This week Jane Austen's iconic Mr Darcy celebrates his 200th birthday.
Colin Firth is probably the best loved actor to play Mr Darcy
Just imagine: the dashing Mr Darcy is 200 years old this week. I believe that entitles him to three bus passes – and yet he is still the ultimate romantic hero.
He was introduced to the world on 28 January 1813 and became famous overnight, as did his creator Jane Austen. But the extraordinary thing is that he has remained so enormously popular for two centuries. The book has now sold more than 20 million copies worldwide and has spawned countless adaptations on both the big and small screens.
One can’t help wondering why. Well, I believe that these days, whenever Mr Darcy comes to mind, we women all think of Colin Firth, that marvellous, good-looking actor who portrayed him in the sixhour, 1995 mini-series on British television.
It was a hugely popular dramatisation, which The New York Times called ‘a witty mix of love stories and social conniving, cleverly wrapped in the ambitions and illusions of a provincial gentry’.
It won a Bafta best actress award for Jennifer Ehle, who played Darcy’s love interest Elizabeth Bennet, and elevated Colin Firth to stardom. As an actor, he has never looked back.
The scene of Colin, clad seductively in a wet shirt, was recognised at the time as ‘one of the most unforgettable moments in British television history’. Other actors have played Mr Darcy, including Laurence Olivier, Peter Cushing and Matthew Macfadyen, but almost everyone considers Colin Firth to be the best.
But how does this 200-year-old leading man have so much staying power and why does his character still resonate with us so much today?
Well, I have always believed that, as human beings, we have never really changed. In 2013, we have the same human instincts, traits and characteristics, both good and bad, as our forebears. We behave slightly di erently in certain situations, of course, and we must t in with the manners and mores of our time. But our basic emotions and feelings echo those of our great-great-greatgreat- great-grandparents, those relatives of ours who would have been contemporaries of Austen – and Mr Darcy.
In other words, while Mr Darcy would doubtless look rather out-of-date if he were to be caught walking in his breeches down a modern British high street, we would still empathise with him.
Ultimately, he is not so di erent from the men we know today. Indeed, Darcy is very much of the 21st century, despite being born in the imagination of a 19th-century woman. In fact, 183 years on, Helen Fielding used the book as inspiration for her own 1996 bestseller, Bridget Jones’s Diary. She named her leading man Mark Darcy – and he was even played by Colin Firth when it, too, made its leap on to the big screen.
In Pride and Prejudice, when we meet 28-year-old Mr Fitzwilliam Darcy (his Christian name is only mentioned twice in the book), he is handsome and rich, but far from perfect. He is from a fine family, has an income in excess of £10,000 a year and is the master of Pemberley, a large Derbyshire estate. But he is also a snob, status-conscious and awkward. He could be a leading man in any number of modern dramas.
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http://www.lady.co.uk/people/features/1 ... erfect-man
and Keira Knightley as Elizabeth.