The insufferable Lord Henry Wotton is a man of intellect and charm. Harry, by his friends, is the catalyst for Dorian Gray's slip into hedonism. What does Colin Firth have to say about his lure and temptation of the young man as the older and wiser gentleman?
“As I see it, there are three primary characters in the story: Basil, Dorian and Henry and there’s a relationship triangle between the three. Both Henry and Basil are infatuated with Dorian in their own way. I suppose the painting is also a character in some way and this is the side of Dorian that’s kept from the world while Dorian becomes more fascinating to the world, either because he repulses people or because he attracts them. Henry wants to mess with Dorian’s beauty, to disrupt it. In my mind he does it initially to tease Basil, to provoke him, but as time goes on, for all sorts of tangled motives, he wants to break it down, he wants to see this phenomenon of beauty tarnished in some way”.
“Henry Wotton is a voyeur, he’s not prepared to get his own hands dirty. He doesn’t want to lose his family, he doesn’t want to pay the price himself and so Dorian is a kind of proxy for all. Either Henry doesn’t have the courage or he’s just not dark enough. I think it’s all just a game for Henry. In the book Henry doesn’t really change – he’s the only character who doesn’t go on one of these journeys of discovery, what we like to call the arc. I think we’ve altered that a little in this story by giving him a daughter - the stakes change and because of this, his character has to change. The fact that he has a daughter makes him vulnerable, he can no longer be flippant because something suddenly matters terribly; it gives Dorian a different kind if power and it gives Henry a different kind of urgency, he’s no longer a voyeur because he’s involved”.
“I’m drawn to characters that are hard to pin down. I’ve played plenty of characters you can pin down according to their ‘Englishness’, but I’m talking about what actually motivates this man (Henry) is very, very hard to put your finger on. There’s a big mystery to him. One could continue to ask the question about why he behaves the way he does, about his continuing fascination with Dorian which provides an opportunity for a cruel game; is there some kind of paternal love there? Some kind of sexual love there? I actually think all of those elements are there. He destroys Dorian completely - it’s Henry who initiates the process of Dorian’s self-destruction by proxy. I think there’s a kind of self-loathing that he projects”.
“In this film I obviously have to play Henry as an older man. One uses one’s imagination when you’re playing older. I’ve had to play an age other than my own in the past. I think it’s how you view the world. If it’s a well-written script and the things that are happening around you are all in place then I think it happens naturally. The minute I’m made up to look a certain way it has a bearing on how I hold myself. As soon as Ben Barnes sees me with a bald wig he wants to help me to my chair and give me some medication and help me change my colostomy bag! He can’t help patronising me when I’m old!”
“When you’re playing older it’s to do with how your eyes see the world, it’s not to do with how many wrinkles you have. There’s no alertness, no sense of being introduced to every new sight. I think Ben is also at some level following that rule.
Young Dorian is someone who’s always a bit surprised, a bit awkward and you feel like the world is always ambushing him; old Dorian is very hard to have an effect on. Olly (Parker) was always saying wisely that Henry holds himself in a certain way that says ‘I’m not old’, but there’s a huge power shift when Dorian comes back from his travels”.
“The older I get, the less I’m inclined I am to do something that I don’t enjoy, it’s as simple as that. I don’t care what masterpiece comes out of it, if I’m not enjoying it it’s not worth it, but Ben Barnes and I had a lot of fun on set. One of the great draws for me was that Ben was doing this. It helps us, and it helps the work. There’s a playfulness between Dorian and Henry and a bit of our own relationship spilled over into that”.
“Olly Parker has proved, like a lot of the best filmmakers that getting some kind of ‘film family’ together is beneficial: your trusted DoP, the team of actors you know - not just because it’s a comfort zone, but also it means you have a shorthand that you’ve developed. There’s an awful lot of territory you have to cover very quickly when you work together in order to find all the intimacy and trust and security that you need. I think being directed by an actor, as Olly is, helps a lot for all the obvious reasons. There’s an understanding. Olly was a good actor and he knows the tricks that actors pull; he knows how you like to hide – he’s got the language for that”.
Source: Momentum Pictures
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