'The King's Speech' plays for the home crowd

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It’s won the audience prizes at the Toronto and Hamptons film festivals and wowed the crowds at Telluride. Now the British drama The King’s Speech, which has already emerged as an Oscar frontrunner for Best Picture and Best Actor (Colin Firth), will finally play in the U.K. as it has its premiere at the London Film Festival tonight. Firth knows it’s an important hurdle for his lauded film. “There are certain aspects of the home environment which are not that comfortable,” he told me earlier this week while I was at the festival. “I think your own critical community can be a lot more…critical than people elsewhere. But I tend to feel quite comfortable at the London Film Festival.” Firth stands to score his second consecutive Best Actor Oscar nomination after earning one for last year’s Tom Ford drama A Single Man (and quite possibly his second consecutive victory at the BAFTAs). Is he anxious for Ford to see his latest project? “I’m apprehensive,” he says. “I kind of wish that he could see it without having to watch me.”