Colin Firth visits grave of Railway Man Eric Lomax

EDINBURGH NEWS
PARIS GOURTSOYANNIS
March 8, 2015



Hollywood star Colin Firth, who played World War Two prisoner of war Eric Lomax in a blockbuster film, has paid tribute to the Edinburgh-born railwayman in a secret visit to his graveside.

Mr Firth, who won plaudits for his depiction of Mr Lomax’s life in the Railway Man, stayed with Mr Lomax’s widow Patti on a visit to Berwick-upon-Tweed last week, and sprinkled sand from a beach in Shetland on his grave.

 Mrs Lomax said: “It is quite lovely that he took the time to visit. He and Eric hit it off right from the beginning and Colin has always said that the film really affected him.”

Mr Lomax was captured by the Japanese in 1942 and was sent on a forced march along with his fellow soldiers before being put to work building the Burma Railway. More than 100,000 people died as a result of the forced labour and barbaric conditions on the railroad, including more than 6000 British personnel.


READ MORE HERE: http://www.edinburghnews.scotsman.com/news/colin-firth-visits-grave-of-railway-man-eric-lomax-1-3712687

Colin Firth Review: Masterful acting powers The Railway Man Colin Firth, Nicole Kidman powerful in emotional roles

CALGARY HERALD
BY KATHERINE MONK, POSTMEDIA NEWS MAY 1, 2014

Tanroh Ishida, left, and Colin Firth in The Railway Man. Firth brings endless pathos to the part of a broken man looking for some sense of redemption and closure.

Photograph by: Jaap Buitendijk

We can feel where the movie is going as it click-clacks along each bend with a laboured creak, but that’s OK because we’re sharing the cabin with two truly gifted performers.

Firth brings endless pathos to the part of a broken man looking for some sense of redemption and closure. His tall frame sags with the weight of human morality while his deep brown eyes stare back at the camera, silently whimpering our frailty.

It’s a truly masterful piece of acting that transcends Teplitzky’s store-bought framing, but it’s Kidman who delivers the biggest surprise: For the first time since her eyebrows turned into solid marble arches, the Australian Oscar winner who once shared a life with Tom Cruise is truly terrific.

Kidman’s physical liabilities have been masked by a smart hairstylist who gave her sweeping auburn bangs that let us read her eyes without feeling creeped-out by the frozen brows, and it makes a huge difference just in terms of empathy. She looks human.

Coupled with some dowdy clothes and a keen ear for accents, Kidman is a very believable middle-aged survivor who will not surrender to melodrama or abandonment. Her strength and her conviction in Eric’s ability to overcome his own pain give this otherwise meandering story a linear narrative arc that pulls a freight train of history into the station — a little late, and a little dusty, but shuttering with a sense of vented purpose.


READ MORE HERE: http://www.calgaryherald.com/entertainment/movie-guide/Review+Masterful+acting+powers+Railway/9797289/story.html

Colin Firth is About to Make His Fans Very, Very Happy

BBC AMERICA
By Leah Rozen | Posted on April 9th, 2014



Benedict Cumberbatch isn’t the only one who has been busy, busy, busy. So has fellow English actor Colin Firth.

The Oscar winning star, who has been absent from movie screens since the release of the little seen road movie Arthur Newman nearly a year ago, has a surfeit of new films opening in the next few weeks and months.

Colin Firth attends the New York premiere of The Railway Man on Monday, April 7, 2014. (Andy Kropa/Invision/AP)

First up is The Railway Man, an inspirational drama based on a true story that arrives in movie theaters this Friday (April 12). Firth portrays Eric Lomax, a middle aged, British World War II vet who can’t put to rest his memories of being tortured by the Japanese when, as a soldier, he was a prisoner of war in Burma. Nicole Kidman plays the sympathetic woman he marries who helps him confront his past.

Here’s the scene where Firth and Kidman’s characters first meet:

Come May 9, Firth will play a Yank and a Southerner when he portrays a private investigator in Devil’s Knot. His character, based on a real person, volunteers to help the lawyers defending a teenager who, along with two other teens, was tried and convicted–many believe mistakenly–for the killing of three young boys in 1993 in a celebrated case that came to be known as the West Memphis Three. The film, which had its premiere last fall at the Toronto Film Festival, suffered in the estimation of most critics when compared with earlier, more thorough documentaries on the same topic.

