"On the other hand, you might get a director that does put the camera on your face, but he decides he wants to interfere and control it, and provoke it out of you and say, 'Think about the time your dog died and you were little,' and I was fine before the dog thing. They don’t just let you do things. The script was clear to me. By the time I saw the way he set things up, it was eloquent already, and so we were free."
In addition to heaping praise on co-writer/director Ford, Firth also had nothing but compliments for his co-stars. "Everybody in the film seems to be at the top of their game. When I close my eyes and think of the film, I tend to see Nick Hoult’s face looking back at me. It’s very hard to forget the eyes. There’s something very truthful and very in the moment about what everybody was doing, the people I was watching. I never had such an easy time as when I worked with Julianne [Moore]. That relationship felt real to me. I wasn’t sure about it on the page, but the minute I met her, it was there. I think it’s exactly the same with Matthew [Goode]. Like that scene on the sofa, there’s moments of familiarity. If all of those things are happening, it’s got to be something to do with your director. He’s cultivated an atmosphere where he’s not going to fuss around. He’s going to let people connect with each other. Or, if there’s nobody else around, and there wasn’t in my case, let your imagination take hold and just go. He would roll out a whole magazine of film. You’d be sitting there by yourself, and if he was interested in what you were doing, he wouldn’t say cut just because the scene’s done. You’d just stay there until you heard the sound of the magazine stopping and then he’d say, 'Okay, we’ll do another one of those. Reload.' He rolled out three times, in one case."
A Single Man and Homosexuality
Firth believes that A Simple Man doesn't make an issue of its characters' sexual preference. Their choices are not what defines them and instead are simply part of who they are. "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," said Firth. "It's great, 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 [played by Nicholas Hoult]… 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. Because 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?""Tom [Ford] said at a press conference recently that he doesn’t define himself by his sexuality, particularly. It’s there, and if he were asked to say 10 things to describe himself, he’d tell you he’s from Texas, give you his name, tell you something about his life. Probably by the time he got to 10, he’d mention he’s a gay man. In my 10 things, I don’t know that I’d think to tell you I was heterosexual or not. The homosexuality is not irrelevant. I just think the film is about love, regret, and gaining or losing your love of life. What I like about it is it’s absolutely, unashamedly, and unassumedly there. This movie is homosexuality simply as sexuality, as any other sexuality."
Handling the Oscar Buzz
As for the awards recognition this performance may earn him, Firth's taking a very level-headed approach to the whole thing. Although actors always love the attention, when all the focus actually shifts to them they express confusion on how to handle it. So, how's Firth dealing with the awards buzz? "It’s confusing," laughed Firth. "It’s hard to judge an actor who’s having his insane and insatiable need for attention fulfilled, because he’d probably be at his best… It’s that Tom Waits line: 'I don’t have a drinking problem, except when I can’t get a drink.' Check in with me when I’m not getting attention.""Acting is my day job, and I do have a life. I think I invest more in my personal life than I do in my professional life. My wife is spectacularly good at keeping my feet on the ground. I have a home to go to at the end of the day, so all the rigors, the ups and downs, disappointments, and expectations, they come and go constantly. Disappointments don’t last unless you cling to them, and neither do expectations. Even if you get rewarded, you can’t cling to that moment. I do find that the sanest actors I know have a fairly strong home life and have friends outside the business."
