Colin Firth’s moose sweater, or jumper, in Bridget Jones’s Diary is iconic, but he said wearing it on set wasn’t a dream come true.
“The set was lit at about 140 degrees Fahrenheit; it melted candles and desiccated the turkey curry,” Firth, 63, recalled to Entertainment Weekly in a resurfaced interview. “I almost tore the jumper to pieces pulling it off between takes.”
Firth, who played Mark Darcy in the film franchise, joked, “I probably lost about 15 pounds,” confessing, “I had little love for it by the end.”
The actor famously wore the ugly jumper in the 2001 rom-com when his character first met Bridget Jones (Renée Zellweger) at a New Year’s Day celebration.
“Maybe this was the mysterious Mr. Right I’ve been waiting my whole life to meet,” Bridget says in her head during the movie before Darcy turns around and she sees his bold jumper choice. “Maybe not,” she quips.
The clothing item, which seemingly predated the trend of wearing ugly sweaters during the holidays, was also difficult to make, according to the film’s director, Sharon Maguire.
“We sent out the knitting challenge to approximately 20 or 30 knitters,” Maguire previously told EW. “At first, none of the designs worked. They were lovely, but they just weren’t funny. So eventually we decided it had to be a moose, not a reindeer.”
Looking back, Firth revealed that he’s not a fan of over-the-top festive sweaters. “I have at times been unfairly blamed for subsequent surges in Christmas sweater sales,” he shared. “For whatever reason, I tend to break a sweat at the sight of them.”
Firth then confessed, “I never noticed it was a moose.”
Despite having an uncomfortable shooting experience, Firth reprised his role in 2004’s Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason and 2016’s Bridget Jones’s Baby.
The Oscar winner hasn’t ruled out a fourth installment either, telling Collider in September 2016, “One of the greatest incentives for doing this again was to see Renée in the role again.”
“I enjoy playing Mr. Darcy, but I’m not hungry to play Mark Darcy again. It’s not an ambition,” Firth explained. “But it is something of an ambition to see Renée inhabit that role again, because I think it’s one of the best characters ever created.”
Zellweger, 54, teased in April 2022 that she does hope to reprise the role once again. “I love being in her shoes,” she said during an interview on SiriusXM’s The Jess Cagle Show. “It makes me giggle every day on set, the choices that we get to make about just how awkward we can make her circumstances. It’s just so much fun.”