SAG Awards: Colin Firth hopes ‘King’s Speech’ makes a difference to people
This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.
‘The King’s Speech’ is about royal public life getting sabotaged by private matters — and when the cast of the film won the ensemble award as the climax of the Screen Actors Guild Awards, there was an appropriate bit of stutter and flutter amid the pageantry.
Colin Firth didn’t know the trophy had been won — he was backstage after winning the previous award for lead actor in a film — and Helena Bonham Carter almost stayed in her seat. ‘I thought ‘The Fighter’ was going to win it,’ she said backstage as the applause still echoed in the Shrine Auditorium.
After receiving the trophy, the cast left the stage in the wrong direction and, once off, they had to pause for a few moments so Geoffrey Rush could make a stop. But really, where it mattered most, the cast of elite British actors sparkled — on screen and on the SAG stage.
Firth said he has also been having meaningful encounters on the streets these days as people ‘talk about themselves, their sons, their daughters, the person in their life who has a problem with speech,’ the actor said. ‘I never knew there were so many people in that place out there. You hope as an actor that something you do will make a difference, you know? A lot of it is fun or escapism or light, but I think deep in all of us we hope something we do will really matter to people in a deep way.’
RELATED:
— Geoff Boucher