Who is your favourite Darcy?

[RintoulFan]

.....

[cacian]

There is only one Darcy.
Are there many I do not know of?
Ok how about you?who is your favourite Darcy if there is another one? ;)

[kiki1982]

Oh, come one there are only two real Darcys! Well, OK, maybe 3.

Auten's, Firth (sorry man) and Eliot Cowan. If you haven't seen him, please watch Lost in Austen. All the others are just... meh

[Zaza]

What about Laurence Olivier? Or Matthew MacFadyen?

[qimissung]

I know this isn't popular, but I liked Matthew MacFadyen as Darcy. I loved Colin Firth as Darcy, too. Of course, I just love Colin Firth, anyway. :D

[Snowqueen]

I know this isn't popular, but I liked Matthew MacFadyen as Darcy. I loved Colin Firth as Darcy, too. Of course, I just love Colin Firth, anyway. :D

He is popular over here, Qimi. My younger sister was head over heels for Mathew McFadyen when she saw Pride and Prejudice, I like him too. But my favourite is Collin Firth.

[mona amon]

Only one Darcy for me and that is Colin Firth. **swoon** :D

Mathew McFadyen seemed shy rather than arrogant, and Keira Knightly was too pretty, I felt.

[Snowqueen]

Only one Darcy for me and that is Colin Firth. **swoon** :D

Mathew McFadyen seemed shy rather than arrogant....

I agree he did seem a bit shy, but I liked him too. He looked very handsome in that role.

[mona amon]

Oh he's very cute! :p And I quite liked the film, but he just didn't seem like Darcy to me.

[qimissung]

He did seem like Darcy to me. They can't be carbon copies of the book, that's just not going to happen. Apparently both he and Kiera Knightley were about the actual ages of the characters in the book, which I liked. I like Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle, but they were a little older. It's hard to fake both the impulsiveness and hardheadedness of youth.

[kiki1982]

I have nothing against MacFayden (he looked good in Little Dorrit), but despite the ages I thought his face is too introverted to be mistaken for proud. With his long and pretty open face, he just doesn't look hard enough to be a Darcy. Darcy looks the confident and naturally aloof person in the corner, where he is in fact a bit shy. MacFayden, to me, looked the shy and gentle man in the corner who doesn't dare to speak to anyone.

I thought Ehle was actually about 21, but Firth was 35 at the time. Reasonably unknown.

Although I don't think we should compare a 21-year-old now with one back then. Your life was about a fifth to a third of the way through, if you didn't account for 20% of deaths in childbirth and other accidents.
Similarly, Darcy when he is 28 and a mere 6 years older than his friend Bingley, there is a great big difference in stature. Not only because Bingley only has 5,000 and Darcy double, but also because Darcy has bene his own man for a bit longer. I don't think 35 was too far off for a modern man, actually. 30 is when men more or less start to grow up.

[Lokasenna]

Now, I love Jane Austen, I really do, but I've never quite understood why Darcy gets so much more attention than her other romantic heroes? Everyone always goes goo-goo eyed over Darcy in a way they simply do not with Captain Wentworth or Mr Knightly.

[kiki1982]

Yes particularly Wentworth is worth more attention. The silent suffering that finally gushes out of him is better than anything Darcy ever came up with.
Knightley is kind of cute. He is particularly funny in that seventies BBC adaptation. At the point he is about to propose, but thinks Emma is attached :lol:. The actor has played him as a kind of second father for Emma and he is on pretty intimate terms with her until he is faced with the fact he loves her. He just can't say it and she doesn't want to listen. It's pretty cute, all the emotions in his face: the despair, the flutter, the doubt on the man's face in that little summer house. Although I like Davies' Knightley better (he is not so obviously old compared to Emma, and he is still able to get worked up in a kind of childish way, particularly during his rant about Churchil, flinging his hat about in sheer frustration :lol:), that seventies version is particularly well acted in that part.

But isn't that always the way? People get obcessed with one hero of an author and forget about the other brilliant characters. Maybe it's just Firth's appeal, though, that keeps Darcy in the public mind. Wentworth and Knightley have not had that fortune (although they were acted by very good actors maybe even superior when it comes to the fomer).

[Zaza]

I'd like to put in a word for JJ Feild as Henry Tilney in the ITV adaptation of 'Northanger Abbey'. He was very appealing. Of course, the script was by Andrew Davies, which did no harm. I think Tilney gets overlooked because it is a lighter novel.

As for any really old BBC adaptations of Jane Austen, they tend to be pretty ropey. Nothing much good 'til the nineties.

[kiki1982]

Can't remember the actor, but Tilney was definitely very very very charming and sparkly on paper. Reminded me a little of Frank Churchill, but more honest. Tilney splashes off the page with delight, almost. He's the typical man who walks into the room, changes the mood and attracts all the looks.

