Colin Firth and Progreso ~ Austen Actor gets caffeinated

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'I don’t particularly like just being a mouth on a subject,” he says. “I felt more useful putting some money into it and getting involved with the business, so I’m on the board of directors,” he says. “There are people I met in Ethiopia, who should be editing newspapers. They are incredibly articulate, they have first-hand experience of everything. They’re the people that should be speaking, but they don’t get heard. They don’t get interviewed. So NGOs are imploring celebrities to come and help. I’ve been doing this for a few years and tried to do it quietly, but in the end I realised that profile is too useful to leave unused.”


http://www.colinfirth24-7.com/advocacy/progreso.html

Current Projects 2010 -11

The King's Speech
A chronicle of King George VI's effort to overcome his nervous stammer with the assistance of speech therapist Lionel Logue

Promised Land
Firth will now reunite with the filmmaker on a completely different blend - The Promised Land political crime thriller set in British-ruled Palestine at the end of World War II - circa 1948 when the partition of Palestine and the subsequent creation of the state of Israel.

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IT HAS been 15 years since Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle canoodled both on and off screen in the BBC adaptation of Jane Austen’s drama Pride And Prejudice but now the two are back together, though this time only for professional purposes.

Firth is playing George VI in a film, The King’s Speech, about the monarch’s battle with a nervous stammer, of which he was cured by an irreverent speech therapist, Lionel Logue, with whom the shy Royal became firm friends.

American-born Miss Ehle, 40, who plays Logue’s wife Myrtle, still speaks fondly of the smouldering Firth, with whom she enjoyed a fling while she played Elizabeth Bennet.

Jennifer went on to marry writer Michael Ryan, with whom she lives in New York, while Firth is married to Livia Giuggioli, an Italian documentary-maker whom Colin’s chum Nick Hornby described as “joke perfect”; shehas a PhD as well as sultry looks.

For his new movie, Firth (described rather unkindly by Rupert Everett as a “ghastly, guitar-playing red-brick socialist”) says he put aside his own political views to play the king. In reality he does not support the Establishment.

“No matter what your feelings for the monarchy, I’m aware King George was held in enormous affection by the public. I think there was something quietly heroic about him,” says Colin whose sister, incidentally, is a speech therapist.

http://www.dailyexpress.co.uk/posts/view/164240/Colin-Firth-to-reunite-with-Pride-and-Prejudice-star