Matthew Macfadyen is looking back at his career and regretting not enjoying his experience filming 2005’s Pride and Prejudice.
The Succession alum played Mr. Darcy in Joe Wright’s adaptation of the classic Jane Austen novel playing opposite Kiera Knightley.
“I didn’t really [enjoy it],” Macfadyen said on CBS Mornings of his experience filming. “I feel bad saying that. There were moments I had a good time, but I wish I enjoyed it more. I wish I was less worried about it.”
He added, “I felt a bit miscast, like, ‘I’m not dishy enough. But it worked out.”
Despite not feeling like he was fit for the role, the Deadpool & Wolverine actor says, “The most flattering thing that happens to me now is people say, ‘Were you Mr. Darcy?’ It’s a good 20 years later. So I think, ‘I can’t be aging that badly.’”
Pride & Prejudice also starred Brenda Blethyn, Donald Sutherland, Rosamund Pike, Jena Malone, Tom Hollander, Penelope Wilton, Judi Dench, Simon Woods, Carey Mulligan, Talulah Riley, Rupert Friend, and many more.
The director said that casting Knightley in the role of Elizabeth Bennet allowed him to cast Macfadyen as Mr. Darcy.
“I think Matthew is obviously less of a star than Keira, and so if she hadn’t been playing Elizabeth, I’m not sure I’d been allowed to cast Matthew [as Darcy],” Wright said in an interview with MovieFreak. “So, it kind of worked like that. You try to balance it out as much as you can.”
In the same interview, Wright also noted that Macfadyen is “one of the best actors of his generation in England but, also, I knew he would approach the role like any good actor should, and that’s from the point-of-view of trying to understand the character.”
“He’s the least vain actor you’ve ever met in your life and he wasn’t coming onto this trying to portray an icon, he was coming on to play a character in the same way he would, had he been approaching Hamlet or any other great role,” Wright said.
Watch Macfadyen’s interview on CBS Mornings in the video below.
