WHEN Matthew Vaughn first met with Colin Firth to discuss Kingsman: The Secret Service, the director warned his leading man that, should he accept the role, there were tough challenges ahead—very tough challenges, indeed. “He said, ‘It’s going to hurt and you’ll hate me by the end,’” laughs Firth. “All true!”
The 54-year-old British actor was indeed about to embark on a role unlike any other that he has tackled during his long, distinguished career, and he clearly loved it. Yes, he says with a smile, there were plenty of occasions when, after a particularly gruelling day, nursing cuts and bruises, he questioned quite why he had taken on an action role in a spy movie, but the rewards were enormous.
In Kingsman: The Secret Service, Firth heads an all-star cast as Harry Hart, a crack operative with secret independent intelligence organization. Hart is a British gentleman—a suave sophisticate impeccably attired in the finest Savile Row suits—who also happens to be a formidable spy and, as Firth says, “a cold steel killer.” Firth embarked on months of intensive training to get into peak condition for the all action role. He enlisted the help of his regular trainer, Ed Chow, and the hand-picked specialists, led by stunt coordinator Bradley Allen, recruited by Vaughn for the film.
“It was about six months, three hours a day,” he explains. “Three hours a day, every day with this extraordinary team of guys. I’m not an athlete, historically, at all. This was taking a man in his 50s and starting almost from scratch—not quite from scratch, because I’d done some fairly standard middle-aged man’s maintenance over the years with my trainer, but still.
“Ed did say he was quite thankful for that, because otherwise the starting point would have been even lower. There were things with the lower body, squats and lunges and painful things, that you really had to get moving in order to make this thing viable.
“Then there were the hopeless first months where not only was it agony, but there was also a sense of shame that these brilliant men had to be lumbered with me.
“They must have been thinking, ‘What on earth have we got here? Is he ever going to get there? Has he got the discipline? Has he got the willpower? Has he got the strength? Has he got the aptitude?’ But then sheer persistence can deliver. I certainly did try. The spirit was willing.”
It was, indeed, and by the time he got to Vaughn’s set Firth was ready. He had to be. One of his first scenes was an extraordinary, brilliantly choreographed sequence where Harry Hart is at the center of a mass fight inside an American church
For Firth, there was also an intensive period of weapons training. Hart is an expert in hand-to-hand combat but he’s also equipped with guns and all the latest hardware and gadgets that a 21st century spy should have—including an umbrella that acts as both a shield and fires bullets and a cigarette lighter that happens to be a grenade. And, of course, his beautifully tailored suit is made of a very special bullet-proof material.
“There was an ex-Special Forces guy, telling you how to hold a gun in your hand, how to roll around, how to shoot. Then there were the actual firearms guys, who tell you how to actually operate the guns, how to reload them, as well as how to use the various objects we’ve got, and how to fight multiple opponents.
“It was as much of a dance as it was a fight thing. It’s a choreographed dance, in which you’re all dependent on each other. Once you start to speed it up, there are risks, obviously, because if you mistime something, then you get walloped, or somebody else gets walloped. It’s like what happens on a football field: just turn in the wrong way and there goes your knee.”
It’s inevitable, he says, that a few injuries are picked up along the way. But the team also included Pilates expert David Higgins who was on hand for emergency repairs.
“If you did hurt yourself, David was there to basically make sure you could be back on in 10 minutes. At one time my shoulder went in the wrong direction, because I was throwing people and doing somersaults and that sort of thing.
“Bruises were a bit of a badge of honor, actually. I remember there was a huge
bruise that basically covered my entire left arm, and the stunt guys said, ‘Yes!’ and rushed in with cameras.
“The cameras got there before the medics did, because they wanted proof that I was doing it. They said, ‘You’re getting good enough now that people aren’t going to believe it’s you.’ They said, ‘Get the B-roll.’ I don’t normally like B-roll people coming in, but for this I welcomed them, because I said, ‘Let there be proof!’”
The concept for Kingsman: The Secret Service was born when Vaughn was working with Mark Millar, the comic book author, on set for Kick-Ass back in 2009. Both huge James Bond fans, they came up with the idea about an elite spy.
A couple of years later, Millar, with illustrator Dave Gibbons, began working on the graphic novel, The Secret Service, which was published in 2012. Meanwhile, Vaughn and his regular writing partner, Jane Goldman, were working on the screenplay for Kingsman: The Secret Service. Among their other collaborations, Vaughn and Goldman also adapted Millar’s comic book, Kick-Ass, for the big screen.
