From KCRW in Santa Monica, this is The Treatment.

Welcome to the treatment, which you can also hear at KCRW.com.

I'm Elvis Mitchell. My guest, Colin Firth, walking through his career is kind of like walking

through a library. He's done some Oscar Wilde. He's done some Shakespeare. He's played Shakespeare

as a matter of fact, one of my favorite pieces, the Blackadder. He's also been some Joseph

Conrad to Helen Fielding. But he's done some original things, too. In fact, one of my favorite

movies of his apartment zero relates to his new film in some ways, the adaptation of Christopher Isherwood's a single man. First, or Colin, thanks so much for being here.

It's a great pleasure. Thank you. The reason I was reminded of Apartment Zero when I saw a single man is with both pieces about guys who are going through extraordinarily tragic circumstances and are forced to recognize

some parts of themselves that they hadn't recognized before because of another man in both cases.

It's interesting. It hadn't occurred to me. Apartment Zero was a film which got under my skin,

and they're both men who are living in isolation, and come to think of it, they're both men who seem to be trying to defend themselves against the world

with a kind of external fastidiousness.

I mean, Apartments here is not set in the past, but Adrian sets himself very much in the past.

He would love to be Carrie Grant or Montgomery Clift or one of the pictures he has hanging on his wall.

There's something in common just in terms of the universe that these men create for themselves.

There have been so many adaptations and a tragic cast to many of them.

And then the characters that you play.

You know, I don't think I've had more than my share of loss or grief in my life.

And maybe there's something to do with disposition or some way I view the world.

I remember years ago, a fellow actor asking me, I think almost within reference to the iconic mind masks of the smiling face and the sad face, which is your

primary impulse, as if all actors would probably err one way or the other. Is it to make

people laugh or to make them cry? I think we both, without hesitation, said, cry. This is when I was

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