Here’s a trailer:

READ MORE HERE: http://www.bbcamerica.com/anglophenia/2014/04/colin-firth-make-fans-happy/

Colin Firth devastated when real life Railway Man died during production (exclusive)

YAHOO
By Mark Lankester | Yahoo UK Movies News – Thu, Jan 9, 2014 16:17 GMT

Colin Firth has revealed he was “devastated” when real life POW Eric Lomax, the man he plays in hard-hitting WWII drama ‘The Railway Man’, died midway through the film’s production in 2012.

Asked if it was a “dark day” for the film’s crew, Firth replied: “It was, yeah. It was devastating. [But] there’s also that sense of, in some ways, triumph; that he didn’t die in his early 20s - in 1943/44 - which he thought he was going to, and could easily have done. And it’s actually a miracle that he didn’t.”

 “I think if someone had told him then that he was going to die in Berwick, in the year 2012, I think he would have bean heartened by that,” he added, “And rather astonished.”

Watch the full interview below, exclusive to Yahoo Movies UK.


READ MORE HERE:http://uk.movies.yahoo.com/colin-firth-devastated-when-real-life-railway-man-died-during-production--exclusive--161732758.html

Colin Firth showers his wife Livia with affection as they attend the premiere of The Railway Man

MAIL ON LINE
By SOPHIA CHARALAMBOUS
PUBLISHED: 16:32 EST, 4 December 2013 | UPDATED: 07:49 EST, 5 December 2013




He may be one of Britain's most successful actors.

But Colin Firth still knows who comes first in his life as he showered his wife with affection on the red carpet on Wednesday evening.

The pair were spotted at the premiere of The Railway Man, at Odeon West End Cinema looking smart and sophisticated in similar suits.

Colin, 53, was dressed in a sharp, tailored blue suit, white shirt, polka dot tie and black brogues for the occasion.

The Bridget Jones's Diary actor slicked back his brunette tresses whilst appearing trim and and in shape for the prestigious evening.

Meanwhile his stunning Italian film producer wife, Livia Giuggoili, 44, opted for an androgynous look for the evening and dressed in tailored black suit, with slim cigarette pant-style trousers.

lLivia continued with her Green Carpet Challenge by wearing the eco-friendly tux by Paul Smith, first wearing the two-piece suit in 2012 to the BAFTA Awards.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2518347/Colin-Firth-showers-wife-Livia-affection-attend-premiere-The-Railway-Man.html#ixzz2pr3thtg7 
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

Colin Firth, Jeremy Irvine: Audience stunned as stars attend showing

HERALD SCOTLAND
Monday 6 January 2014



OSCAR winner Colin Firth and rising star Jeremy Irvine stunned a cinema audience by walking on stage before the first screening of their new film The Railway Man.

They made a surprise appearance on Friday in Berwick-upon-Tweed and answered questions after the screening.

The film is based on Eric Lomax's book of the same name about his time as a Second World War POW on the Thai-Burma railway. The two actors play Lomax at different stages of his life.

Lomax lived in Berwick with his wife Patti, who is played by Nicole Kidman in the film. The widow was at the screening of the film, which runs for one week before a national release on January 10.


READ MORE HERE: http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/audience-stunned-as-stars-attend-showing.23093194

Review and trailer: The Railway Man - Colin Firth puts in a mesmerising turn

THE DAILY STAR
By Andy Lea/Published 
4th January 2014

AS this film hasn't been released in America, Colin Firth can't win this years’ Best Actor Oscar for his latest turn as a tongue-tied Brit.

Which is a shame. Because the King’s Speech star puts in the performance of his career in this accomplished drama based on the memoirs of Eric Lomax.

Lomax, who died last year, was a railway enthusiast who was subjected to unspeakable horrors at a Japanese prisoner of war camp in Burma. The film starts some decades later when he falls for Nicole Kidman’s vivacious divorcee Patti on the romantic setting of the north-west mainline. At first, Firth is in full Mr Darcy mode delivering killer chat-up lines like: “If you think Warrington's exciting, wait till we get to Preston."

