industry was working at a gentler pace. Two thoughtful, very English films about male friendship came out that year and helped to launch the screen careers of actors who have proved to be Britain's most enduring homegrown stars. Maurice, the film of EM Forster's tale of blighted love, starred a 27-year-old Hugh Grant opposite James Wilby as Edwardian schoolfriends who fall in love while at Cambridge. A similarly poignant story was being played out in A Month in the Country, starring Colin Firth, also 27, as an artist and veteran of the trenches who is hired to restore a medieval mural in a rural Yorkshire church. He develops a close friendship with an archaeologist, played by Kenneth Branagh in his first screen role.
Both Grant and Firth won praise for the quality of their acting in the rival films and both seemed to be embarked upon challenging careers. But that was before they were both landed with the label of heartthrobs. It is a tag that has probably done as much to hinder them as to propel them towards glory.
This month both men, born one day after the other, have celebrated their 50th birthdays. Confronted by reporters as the date approached, Grant joked about his feelings: "I'm dreading it. There is this place in Switzerland called Dignitas [an assisted dying centre]. I'm going to go to Dignitas on my 50th birthday - 50 is enough."
A natural comedian from his early days performing in revue sketches at the Edinburgh Festival, Grant adopts an ironic tone about his work as well as his personal life. It has all been an accident, he assures interviewers.
Hailed across the world as the perfect Englishman after his performance in the Richard Curtis film Four Weddings and a Funeral in 1994, Grant has also been candid about the impact of the role on his work.
"Although I owe whatever success I've had to Four Weddings and a Funeral, it did become frustrating after a bit that people made two assumptions. One was that I was that character - nothing could be further from the truth, as I'm sure Richard would tell you - and the other frustrating thing was that they thought that's all I could do," he told Variety.
Firth, in contrast, garnered early plaudits for his television performances in Tumbledown in 1988 and, of course, as the sombre Darcy in Pride and Prejudice in 1995, yet he took his time picking up accolades as a leading man on the big screen. Two weeks ago, though, he appeared at number 52 in the London-based Guardian newspaper's list of the 100 most influential people in the film industry; Grant did not feature.
The comparative late developer, Firth now seems set to win at least an Oscar nomination for his performance as George VI in The King's Speech.
"This film belongs to Firth," wrote one commentator. "With nearly every scene granting him a wet-eyed close-up as the traumatic origins of Albert's stutter are unravelled, his performance registers at a pitch that Oscar voters are bound to respond to."
The film tells the story of the father of the present Queen of England, Elizabeth II, who was afflicted with a bad stammer, as he prepares for war, aided by Geoffrey Rush, as his speech therapist.
This week it has also been confirmed that Firth is to star with Gary Oldman in a film version of John le Carre's spy saga Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. Shooting on the Working Title production, directed by the Swede Tomas Alfredson, will begin at the end of the month and a role in a serious spy thriller will be a new departure for Firth, further broadening his range following his Bafta award-winning portrayal of a bereaved gay professor in Tom Ford's A Single Man.
Until these break-out roles for Firth, the two actors had kept up some kind of equivalence, each succeeding as Jane Austen heroes after Grant played Edward Ferrars in Ang Lee's Sense and Sensibility, then both tackling the modern-day laddy Englishness of Nick Hornby's world in adaptations of Fever Pitch and About a Boy. Most importantly, both actors were also ready to make fun of themselves.
Appearing as rivals for the attentions of Bridget Jones in the two films made from Helen Fielding's books, they happily mocked their own public images. As Mark Darcy, Firth played an illusive dreamboat named after his own television triumph as Austen's hero, while Grant's portrayal of the caddish Daniel Cleaver was an amused nod at his own popular persona.
Variety called Grant's performance in the film "as sly an overthrow of a star's polished posh - and nice - poster image as any comic turn in memory".
For the Observer newspaper's film critic, Philip French, the two screen idols have, on-screen, always represented two entirely different kinds of postwar hero: "In the 1950 book The Lonely Crowd, the brilliant sociologist David Riesman set out two types of behaviour - the other-directed individual and the inner-directed individual - and for me there is absolutely this distinction between these two actors. Grant is the ultimate other-directed figure, who wants to be loved rather than esteemed, while Firth is inner-directed and looks back to a much older, more grounded tradition. Together they represent these two ideas in our society."
Divine Brown, the Hollywood prostitute caught with Grant at the height of his popularity in 1995, was tracked down as an unwanted birthday gift for the actor this month. She told reporters that the incident had improved her life beyond measure and she thought it had done his career good: "He got more recognised and more movies after that night." Most observers would beg to differ.
Attempts to become a film producer with his former partner Elizabeth Hurley foundered then failed at the end of the 1990s, while a series of romcom's opposite leading American actresses have failed to work the box office magic of his outings with Curtis in Notting Hill or Love Actually.
It may look as if Grant is now as devoted to pro-celebrity golf as he is to acting, but the star is still misdirecting the crowd. In fact he takes his acting seriously and is known to be a perfectionist on set. Four years ago he fired his agent, explaining that he did not listen to counsel: "They've known for years that I have total control. I've never taken any advice on anything."
He has strong views on his own skills, too, telling an American website interviewer: "I've never been tempted to do the part where I cry or get Aids or save some people from a concentration camp just to get good reviews. I genuinely believe that comedy acting, light comedy acting, is as hard as, if not harder than serious acting, and it genuinely doesn't bother me that all the prizes and the good reviews automatically by knee-jerk reaction go to the deepest, darkest, most serious performances and parts."
And for all the power of Firth's inner-directed subtlety, it is surely true that there are few stars who occupy such a clear place in the mind of the cinema-going public as Grant does. The danger is that his charming mannerisms are now so widely recognised they have prevented him experimenting and sent him back along the same path too many times.
As French says: "The definition of Grant's public persona is now so precise that he needs to take into account how he is perceived when he takes on a role. Firth has a more plastic, or perhaps elastic, persona, giving him more room to move." And, in all probability, keep on collecting the Oscars.
Hugh Grant
1982: Appears in his first film, Privileged, while at Oxford - reviews persuade him to abandon plans for a PhD in art history.
1987: First big break arrives with a role in Merchant Ivory film Maurice, followed by Roman Polanski's Bitter Moon (1992).
1994: Four Weddings and a Funeral makes Grant an international star.
1995: Arrested for "indecent conduct" with prostitute Divine Brown.
1999: Cements his A-list status with Notting Hill.
2000: Breaks up with girlfriend of 14 years, Elizabeth Hurley.
2001: Plays role of predatory cad in Bridget Jones's Diary, saying: "I'm sick of playing Mr Nice Guy and I think everyone else is sick of it too".
Colin Firth
1983: Plays Guy Bennett in the hit stage production of Another Country while still at drama school.
1988: Earns a Bafta nomination as a paralysed Falklands veteran in TV film Tumbledown.
1995: As Mr Darcy in Pride and Prejudice captivates female audience and establishes Firth as a leading man.
1996: Meets his wife, film producer Livia Giuggioli, while working on Nostromo.
2001: Despite supporting roles in major films, including The English Patient (1996), Firth does not land a lead film part until the success of Bridget Jones's Diary.
2003: Wins acclaim for balancing hit films such as Love Actually with art films such as The Girl With a Pearl Earring.
2007: Leads campaigns against deportation of Congolese asylum seekers. Fronts Oxfam's Make Trade Fair campaign.
2009: Hollywood status confirmed with Oscar nomination for his starring role in Tom Ford's A Single Man.
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