COLIN FIRTH'S DAUGHTER

      I used to have a friend who was Colin Firth’s daughter. She wasn’t really: her father had been a chartered surveyor and her mother a nurse, and she was brought up in a small town on the windy East Anglian coast, whose closest brush with the glitz and glamor of show business had been the arrival of the ice cream van in the summer. But she was tall and British with wavy brown hair, and if you had happened to be a film director who was casting Colin Firth’s daughter in a movie, and if my friend had happened to be an actress instead of a curator at an art gallery in downtown LA, no one would have laughed at you for considering her for the part.

Photo by Ahtziri Lagarde on Unsplash

       One evening, my friend – I’ll call her Emily – went out to dinner with some other friends at a restaurant near her apartment in Hollywood. A fine time was had, and after dinner the party decided to move on for a nightcap at a popular club that was near the restaurant. Unfortunately, the bouncer on duty – a man whom Emily has subsequently described as “hardly a ray of sunshine” (others of the group have used other descriptions for him) – refused to let them in for reasons he refused to explain, and after a while, the manager was called.

       “It’s crazy that you’re not letting us in,” said one of Emily’s gang, a not-shy woman called Melissa, when the manager arrived. “We’re well-dressed, we’re polite, and we’d be very good customers. And besides.”

       Without a word of warning, she wheeled around to point at Emily.

       “… she’s Colin Firth’s daughter,” she concluded triumphantly.

       Emily, who is a truthful woman, was horrified.

       “I am not!” she said.

       Melissa nodded knowingly at the manager.

       “She doesn’t like to talk about it,” she said.

       The manager nodded knowingly back at Melissa.

       “I understand,” he said. “Ladies, gentlemen, Miss Firth, please follow me.”

       “I’m not Miss Firth!” said Emily. “My name is Emily Harrison.”

       Melissa winked at the manager.

       The manager winked back at Melissa.

       “Of course it is,” he agreed, smoothly. “Come this way, then, Miss … Harrison.”

       He led them to the best table in the room and on his way out stopped at the bar to order a bottle of champagne on the house. He whispered something to the bartender. The bartender whispered something to the waiter. The waiter whispered something to one of the regulars. Pretty soon the entire clientele was surreptitiously scanning Emily’s high forehead and fair English skin and agreeing unanimously that some family resemblances were just impossible to miss.

       Suddenly, the manager re-appeared. He frowned at the bartender, and whispered another word to a different waiter, who whispered the new word to the same regular. Gradually, the gazes fell from Emily, and instead the room began to throb with a discreetly deafening hum of approval. Colin Firth’s daughter, it seemed, did not want attention paid to her. Colin Firth’s daughter, it seemed, wanted to be treated exactly like all the other patrons of the club. Colin Firth’s daughter, it seemed, did not even want people to know that she was Colin Firth’s daughter. What a delightfully humble and down-to-earth person was Colin Firth’s daughter, and how heartwarmingly well it spoke of both Colin and Colin’s daughter’s mother that they had raised her so to be.

       Emily was mortified. She is British, for heaven’s sake, and the only fate that she could possibly imagine more agonizing than having a roomful of eyes stare at her, would be to have a roomful of eyes pointedly not stare at her while a roomful of voices softly whispered her praise. She was sorely tempted to get up and leave; but to have left the club without the rest of the party would have been to draw further attention to herself, which to Emily was as unthinkable a notion as that of taking the last cucumber sandwich before offering the plate around the table. She stuck it out for the rest of the evening. But she has since commented that, had the Big One chanced to hit at any point in it and reduce the entire city of Los Angeles there and then to a heap of rubble, she … well, she wouldn’t exactly have cheered; but then she wouldn’t exactly not have cheered either.

       The club remained popular for some years, and although Melissa and company knew better than to propose Emily ever return there with them, there were occasions when other people suggested it, and Emily never knew how to refuse without spilling the full, and to her, impossibly embarrassing, beans. By then, the staff had been given strict instructions to maintain Miss Firth’s anonymity. But until the club’s dying days, Miss … Harrison was greeted by the manager with warm smiles and knowing nods and a bottle of champagne on the house for her table.

       Emily’s companions for the evening would ask her just how it was that the management knew her so well, and just what it was that she had done to deserve such celebration, to which Emily would reply that it was a long story that she’d tell them one day.

       Somehow, that day never came.