But soon after their hurried wedding, Patti realizes that Eric is still fighting his own Second World War. Lomax can’t bring himself to talk about his experiences but sudden rages, horrible nightmares and long bouts of depression, suggest he’s suffering from what we would now call post-traumatic stress syndrome.

As Patti learns his story from Lomax’s curiously accented wartime pal Finlay (a miscast Stellan Skarsgård), the film takes us back to the hells of Burma. Here we see the full horrors heaped on the young soldier (played by a great Jeremy Irvine) by a young Japanese officer.

READ MORE HERE: http://www.dailystar.co.uk/movies/358822/Review-and-trailer-The-Railway-Man-15-Colin-Firth-puts-in-a-mesmerising-turn

Video: Actor Colin Firth doesn't feel very British

BELFAST TELEGRAPH UK
Thursday, 2 January, 2014

Belfast Telegraph

Englishman Colin Firth on becoming a Scots hero

THE SCOTSMAN
Monday 30th December 2013
by SIOBHAN SYNNOT


http://kitharingtonrph.tumblr.com/post/30289735453/colin-firth-gif-hunt

Oscar clout has enabled Colin Firth to make his pet project, a harrowing testament to human cruelty that is also a tribute to a remarkable Scot

Can an Oscar change your life? Or just hang a burden of expectation around the neck that can induce paralysis? Renée Zellweger, Halle Berry and Adrien Brody never made it back to the A-list after their wins. Hilary Swank has two awards, which is also the number of films most people can name that star Hilary Swank.

Two years ago, when Colin Firth held the statuette in both hands for The King’s Speech, he fretted, “I have a feeling my career has just peaked,” then promised the academy a night of celebratory bad dancing. It took a little longer for the film industry to respond: “One day I had three bad scripts on my desk,” he says, “the next day I had 300.”

Firth’s Oscar has had a nomadic existence since 2011, travelling around the houses of friends and family, or off to his sons’ school for show and tell sessions, where anyone can pose with it. It’s not yet been used as a door stop, but “it definitely opens doors. There are two ways of dealing with such an immense piece of good fortune. One is to feel pressure and say you have to do everything right – and you won’t. Or you can say ‘I’ve got that in the bag, I can do what I want,’ and if you want to reach somebody to get the collaboration on something, then they’ll talk to you.”

The Railway Man is the first beneficiary of Firth’s new clout. Based on Eric Lomax’s memoir of being forced to work on the Burma-Thailand train line known as the Railway of Death, it is a war drama wrapped in a love story. Firth has wanted to make this film for years, but the money only arrived when he received his golden gong.

Firth films usually centre on earnest men who are a little inhibited and awkward about revealing passion. Eric Lomax was different. For a start, he was always openly enthusiastic about his love for trains. The infatuation began when Lomax was growing up in Edinburgh towards the end of the golden age of steam. He loved their precision, their romance and their craft, but later the enthusiasm became bitterly ironic when he was conscripted to help build the jungle railway made famous in the film The Bridge On The River Kwai.

As a signals officer in Singapore, Lomax was just 23 when the Japanese overran that city and made him a prisoner of war. Lomax survived, but only just. Malnutrition, disease, heat and cruelty killed more than 100,000 Asian labourers and some 16,000 British, Australian, Dutch and Americans who hacked out tracks in soil, but Lomax was subjected to especially shocking punishment when the Japanese discovered he had helped build a basic radio and had drawn a detailed map of the terrain.

Each day he was forced to stand to attention in the blazing sun with four other officers. When night came, they were each beaten systematically. One particular voice lodged like shrapnel in his mind. Nagase Takashi translated back and forth during the beatings and torture, and advised him to confess before execution. “He was centre-stage in my memories,” Lomax wrote in his book. “My private obsession. He stood for all the worst horrors.” The trauma continued to haunt him for decades, costing him his first marriage, and casting a long shadow over his second.

As the sun sets on a midwinter Sunday afternoon, mine is the last of a small handful of interviews with Firth. I can’t help but notice that the Today programme just beforehand sent three women; one to ask the questions, and two apparently to watch Firth, who is looking very sharp with his Harry Palmer glasses, a beautifully cut suit, and the sort of good hair you see adorning the heroes on the covers of Barbara Cartland novels.

