Colin Firth: Mild actor unleashes inner Bond

Is the world ready for Colin Firth, action hero?

Maybe. Maybe not.

Nonetheless, the Oscar winner is ready.

Firth — who stars in the comic-book-based Kingsman: The Secret Service, opening on Friday in theaters — appears as a suave, debonair and thoroughly lethal secret agent.

He couldn’t wait.

“When I was offered this role,” he said, “(director) Matthew Vaughn said to me, ‘Colin, you’re the last person on this Earth anyone would expect to kick someone’s arse. Are you up for it?’

“I’m someone who is always up for a major surprise,” he added, “and I grew up playing secret spies. I was in.”

Kingsman is based on the comic series by writer Mark Millar and artist Dave Gibbons.

Firth plays Harry Hart, code-named Galahad, a veteran agent for a secret organization of undercover good guys, whose latest mission is to tutor the next generation of spies. The cast also includes Michael Caine, Jack Davenport, Mark Hamill, Samuel L. Jackson and Mark Strong.

Firth, 54, summed up the movie as “an old-school spy thriller where I play the Henry Higgins of the spy world.”

The actor is best-known for playing brooding, sensitive Englishmen. His brea'kthrough role was as the sardonic Mr. Darcy in the BBC miniseries Pride and Prejudice (1995), and he won a best-actor Oscar for his performance as the tongue-tied King George VI in The King’s Speech (2010).

Kingsman isn’t that type of a movie, but that’s fine with Firth.

“This is one of those things that makes me remember why I wanted to become an actor in the first place,” he said. “When I was a young boy, thinking about acting, I wanted to be in films where you completely suspend disbelief, pretend and enter into this story world.”

Although stuntmen were used here and there in Kingsman, most of the time it’s Firth himself doing the fight scenes.

“Again, I’m the last person you’d expect to do all the action stuff,” the actor said. “But Matthew wanted me to really do it and not just cut to a stuntman. He wanted it to be utterly convincing, and, therefore, it had to be me.

“The training was extraordinary, intense and unfamiliar to me. It was long, painful and incredibly gratifying. Strangely, at the end of the shoot, I wished I could do more training.”

Seeing him in action surprised co-star Jackson: “I was sitting there slack-jawed, thinking, ‘ That’s Colin Firth?’??”

Will Firth’s fan base, made up largely of women who fell in love with Mr. Darcy and are used to seeing the actor in sober-minded period pieces, want to see him as a daring super-spy?

That might be overthinking the question, Firth said.

“This wasn’t about explaining history,” he said, “and the film is not supposed to achieve world peace. It’s just there to enjoy. I enjoyed making it and want audiences to enjoy seeing it.”

Firth lives in England and Italy with his wife, producer-director Livia Firth. They have two sons, 12-year-old Matteo and 14-year-old Luca. He also has a son, 24-year-old William, with ex-girlfriend Meg Tilly.

“I’m just a normal father in my off time,” he said, “taking the boys to school and spending time at home.”