Early Life
Jonathan Firth was born in Essex, England. His mother, Shirley Jean (née Rolles), and his father, David Norman Lewis Firth, were both children of Methodist missionaries in India, and both worked as teachers in Nigeria after their marriage. He is the younger brother of actor Colin Firth and voice coach Kate Firth. The family moved many times, from Essex to Billericay and Brentwood, and then to St. Louis in the U.S. for a year when Jonathan was five. Upon returning to England the family settled in Winchester, Hampshire, where his father became a history lecturer at King Alfred's College and his mother was a comparative religion lecturer at King Alfred's College, Winchester (now the University of Winchester). Firth's desire to become an actor surfaced, he said, when he performed in a school play at the age of eleven.
Firth studied at Central School of Speech and Drama and Peter Symonds College in Winchester. His flatmate at one time was actor Rufus Sewell. After graduation, he toured with the Royal Shakespeare Company, where he made his debut at the age of twenty-seven as Henry VI (1994).
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