Colin Firth stammers eloquently

TORONTO (AP) — Academy Awards voters love a great performance as a British monarch. And they love a great performance embodying a disability.

Colin Firth (photo), who earned his first Oscar nomination for last year’s A Single Man, this season delivers on both counts in The King’s Speech, playing King George VI as he reluctantly ascends to the throne amid a life-long battle to overcome a debilitating stammer.

Often playing glib characters with a biting tongue, as he did in Bridget Jones romances and the comedy Easy Virtue, Firth is the utter opposite of eloquent as George VI, father of Queen Elizabeth II, who was known by his given name Albert, or Bertie, to his family.

“I suppose I wasn’t looking to undermine my eloquence, such as it may be, or to interfere with my own ability to complete a sentence,” Firth, 50, said in an interview at September’s Toronto International Film Festival, where The King’s Speech played ahead of its theatrical release last Friday.

“What fascinated me is what is in that stammer that tells us about what he’s going through,” Firth said. “Those silences that Bertie finds himself in when he hits one of those blocks are a positive abyss, and they may only last a second or two, but they probably feel like an eternity.”