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'King's Speech' Star Colin Firth Talks Awards-Season Love And 'Dumb Luck'

2010 best actor nominee looks poised for another Oscar nod.
By Eric Ditzian, with reporting by Josh Horowitz

Colin Firth in "The King's Speech"
Photo: The Weinstein Company

For the second year in a row, Colin Firth finds himself at the center of awards-season chatter. And after losing out on a best actor Oscar for "A Single Man," the 50-year-old actor has again established himself as one of the frontrunners in that category, thanks to his turn as the stammer-afflicted King George VI on the verge of Britain's entry into World War II in "The King's Speech."

It seems Firth is an actor at the top of his game, but to hear him tell it, it's as much a matter of good fortune as it is great talent.

"It's just dumb luck," he told MTV News at the Toronto film festival in September. "That's all: Just getting a crack at it. Sometimes you just take roles to stay in the game or pay bills and hope the good ones are going to come along.

"I was never in a world of perfect choice, and now I feel like I've had a couple of real plums landing in my hand," he added.

It was at fall film festivals in Toronto and Telluride, Colorado, as critics first began to catch screenings of "King's Speech," that it became clear we'd still be talking about Firth's performance come awards season. He's been faithfully making the publicity rounds ever since, and as he told us when we chatted earlier this month in New York, he's not bored with the experience.

"Funnily enough, I find it easier than many things," he said. "There are so many angles you can approach it from, to do with the way people are reacting to it to the surprises we've had along the way to nuances about the actual history itself. I think this has a lot of mileage in it.

"It's been very gratifying for audiences to have howls of laughter and be open to crying," he continued. "To see that happening in the same film is a triumphant feeling. When you're in Telluride, you can put it down to altitude — one glass of wine amounts to 10. So we had to test it at sea level as well to see if people enjoyed it, and they did."

Did you see Firth's performance as King George VI? Give us your review in the comments below.

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Kylie Is A Snow Angel! Minogue Seduces America!

So beguiling!
Watch Australia's favorite export perform Santa Baby and Let It Snow live on the Christmas at Rockefeller Center TV special (above)!

Tamie Sheffield Maria Sharapova Whitney Able Jenny McCarthy Reese Witherspoon

'King's Speech' Star Colin Firth Talks Awards-Season Love And 'Dumb Luck'

2010 best actor nominee looks poised for another Oscar nod.
By Eric Ditzian, with reporting by Josh Horowitz

Colin Firth in "The King's Speech"
Photo: The Weinstein Company

It seems Firth is an actor at the top of his game, but to hear him tell it, it's as much a matter of good fortune as it is great talent.

"I was never in a world of perfect choice, and now I feel like I've had a couple of real plums landing in my hand," he added.

Did you see Firth's performance as King George VI? Give us your review in the comments below.

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Katy Perry Victoria's Secret Fashion Show Performace: Video & Pictures!

Victoria's Secret's annual fashion show has come and gone, showcasing the brand's "fashion line" and giving over a billion global viewers prime ogling potential.

Also in the mix this year? Miss Katy Perry!

The singer performed at the event and showed why she's beloved around this planet, and her rendition of "Firework" was better than her AMA performance too:

Katy Perry at the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show: Live Performace

With a bombshell like this, who needs actual lingerie models? Okay, stupid question. In any case, click to enlarge some Katy Perry pictures from the event ...

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'Deathly Hallows' Designer Reveals Scene Secrets

'Harry Potter' production designer Stuart Craig talks to MTV News about helping Harry retrieve Sword of Gryffindor from a frozen lake.
By Kara Warner

Daniel Radcliffe in "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 1"
Photo: Warner Bros.

In the weeks leading up to the release of "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1," fans were in a frenzy, trying to figure out just how much of the book would make the first film, which scenes would delight and disappoint, and what characters might not return ever again. And trying to get the tight-lipped folks in the Potter camp to discuss those key points was a bit of a struggle. However, now that the film has opened, MTV News has enlisted the expertise of longtime Potter production designer Stuart Craig for a few behind-the-scenes tidbits.

Much has been said of the production moving away from Hogwarts and out on multiple locations, which Craig described as a "movie on the run."

"We made a very different kind of film, which was shot a great deal on location. We traveled quite far, we built sets, and they spend a lot of time in a forest," he explained. "We built forest sets and integrated them into the real forests, so there were challenges there, as you might imagine."

Another one of the production's major challenges — and accomplishments — was shooting the sequence in which Harry retrieves the Sword of Gryffindor at the bottom of a frozen lake.

"There was a really demanding, complicated special-effects requirement there to do the ice," Craig said. "I think that all works remarkably quite well, actually. Harry breaking the ice, diving in and then subsequently strangled by the Horcrux around his neck and is struggling and can't get up quickly because of the ice above him. It's good stuff."

Which begs the question: How did Craig and his team pull off that scene, and what do they use to make the ice look so real?

"As always, well, as nearly always, there's more than one solution. The camera on top, looking from the outside down on it. It's big, thick sheets of Plexiglass with frosty texture on top of that," he revealed.

"When we're underneath, it's actually an area of wax which floats on top of the water. And wax makes very effective ice. They're tried and tested movie techniques; there are a lot. You could write a book one day, a guidebook, to the very movie techniques — frost on window panes with some Epsom salts and brown nails."

One of the great pleasures in chatting with Craig, whose credits outside the world of Harry Potter include "Ghandi," "The English Patient" and "Notting Hill," is the fact that he has such an informed perspective on the inner-workings of the industry; specifically, how advanced film-making technology is now.

"The great thing about movies these days is that you can fix everything," he said. "I have to give a talk at a film festival early next month, and I've just been looking at films that I've done in the past. In particular, 'Ghandi,' years ago in India. The thing then was: If sometimes there was a compromise, it was filmed and it was there, locked. Forever. You look at the movie 20 years later, and there it would be.

"These days, with visual effects able to do so much, you can do face replacement, you can put Dan Radcliffe's head on somebody else's body. There's nothing they can't do, it seems. I mean, at a cost, it's not cheap, so terrible things seem to get fixed, which is very reassuring," he added, chuckling.

What was your favorite scene in "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1"? Tell us in the comments below!

Check out everything we've got on "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 1."

For young Hollywood news, fashion and "Twilight" updates around the clock, visit HollywoodCrush.MTV.com.

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