Our seating arrangement is all business – a couple of high-backed chairs and a table, ignoring the chummy sofa by the hotel window because Firth doesn’t get too comfortable in interviews. “It’s not the saltmines”, he allows, but he’s not a big fan of the process and its scrutiny. Yet he met Lomax many times at his home in Berwick-upon-Tweed to discuss the book, the film and, inevitably, to draw out and relive some of Lomax’s traumas. A bit like being a journalist then? Firth flinches slightly at the comparison. “I wasn’t there to write about him, I was there to portray him,” he says. “I wasn’t there just to pry into the painful things, but to see who he was, how he processes things. It’s about trying to inhabit his perspective.”

His first meeting with Lomax and his wife Patti was tentative. “I’d been told not to expect a man who was old in his mind, but when you see a frail man in his 90s, you fall into that trap of speaking a bit louder at first. Then I realised this man was as present as anybody at any age. He was formidably articulate, very sharp and very witty.”

It was difficult for Lomax to meet new people by this point, but he took a liking to Firth, who has a droll wit and a gently persistent curiosity. However, the former PoW had no idea that this polite actor was also one of Britain’s biggest stars until he saw a picture of Firth on the front page of a newspaper. “We must’ve gotten someone famous!” he said to his wife Patti, who gets an equally glam doppelganger, as she’s portrayed by Nicole Kidman in the movie.

READ MORE HERE: http://www.scotsman.com/what-s-on/film/englishman-colin-firth-on-becoming-a-scots-hero-1-3249762

Movie starring Colin Firth tells remarkable story of late Scots soldier Eric Lomax who was tortured at the notorious Changi camp

DAILY RECORD
By Amber Wilkinson
October 1, 2013

HIS story is the inspiration for a new film about the building of the Thai/Burma railway during World War II, starring Colin Firth and Nicole Kidman.

But the director of The Railway Man feels the late Scots soldier Eric Lomax would have found the depiction of his life as a ­prisoner of war too difficult to watch.

Its based on Eric’s memoir and relives his horrific experiences as a Japanese prisoner of war, his post-traumatic stress and what happened when he met his former tormentor Nagase Takashi years later.

Eric and a group of friends were subjected to brutal torture after being caught with a ­contraband radio at the ­notorious Changi camp.

The camp housed soldiers who worked on the Thailand to Burma “Death Railway”.

During the making of the movie, Eric became good friends with Firth, who plays him after the war. War Horse actor Jeremy Irvine portrays him in his younger years.

But the former PoW died, aged 93, in May 2012, before the movie was finished.



Speaking after the film screened at San Sebastian Film Festival in Spain, Australian director Jonathan Teplitzky said: “It’s bittersweet in the fact that he’s not here but it’s also a film I don’t think he would have sat down and watched.

“He was utterly thrilled that it was being made. He came on set a couple of times and he saw a lot of still photos and he had a close relationship with Colin.

“But he would have loved his wife Patti to have come home and told him about the reception of the film.

“He didn’t need to watch it – that’s the important thing. The events that are depicted in the film, he worked a whole lifetime to leave behind and he probably didn’t need to see those things triggered again.

“But he would have loved to have known and his book is being rereleased as a result. He would have been thrilled with that too.”

Eric grew up in Edinburgh and lived with Patti, 76, in Berwick-upon-Tweed until his death.

She is played by Kidman in the film, which charts not only the brutality of war but also how the pair fell in love after a chance meeting on a train.

Jonathan says Patti helped Eric come to terms with post-traumatic stress, even though she only has two mentions in Eric’s book.

“Nicole loved the script and what it was saying about what it took to love a man,” said Jonathan.

“We cast her very quickly. Patti is a selfless role – it’s not following her life, it’s about what happened to Eric and her emotional response to it.

“We built up the role of Patti from talking to them and realizing she played such a significant role in what Eric went through.”

The film was partly shot in Thailand, Perth and East Lothian, which Jonathan believes helped paint an authentic picture.


