Colin Firth almost didn't get the Mr Darcy role because he was 'too ginger'

Whatever Colin Firth does in his career, it’ll be tough to shake off his breakthrough role, as Mr Darcy in the BBC’s 1995 adaptation of ‘Pride and Prejudice’.

But according to the series writer Andrew Davies, he almost didn’t get the role… because he was too ginger.

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Amazingly, it appears that Firth’s dark and brooding colouring is not his natural one.

Speaking to an audience at the BFI to mark his 80 birthday, Davies said: “I was a bit doubtful about Colin at the time because of his colouring at the time. He didn’t have those dark curls back then.”

“He did go dark and he stayed dark ever since. He must have liked the look. I think underneath all that he’s sort of fair to ginger.”

“You must not tell anybody,” he cheekily added, saying that that it was the series producer Sue Birtwhistle who was ‘absolutely convinced that he would be wonderful’.

We’ll let that sink in for a moment, that all you thought you knew about Colin Firth’s hair colour is a lie.

Firth was 35 when he landed the role that made him leading man material, memorably emerging from the lake in the now infamous ‘wet shirt’ episode.

He revealed last year that in fact, he was meant to have been naked, but the plan was later abandoned.

“I was meant to be wearing precisely nothing,” he told Jonathan Ross.

“[It was down to] the BBC and me being a bit prudish I suppose… I probably would have done it [though].

“They had a problem because the writer had written that [Darcy] takes all of his kit off and jumps in the pond and we all knew that that was going to be delicate for family viewing and so we thought what do we do? Underpants?

“And then one of these experts said ‘they don’t wear underpants’ so we thought, ‘well let’s do something that’s sort of what if they did and they looked like my Granny’s bloomers. And the idea wasn’t supposed to be sexy it was just about a guy who is tired and het up and wants to cool off.

“I think the idea had come from me, but the next most spontaneous thing to getting all your kit off and jumping in the water is to [not] get your kit off… That’s just a wet blouse from the costume department spritzed down for continuity.”

Davies has previously teased Firth over the scene, questioning why he didn’t fancy getting his kit off.

“I don’t know the reason why – maybe they felt it would have taken too long to get him undressed. They could have always cut to him standing on the bank diving in naked so it might have been something about Colin’s anxiety about love handles or something,” he told The Times in 2013.

Image credits: BBC/Rex Features