Early Career
Firth was a leading child actor by mid-1970, starring in The Flaxton Boys as Archie Weekes and the Here Come the Double Deckers series, which featured child actors in the leading roles. Firth played Scooper, the leader of the gang.
In July 1973, he appeared at Laurence Olivier's National Theatre, starring in the stage version of Peter Shaffer's play Equus, playing a teenager being treated by a psychiatrist, and in October 1974 repeated the role in the Broadway production, receiving a Tony Award nomination for his performance as Alan Strang.
His first major role as an adult was in the title role in a 1976 BBC Television Play of the Month adaptation of Oscar Wilde's novel The Picture of Dorian Gray. The adaptation was based on a stage adaptation by John Osborne and also starred Jeremy Brett and John Gielgud. That same year saw the release of the World War I film Aces High which featured Firth as the inexperienced RFC pilot Lt. Stephen Croft.
Firth played the lead role in the unsuccessful film adaptation of Henry Fielding's Joseph Andrews (1977). That same year, he starred in the film adaptation of Equus, with Richard Burton. The film was only a moderate box office success, but earned Firth a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor and a Golden Globe award in the same category. Further film work quickly followed, most notably Roman Polanski's Tess (1979).
In May 1981, he appeared on Broadway again in Peter Shaffer's Amadeus as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart replacing Tim Curry. Shaffer had offered him the role in the original London production, but he was unavailable due to film commitments.
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