Colin Andrew Firth, CBE (born 10 September 1960), is an English actor. He has received an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award, two BAFTA Awards, and three Screen Actors Guild Awards, as well as the Volpi Cup. Firth's most notable and acclaimed role to date has been his portrayal of King George VI in Tom Hooper’s The King's Speech (2010), a performance that earned him an Academy Award for Best Actor, among other accolades.
Identified in the late 1980s with the "Brit Pack" of rising, young British actors, it was not until Firth's portrayal of Fitzwilliam Darcy in the 1995 television adaptation of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice that he received more widespread attention. This led to roles in films such as The English Patient, Bridget Jones's Diary (for which Firth was nominated for a BAFTA), Shakespeare in Love, and Love Actually. In 2009, Firth received widespread critical acclaim for his leading role in A Single Man, for which Firth gained his first Academy Award nomination, and won a BAFTA Award. Firth starred in the action spy movie Kingsman: The Secret Service in 2014, which was a commercial success and received generally positive reviews.