READ MORE HERE: http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/entertainment/movies/movie-news/movie-starring-colin-firth-tells-2326093

Colin Firth tackles story of torture, forgiveness in 'Railway Man'

REUTERS

By Jeffrey Hodgson

TORONTO | Sun Sep 8, 2013 6:37am IST\

(Reuters) - Actor Colin Firth said on Saturday he felt a special sense of obligation portraying the true story of a British soldier who was tortured and then suffered for decades before finding the strength to forgive his captors.

In "The Railway Man," which had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on Friday, Firth portrays World War Two veteran Eric Lomax, who was captured by the Japanese and spent years as a prisoner of war.

"You just want to be absolutely sure that you don't drop the baton, that you don't compromise how well this story has been told up to now, despite your limitations. Such care has been taken to get the truth out there," Firth, who won an Oscar in 2011 for his performance in "The King's Speech," told reporters in Toronto.

The film begins in the later decades of Lomax's life, when he meets and falls in love with his future wife Patti, played by Nicole Kidman. Their marriage was tested by his nightmares and breakdowns, a legacy of the beatings and other torture he suffered.

Lomax is forced to confront his past when he learns that Takashi Nagase, the young English-speaking officer who participated in his brutal interrogations, is still alive.

Screenwriter Frank Cottrell Boyce said that sadly, while the film is historical, topics like the trauma of torture victims and returning soldiers are as relevant as ever.

"The way that Eric was tortured was water-boarding. When we first started working on this film, that seemed like a kind of antique, remote thing. And now it's part of how we do business in the West," he told reporters.

READ MORE HERE: http://in.reuters.com/article/2013/09/08/entertainment-us-toronto-railwayman-idINBRE98700Q20130908

Colin Firth, Jeremy Irvine: The Railway Man Press Conference - TIFF

Colin Firth: Caffeinated and impassioned in Toronto

DETROIT FREE PRESS
by Donna Freydkin, USA TODAY

TORONTO - Colin Firth doesn't mind aging himself. "I've been coming here since the late '80s, when it was so much smaller," says the Oscar winner regarding the International Film Festival, which runs through Sept. 15. He's been here for The King's Speech and A Single Man - winning an Oscar for the former and being nominated for the latter.

And this year, Firth is headlining the war drama The Railway Man, directed by Jonathan Teplitzky and co-starring Nicole Kidman, based on Eric Lomax's autobiography of the same name.

In the film (no U.S. release date yet) and the book, Firth's Lomax is taken captive during World War II and sent to a POW camp by the Japanese, where he is forced to work on the Thai-Burma Railway and suffers almost unspeakable atrocities.

"What happened was so brutal that you can't tell adventure stories about that stuff," says Firth. "Once you understand what individuals did for each other, it's probably more heroic than you can imagine." He spent time with Lomax, an experience he says was critical to developing the role.

"You do what you can. Our tools are very limited. You're employed to represent experiences that are beyond your understanding. I've never been through anything approaching that. My courage has never had to be summoned for anything like that. I can only offer my imagination."


READ MORE HERE: http://www.freep.com/usatoday/article/2776525

Nicole Kidman & Colin Firth: 'Railway Man' TIFF Premiere! (video)

 

 JUST JARED

September 6, 2013

Nicole Kidman suits up for the premiere of her new film The Railway Man held during the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival on Friday evening (September 6) at Roy Thomson Hall in Toronto, Canada.

The 46-year-old actress was joined by her co-stars Jeremy Irvine and Colin Firth, whose wife Livia Giuggioli was by his side at the premiere.

READ MORE HERE: http://www.justjared.com/photo-gallery/2945368/nicole-kidman-colin-firth-railway-man-tiff-premiere-17/

Toronto Film Festival 2013: Colin Firth stars in The Railway Man

THE TELEGRAPH
By Dalya Alberge1:30PM BST 06 Sep 2013

As a British prisoner of war, Eric Lomax endured unspeakable torture and terror at the hands of his Japanese captors. Forced to stand for hours in the burning sun, he was half-drowned by a water-hose placed in his nose and mouth, his arms were broken and his ribs cracked in savage beatings, and he was made to sleep in a cage covered in excrement. That was his punishment for being caught with a radio that he helped to build. Two fellow prisoners similarly accused did not survive the beatings.

