Firth Class 

Fans and critics love Britain's Colin Firth. But the star of Nostromo prefers good acting roles and a low profile to stardom.

"I'm still trying to find someone who has actually read Joseph Conrad's Nostromo, jokes Colin Firth who scored so heavily as Mr. Darcy in the sumptuous TV version of PrIde and Prejudice.

"While most people read and reread Jane Austen, how many actually tackle Conrad's sprawling novel? That's why it can make the ideal television adaptation. Not many can compare it to the novel because so few have read it."

The epic novel - a sort of South American western - about love, honor and greed set in a mythical Latin American country in the 1890s is coming to Masterpiece Theatre as three, two-hour episodes to run on Buffalo's ch. 17 on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday at 9 p.m. The TV version is so realistic looking precisely because it was shot on actual locations in Costaguana de Indias in Colombia in unbelievably humid conditions.

"Everybody came down with something or other," says Firth. "The heat can't be described it was so bad. It was the most uncomfortable place I have ever been to and we were there for six months sharing the sweltering sun."

Firth stars as Englishman Charles Gould who arrives with his wife (Serena Scott Thomas) to take over his father 's silver mine which has been closed but may still yield a great deal of money. Only one man is not corrupted by the lure of riches - the dockyard workers' leader Nostromo (Italian star Claudio Amedola) whose name means "our man". He must try to save the contents of the mine after civil war breaks out in the countryside.

Co-stars inlcude Albert Finney as Dr. Monygham, who has an uncanny knack for survival. And there is the intellectual gunrunner and dandy Martin Decoud (French-Canadian actor Lothaire Bluteau). There is American financier Joshua Holroyd (Brian Dennehy). And looking on is the aging but still beautiful innkeeper Teresa Viola (Claudia Cardinale).

"Somehow we made it," reports Firth. "We didn't know what we were in for. And it will be very interesting to see if television viewers take to Conrad the way they take to Austen. I rather guess Austen is more their cup of tea."

Nostromo is hardly a masterpeiece but is still engrossing during its better moments. The miniseries works as a powerful allegory and its look at Third World conditions is surprisingly contemporary.

Ironically, Firth was out of the country making Nostromo when Austen's Pride and Prejudice first ran. The story attracted 10 million British viewers a night but few people recognized him. That wasn't the case when a friend took him in to an office where adoring females gathered around and fawned.

"I decided I'd feel better unrecognized," says Firth.

"Jane Austen was not the high point of my acting career. It was a very nice production but what can you say about an author whose chief worry is how many servants her characters can afford? I would not like to spend all my time in period drama."

Firth considers his best work to be the 1987 movie A Month in the Country, a moving account of the post-war eperiences of a World War I veteran. He is not sure he will ever become a box office star.

"In some ways that's like selling your soul. I don't want to be a commodity. I like the freedom I have right now to do a variety of parts. Stars must always play the same part. The closest to popularity was Darcy and that was too close for me."

Firth was relaxing in a garden at the Ritz Carlton Hotal in Pasadena last summer when I interviewed him. No one who passed us that hot July day seemed to recognize the sandy-haired, gangly actor with the deep, cultured voice.

He does not like to talk of his person affairs, he said, and was miffed by a story in a British tabloid that paired him with actresses he'd never even met. In truth he has a young son from a relationship with actress Meg Tilly.

The couple lived for some time just north of Vancouver. To try to avoid the strain of international commutes, Firth wrote to several theatre directors in Vancouver offering his services. "I never heard from a single one," he laughs. "That was the extent of my career in Canada."

Firth came to prominence as the prickly young Communist, Judd, in the West End production of Another Country. When he left the play, he was succeeded by another talented unknown, Daniel Day-Lewis.

"People actually think there's a Brit pack out there," he jokes. "They think we all hang out at the same pub, Day-Lewis, Tim Roth, Ken Branagh, you name it - whereas we hardly know each other. We certainly are not in competition."

Firth is one of three children whose parents were teachers in such places as Nigeria and St. Louis, Missouri. At the age of 18, he moved to London, joined the National Youth Theatre and took a job answering phones and making tea. He left school before graduating for Another Country and later made the film version. Before long he was acting in his first Masterpiece Theatre presentation, Lost Empires, opposite a Mr. Darcy from another era, Laurence Olivier.

"He was very sick and this was about his last role. But he remained competitive which is what made him a great actor. He couldn't remember my name. But he was very kind to me and we had lunch and worked on lines. I'd watch him intently and during his big scenes he'd frequently toss aside his biggest moments. He always did the unexpected."

Firth is also proud of his funny turn in that blackest of comedies, Apartment Zero, shot in Argentina. It's about a serial killer (Hart Bochner) who rents a room from theatre projectionist Firth, who is obsessed with Citizen Kane.

Firth currently is co-starring in the smash movie The English Patient as Geoffrey Clifton, who is truly the catalyst for the film's tragedy.

What Firth would like in the future is parts such as the ravaged Falklands Island veteran in the British TV movie Tumbledown.

What he would not like is a regular diet of heroes in period attire reaching for their sniff boxes.