Mr. Darcy Comes Out

Matt Carr / Getty Images In Tom Ford’s new movie, A Single Man, Colin Firth plays a grieving, yet buttoned up, gay man.

One of the most riveting scenes in A Single Man, Tom Ford’s adaptation of Christopher Isherwood’s novel about a gay man in bereavement, comes early on in the film, when the story’s protagonist, George–played by Colin Firth–receives a telephone call and learns that his partner of 16 years has been killed in a car accident.

In a fury of anguish and despair, George runs out into a rain storm, and winds up, a soggy mess in every way, at the doorstep of his best friend, Charlotte (Julianne Moore), where he collapses in her arms. It’s one of the only times in the entire film that George lets his guard down. Otherwise, he’s as starched and wrinkle-free as the dress shirts he unwraps from their tissue paper every morning and puts on.

It’s the kind of scene that requires supreme concentration and focus from an actor; when the outside world has to absolutely stay outside.

“I don’t think there’s any difference between heterosexual love and gay love,” Firth said. “It’s a love story, and [George] is not a character who flaunts his sexuality, anyway. So I think most of us completely forgot about that fact.”

On the evening of November 4, 2008, that was a hard thing to do.

“I remember shooting that scene when we got the news that Obama won,” Firth said, the day after A Single Man screened at the Toronto Film Festival. “That was all going on in the background, people were kind of listening to radios and watching TV. Fortunately, we got most of [the scene] done, but there was a moment when I said, ‘Don’t ask me to do another take right now, because it’ll be one of joy.’”

The news caused a “general euphoria” on the set, Firth said—though “one or two Teamsters were disappointed.”

The mood fizzled, however, when, later in the night, it was announced that California had passed Proposition 8, banning gay marriage. “It was hugely ironic and depressing, especially given that, we weren’t making a political film, but given the fact that [the film takes place] in 1962, and now California had voted to take us back past 1962,” said Firth.

“I remember going to and from work, past people with placards—families who looked just like the Strunks [his character George’s Leave it to Beaver neighbors], with lovely-looking, WASPy families, saying ‘Support Prop 8’ with their children—saying: Deny the rights for some people to love each other. And I thought it was just shocking and horrible.”

In Toronto, the Weinstein Co. bought A Single Man on Tuesday and plans to release it this year. In an interview, Firth had on a very George-like ensemble: black suit and crisp, white shirt that was open at the collar. The But his demeanor was far more relaxed and chatty, as he discussed what it was like playing a gay man in a film that proudly showcases homosexuality in a way that some have called fetishistic, and that includes some rather baring–in every sense of that word—scenes.

Firth shook his head at the notion that this film was any different from the ones in which it’s women he turns into stuttering, Bridget Jones-like school girls.

“I don’t think there’s any difference between heterosexual love and gay love,” Firth said. “It’s a love story, and [George] is not a character who flaunts his sexuality, anyway. So I think most of us completely forgot about that fact.”