Colin Andrew Firth (born 10 September 1960) is an English actor and producer. He is the recipient of several accolades, including an Academy Award, two BAFTA Awards, and a Golden Globe Award, as well as nominations for two Primetime Emmy Awards. In 2011, Firth was appointed a CBE for his services to drama, and appeared in Time magazine's 100 most influential people in the world.

Identified in the mid-1980s with the "Brit Pack" of rising young British actors, he had leading roles in A Month in the Country (1987), Tumbledown (1988) and Valmont (1989). His portrayal of Mr. Darcy in the 1995 television adaptation of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice led to widespread attention and roles in more prominent films such as The English Patient (1996), Shakespeare in Love (1998), The Importance of Being Earnest (2002), and Love Actually (2003). He starred as Mark Darcy in the Bridget Jones film series (2001–2025), and also acted in the musical comedy Mamma Mia! (2008) and its 2018 sequel.

Firth won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of King George VI in the historical drama The King's Speech (2010). He was previously Oscar-nominated for playing a grieving gay man in the romantic drama A Single Man (2009), which earned him the BAFTA Award and the Volpi Cup for Best Actor. He subsequently played secret agent Harry Hart in Kingsman: The Secret Service (2014) and its 2017 sequel. He also performed in films such as Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011), Mary Poppins Returns (2018), 1917 (2019), The Secret Garden, Supernova (both 2020), and Operation Mincemeat (2021). For his roles on television, he received Primetime Emmy Award nominations for his portrayals of Dr. Wilhelm Stuckart in the BBC film Conspiracy (2001), and Michael Peterson in the HBO limited series The Staircase (2022).

In 2012, he founded the production company Raindog Films, under which he served as a producer for Eye in the Sky (2015) and Loving (2016). His films have grossed more than $3 billion from 42 releases worldwide. Firth has campaigned for the rights of Indigenous people and is a member of Survival International. He has also campaigned on issues of asylum seekers, refugees' rights and the environment. He commissioned and co-authored a scientific paper on a study of the differences in brain structure between people of differing political orientations.

Firth was born in the village of Grayshott, Hampshire, to parents who were academics and teachers. His mother, Shirley Jean (née Rolles), was a comparative religion lecturer at King Alfred's College (now the University of Winchester); and his father, David Norman Lewis Firth, was a history lecturer at King Alfred's and education officer for the Nigerian government. Firth is the eldest of three children; his sister Kate is an actress and voice coach, and his brother Jonathan is also an actor. His maternal grandparents were Congregationalist ministers and his paternal grandfather was an Anglican priest. They did overseas missionary work, and both of his parents were born and spent part of their childhoods in India.

As a child, Firth frequently travelled due to his parents' work, spending some years in Nigeria. He also lived in St. Louis, Missouri, when he was 11, which he has described as "a difficult time". On returning to England, he attended the Montgomery of Alamein Secondary School (now Kings' School, Winchester), which at the time was a state comprehensive school in Winchester, Hampshire. He was still an outsider and the target of bullying. To counter this, he adopted the local working-class Hampshire accent and copied his schoolmates' lack of interest in schoolwork.

Firth began attending drama workshops at age 10, and by 14 had decided to be a professional actor. Until further education, he was not academically inclined, later saying in an interview, "I didn't like school. I just thought it was boring and mediocre and nothing they taught me seemed to be of any interest at all." However, at Barton Peveril Sixth Form College in Eastleigh, he was imbued with a love of English literature by an enthusiastic teacher, Penny Edwards, and has said that his two years there were among the happiest of his life.

After his sixth form years, Firth moved to London and joined the National Youth Theatre, where he made many contacts and got a job in the wardrobe department at the National Theatre. He subsequently studied at Drama Centre London.