Julian Mitchell's play Another Country has schooled many a young talented actor. Old boys so far include Rupert Everett, Daniel Day-Lewis and Kenneth Branagh. No 24-year-old Colin Firth has been picked from its showcase.

Last August Colin landed the lead role of Armand in a new version of Camille and spent September filming in Paris with John Gielgud, Ben Kingsley and Greta Scacchi. At first the American producers thought he wasn't romantic enough, so he sniffed a rose through the screen test and secured the part. Next year he'll be at the Old Vic with Anthony Hopkins in Schnitzler's The Lonely Road. "Jobs float around like bubbles," he comments. "They might pop any minute."

He was first spotted while playing Hamlet in his last year at the Drama Centre andbecame the third actor to play the part of Bennett - schoolboy turned spy - in Another Country. Then came the film in which he played
the Communist Judd, to much acclaim.

On leaving drama school, he had intended to form a company. "I never want to let go of the threatre, although I'm lured by films. I'm very disturbed by what I feel to be the lack of progressive elements in acting."

Last summer he played 'one of Shaw's scallywags' in The Doctor's Dilemma with Gayle Hunnicutt and Emlyn Williams and completed a film, 1919, earlier in the year with Paul Schofield. "I play a patient of Freud and my whole part consists of lying on a couch talking about my bowels. I loved every minute of it."

Despite the calm, intelligent manner in which he approaches his work, Colin Firth has not been left unshaken by his sudden success. "It's a shock how quickly you take things for granted. How after three days of limousines, big dinners and photographs in Cannes, it stops being interesting. I certainly feel that as an actor, you have to ask yourself every day why the hell you do it."