Indeed, it is a shame he is always left behind. Had Austen given him a more yearning quality, a bit doomed like Darcy, he would have gone down a treat.

As to those adaptations. It's true that the earl ones are ropey. They are invariably filmed in a studio (even the garden bits) and the lighting is sh*t. Candles blot the screen when the camera moves. The famous P&P adaptation from the nineties is then much better. But I still found that Emma adaptation quite nice. If only for its meticulous dramatisation. Together with Davies's, it was a very good interpretation. It was a bit sad that Davies did not have the time to make a more elaborate version of that novel.
The only thing that does grate in the beginning of the 70s Emma is the vast and obvious age difference between Knightley and Emma. Not that it is not realistic, but Davies's Knightley looked a bit younger (as we had moved on to the nineties where people didn't look old when they got to 45). Still I find that Mark Strong and that seventies Knightley (have forgotten his name now) can rival each other.

Have you ever watched it. Definitely do! It was on YouTube years ago. And don't get distracted by the eyebrows. :lol: Now that's a difference with the nineties that you can't beat: no botox. In the beginning you wonder what you see in that face of Emma mainly that bugs you. It is the eyebrows that move with every sentence and every expression. How we have got used to immobile brows...

[Varenne Rodin]

My favorite Darcy is the Darcy from our very own forum! The Darcy from the book is quite a nice character as well. :D

[Zaza]

Another one is Darsie Latimer from 'Redgauntlet'. A cutie worthy of the name.

[qimissung]

I have nothing against MacFayden (he looked good in Little Dorrit), but despite the ages I thought his face is too introverted to be mistaken for proud. With his long and pretty open face, he just doesn't look hard enough to be a Darcy. Darcy looks the confident and naturally aloof person in the corner, where he is in fact a bit shy. MacFayden, to me, looked the shy and gentle man in the corner who doesn't dare to speak to anyone.

I thought Ehle was actually about 21, but Firth was 35 at the time. Reasonably unknown.

Although I don't think we should compare a 21-year-old now with one back then. Your life was about a fifth to a third of the way through, if you didn't account for 20% of deaths in childbirth and other accidents.
Similarly, Darcy when he is 28 and a mere 6 years older than his friend Bingley, there is a great big difference in stature. Not only because Bingley only has 5,000 and Darcy double, but also because Darcy has bene his own man for a bit longer. I don't think 35 was too far off for a modern man, actually. 30 is when men more or less start to grow up.

Actually, life expectancy then was not as bad as is often reported:

http://gcanyon.wordpress.com/2009/06/25/life-expectancy-in-the-1800s-not-as-bad-as-reported/

Anyway, who we like is all subjective, and fortunately for us the thread is titled who is your "favorite" Darcy. So far I like both Colin Firth and Matthew McFayden, mainly because I just happen to like both those movies (yes, I know, one is a mini-series).

As to why we in generaly mention Darcy more often, Lokasenna, he was young, handsome, wealthy, and originally quite aloof, and I think we all enjoy watching him him as well as Elizabeth fall in love.

[Zaza]

No takers for Laurence Olivier, then? He did proud and arrogant very well.

[*Classic*Charm*]

Laurence Olivier was pure arrogance. No "real man" quality about him.

Matthew MacFadyen for the win.

[Adolescent09]

Laurence Olivier was pure arrogance. No "real man" quality about him.

This...this is a joke, right?

[Zaza]

Of course Laurence Olivier had 'real man' quality. Plus the best cheekbones ever. He had the face of Darcy before he even opened his mouth.

[*Classic*Charm*]

This...this is a joke, right?

Sadly, no. I don't mean Laurence in general, but in this particular film. He's dull. Greer Garson makes him look like a piece of the scenery. Sorry!

[kiki1982]

Actually, life expectancy then was not as bad as is often reported:

http://gcanyon.wordpress.com/2009/06/25/life-expectancy-in-the-1800s-not-as-bad-as-reported/


Thanks for the link. I had always presumed life expectancy statistics were skewed because of infant death rates. I couldn't imagine that a man would marry at 30 in order to die 8 years later and (at best) leave his wife with a score of children if not his children orphans altogether. I had one sad case like that in my husband's family tree though. Must have been awful for them.

Indeed, if you look at FreeBMD.org.uk - a website for looking up births, marriages and deaths in England originally for genealogy, but we can use it here too -, you can see deaths from about 1860, when ages were started to be recorded too and that indeed has mainly babies/small children on one end and people of mature age (50s and 60s with some 70s and rare 80s and 90s) on the other. A few in the middle, but not the vast majority.