Almost a year after his death aged 93, the harrowing but inspirational story of atrocities that he and thousands of British servicemen suffered in captivity and on the notorious Thai/Burma “Death Railway” is now told in a major British film. The Railway Man receives its world premiere this weekend at the Toronto Film Festival, attended by his widow, Patti, and its Oscar-winning stars, Colin Firth and Nicole Kidman. But its producer and co-writer, Andy Paterson, doubts that Lomax would have joined them had he been alive. He believes that, after a lifetime of nightmares and flashbacks, Lomax would have found the film’s portrayal too realistic. The horrors remained raw – even after facing his demons, both psychological and real, in confronting, then forgiving Takashi Nagase, the interpreter who presided over his torture.



After the war, like many POWs, he was unable to talk about his experiences. But he realised that future generations needed to be told and, in 1995, he published his powerful memoir – The Railway Man – a bestseller that reminded the world of the sacrifices of the “forgotten army”.

Paterson observes: “He was able to make sense of it – not just for himself, but so others might comprehend it … But we still occasionally glimpsed what Patti called ‘the shutters coming down’. If you [probed] … too deep, you’d encounter the silence.” At his home, Paterson and Firth noted the absence of a radio. Paterson recalls. “He looked at us and said ‘I think I’m allergic to radios’.”

They worked extremely closely “to understand what he went through … very different from writing down events,” Paterson adds. They wanted the script “right” and “there was a moment when he said, ‘this is what it felt like’. Then we knew the script was right.”

Like other veterans, Lomax was critical of David Lean’s fictionalised film, The Bridge on the River Kwai. He criticised the well-fed POWs. The Railway Man went out of its way to find thin extras, and Jeremy Irvine, who made his name in Steven Spielberg’s War Horse, lost two stone to play a young Lomax. Firth portrays the older man.

READ MORE HERE: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/10288754/Toronto-Film-Festival-2013-Colin-Firth-stars-in-The-Railway-Man.html

New Look at Colin Firth in TIFF Bound 'The Railway Man'

A tale of survival, love and redemption

ROPE OF SILICON

BRAD BREVET 

PUBLISHED: WEDNESDAY, JULY 24TH 2013 AT 8:30 AM

I still have a lot of new pictures to preview from the films that will be premiering at the 2013 Toronto Film Festival and I'm hoping to get to a lot of them today and first up is The Railway Man from director Jonathan Teplitzky (Burning Man) and starring Colin Firth, Jeremy Irvine (War Horse), Nicole Kidman, Stellan Skarsgård and Hiroyuki Sanada. And just above is a new look at Firth in the film which was shot by Garry Phillips.

The film is without a domestic distributor so its premiere in Toronto is going to be an important one.

READ MORE HERE: http://www.ropeofsilicon.com/new-look-at-colin-firth-in-tiff-bound-the-railway-man/

COLIN FIRTH, BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH: The Railway Man ticketed for Boxing Day, August: Osage County on January 2 By Don Groves

The producers and distributors of The Railway Man are showing great faith in the drama starring Colin Firth and Nicole Kidman by scheduling it for December 26, arguably the most competitive date in the calendar.

Directed by Jonathan Teplitzky, the film is based on a memoir by Eric Lomax, who, as a prisoner-of-war was forced to work on the construction of the Thai/Burma railway during WW2. Years later he confronted the Japanese soldier who tormented him.

The Australia/UK co-production had been due to open on October 24. Transmission Films announced the new release date today, which means it will compete with a raft of other openers including The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, Ben Stiller’s comedy/drama The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, Alexander Payne’s Nebraska, Stephen Frears’ Philomena, Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave and Chilean director Sebastián Lelio’s Gloria.

On January 2 the competition will further intensify with the debuts of the spy saga Jack Ryan, which stars Keira Knightley, Chris Pine and Kevin Costner, Walking With Dinosaurs and August: Osage County, which features Julia Roberts, Meryl Streep and Juliette Lewis.

The Railway Man producer Chris Brown has full confidence in its prospects of drawing audiences on Boxing Day, telling IF, “It’s a very, very powerful film with extraordinary performances. If you want counter-programming to the post-Christmas fare, that’s the place to put it.”