Harry Hart is a veteran operative with Kingsmen, a top-secret independent intelligence organization, and newcomer
Taron Egerton is Eggsy Price, the son of a colleague who, years earlier, sacrificed his life to save Harry.
Eggsy is raw but bright and strong—brought up in a tough, working class part of London and is going nowhere fast. But Hart can see that the young man has huge potential and offers him the chance to turn his life around by trying out for a rare opening with his employers, the Kingsmen, and in doing so honoring the debt he owes his father.
But Eggsy will have to survive a series of perilous tasks that each prospective agent must pass to join the organization and battle against a set of well-educated, well-connected rivals. The Kingsmen are named after the knights of the round table—Hart’s codename is Galahad—and Sir Michael Caine plays the head of the organization, Arthur. Mark Strong is Merlin, a tech wizard who trains the new recruits.
“He blew me away,” Firth says of Egerton.
“There are young people coming out of drama schools, or out of wherever, who seem to be equipped in ways that I wasn’t.
“I was also working with Michael Caine, and there’s the same age gap there as I have with Taron, and I was learning just as much from Taron as I was from Michael Caine—different things, in different ways.”
Firth was born and raised in Hampshire, England, and made his film debut in 1984 in Another Country, reprising the role of Tommy Judd, which he had played in an earlier West End production. His film CV includes Pride and Prejudice, The English Patient, Fever Pitch, Bridget Jones’s Diary, Love Actually, Mamma Mia!, A Single Man, The King’s Speech, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy; The Railway Man, Magic in the Moonlight and Before I Go To Sleep.
He won the Best Actor Oscar in 2011 for his brilliant portrayal of King George VI in The King’s Speech.
Kingsman: The Secret Service will open on February 18 in local cinemas from 20th Century Fox.
How did you get involved in this project?
I went to meet Matthew Vaughn. It was a good year before the shoot. You got this feeling immediately that this wasn’t just your usual scenario where “the director’s thought of you for the role, have a read, we start in a couple of months.” With Matthew it was, “I’m building this.” It was part of a long-term work in progress, and it felt like it had scale.
This was a project that he had a very specific approach to and he called me in at a stage earlier than would be usual. He hadn’t finished writing, and I think he wanted to have his cast, or at least the main two good guys, lined up before he carried on with the writing. I suppose the idea was to tailor it with me in mind, to some extent, from that point onward. I had no script to read. I am not comic book literate.
I would be happy to be now, because he gave me the comics to read—that’s what I had to get going on—and it was compulsive reading. The other thing was basically to warn me about the training involved, and he asked whether I would be prepared to do that, because it would take a long time.
Did you enjoy the physical side of this role?
I loved it. I hated the first month, and by the last month, I almost felt it was all I wanted to do. There’s nothing like going from nought to whatever, with something that you believed you couldn’t do. Matthew cast me precisely because I was an improbable ass-kicking super spy. He was going to make use of the gentleman thing, which he’d seen me do before. He said he wanted this guy, when you meet him, to be the last person in the world who would ever be a cold steel killer. You have to underestimate him in order for it to work. He said, “Let’s cast a guy who is largely known for other things, whether it’s costume dramas or romantic comedies, and let him surprise people. But in order to really sell it to the sceptics, I need you to train up and do it, because anyone can just cut to a stunt guy.
Did you ever have any doubts about accepting the role?
No. Matthew’s got something that wakes you up. He’s got an air about him that makes you think he’s on to something special, and I’m not talking about some nebulous vibe, because I’ve seen Kick-Ass, and his X-Men film, and Layer Cake, and I love them all.
Would you do something like this again?
Like a shot, yeah. I missed it so much. By the time we shot that church scene and I was walking around, I thought, “I want to get back into action.” There’s a great clarity to it. It was very difficult to learn, but there’s something intoxicating about learning a new craft, and feeling that you’re beginning to get on top of it. There’s also the camaraderie with these guys, whose expectations, for all I know, were incredibly low, and it’s about winning some approval, because they were probably very sceptical at the beginning, as was I. Then I started to get points just for willingness, and the fact that I showed up on time, and I was prepared to spend an extra hour, if necessary, after the three hours were up, and that I always wanted another go at getting it right. I had to make up in enthusiasm what I lacked in natural prowess.