READ MORE HERE: http://if.com.au/2013/07/18/article/The-Railway-Man-ticketed-for-Boxing-Day/JFGCVBPZUK.html

Colin Firth: So why has Mr Darcy gone on a diet? Actor sheds the pounds (DAILY MAIL)

After his turn as Mr Darcy, Colin Firth’s fans were, to put it delicately, rather eager to relieve him of that wet shirt.

These days, however, they are more likely to want to sit him down for a proper home-cooked meal.

The Oscar-winning actor, 52, seemed far slimmer than usual as he attended a launch party thrown by designer Tom Ford in Mayfair, with his face and neck looking a little gaunt.

But fans can rest easy about his health – his weight loss is for a movie role.

Firth, who looked smart in a suit and black-framed glasses, has shed pounds to play a prisoner of war in upcoming film The Railway Man.

It is based on the true story of British officer Eric Lomax, played by Firth, who is captured by the Japanese during the Second World War and forced to work on the Thai-Burma railway.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2344781/Why-Colin-Firth-gone-diet-Actor-sheds-pounds.html#ixzz2WlTGUvdU 
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

Great Expectations star Jeremy Irvine reveals 'acting masterclass' with Colin Firth in The Railway Man - but says he doesn't want fame (COVENTRY TELEGRAPH)

 By David Bentley on December 10, 2012 9:12 PM

Jeremy Irvine is having the year of his life. No sooner had he made his film debut as the lead in Steven Spielberg's War Horse in January than he found himself being asked by director Mike Newell to play Pip in his adaptation of the Dickens classic Great Expectations, now on release in cinemas.


And then he was in demand yet again when Colin Firth wanted Irvine to play his younger self in upcoming war drama The Railway Man.

In The Railway Man - due out in 2013 (no UK release date has yet been announced) - Irvine plays the young Eric Lomax, a British army officer sent to a Japanese prison camp during World War Two and forced to work on the infamous Death Railway from Thailand to Burma. Firth portrays the older Lomax.

"I met Colin Firth and had dinner with him and he was the one that actually got me the role, which was nice," says the 22-year-old rising star.

"We kind of share the movie and he was so generous. We'd rehearse in his living room and I was thinking 'My God, this is the kind of acting masterclass you can only dream of when you're at drama school'.

"At the time, you're just working with someone who's really good at what they do and really interesting, and of course afterwards you go 'Wow, that was really kind of him'."


READ MORE: http://blogs.coventrytelegraph.net/thegeekfiles/2012/12/great-expectations-star-jeremy-irvine-on-his-acting-masterclass-with-colin-firth-in-the-railway-man.html

Dinner with Colin Firth helped Jeremy Irvine land Railway Man role by Birmingham Post, Birmingham Post

Jeremy Irvine is having the year of his life. No sooner had he made his film debut as the lead in Steven Spielberg’s War Horse in January than he found himself being asked by director Mike Newell to play Pip in his adaptation of Great Expectations – then Colin Firth wanted him to play his younger self in upcoming war drama The Railway Man.

“Sometimes you read a script and spend a long time saying, ‘Oh well, maybe it could work this way’, but this was just such as ‘I’ve got to do this movie’ moment,” the 22-year-old says earnestly.

“I met Colin Firth and had dinner with him and he was the one that actually got me the role, which was nice.”

Irvine plays the young Eric Lomax, a British army officer who was sent to a Japanese prisoner of war camp during the Second World War and forced to work on the infamous ‘Death Railway’ from Thailand to Burma. The film is based on his memoir of the same title, and Firth plays the older Lomax.


“We kind of share the movie and he was so generous,” says Irvine. “We’d rehearse in his living room and I was thinking, ‘My God, this is the kind of acting masterclass you can only dream of when you’re at drama school’.

“At the time, you’re just working with someone who’s really good at what they do and really interesting, and of course afterwards you go, ‘Wow, that was really kind of him’.”



Read More http://www.birminghampost.net/life-leisure-birmingham-guide/birmingham-culture/film-news/2012/11/29/dinner-with-colin-firth-helped-jeremy-irvine-land-railway-man-role-65233-32326505/#ixzz2DeME4Bt1