How Matthew Mac­fadyen remade Mr. Darcy

Fitzwilliam Dar­cy was writ­ten by a woman – a fact clear­ly com­pre­hend­ed and exe­cut­ed by Matthew Mac­fadyen in Joe Wright’s 2005 adap­ta­tion of Pride and Prej­u­dice. While great­ly impact­ed by the hair, make­up, and cos­tume depart­ments, bring­ing full dimen­sion­al­i­ty to a famed fic­tion­al char­ac­ter is ulti­mate­ly up to the dis­cre­tion of the actor. Mac­fadyen pro­vid­ed a sul­tri­er, almost com­mand­ing char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion to one of literature’s favourite emo­tion­al­ly-unavail­able men.

Pri­or to his cast­ing as Mr. Dar­cy, Mac­fadyen held a sub­stan­tial num­ber of the­atre and tele­vi­sion roles, includ­ing Anto­nio in The Duchess of Mal­fi with the com­pa­ny Cheek by Jowl, Prince Hal in Hen­ry IV at the Roy­al Nation­al The­atre, and Tom Quinn in the BBC spy dra­ma Spooks. How­ev­er, it was his side­burns-heavy pro­file that earned him inter­na­tion­al recog­ni­tion. His entrance had Keira Knightley’s Eliz­a­beth Ben­net and every oth­er per­son in the the­atre ask­ing about ​“the per­son with the quizzi­cal brow.” To the then-31-year-old Mac­fadyen, this came as a sur­prise. In an inter­view with CBS Morn­ings in 2023, he reflect­ed on the role admit­ting he ​“felt a bit mis­cast,” and ​“not dishy enough”. (6’3”, sky-blue-eyed, dark-haired Matthew Mac­fadyen thought he wasn’t dishy enough.)

Per­haps it was the feel­ing of inad­e­qua­cy that allowed him to inhab­it that par­tic­u­lar awk­ward­ness that bemus­es Knightley’s Eliz­a­beth Ben­net. It’s the kind of self-aware­ness that elic­its inno­cence – after all, this is a youth­ful love sto­ry set in the 19^th century.

Austen intro­duces Dar­cy ​“by his fine, tall per­son”. There was no trick of the cam­era nec­es­sary to make Mac­fadyen appear larg­er. At 5’ 7”, Knight­ley isn’t short by any means, but in com­par­i­son to Mac­fadyen, all quips must be direct­ed upwards; a shot that direc­tor Joe Wright repeat­ed­ly used to his advan­tage. Wright knows a frame when he sees it, espe­cial­ly when it comes to the romance device of the ​‘spark’ – the first touch that alters the feel­ings of the two char­ac­ters shar­ing it.

As Dar­cy assists Eliz­a­beth into a car­riage, it’s not their hands mak­ing con­tact that has view­ers whoop­ing, whistling and tap­ping their friends on the shoul­der. Rather, it’s the sub­se­quent moment: a close-up of Darcy’s hand flex­ing as he walks away. Accord­ing to an inter­view with NPR, that choice was impro­vised by Mac­fadyen dur­ing a take and Wright insist­ed on ​“get­ting that” for the camera.

The hand flex is both emo­tion­al repres­sion and phys­i­cal attrac­tion all in a mat­ter of sec­onds. The ges­ture is a relat­able notion to any­one who’s ever had love sneak up on them. A man can loom large over soci­ety par­ties, but­toned up to the chin by his neck­tie, but the moment a woman puts her hand in his, he might keel over. Even a gen­tle­man isn’t immune to a crush. A faith­ful Austen adap­ta­tion can only show so much phys­i­cal touch, desire more so illus­trat­ed in stolen or shared glances, which there’s cer­tain­ly no lack of here. But Mac­fadyen knows what a hand mus­cle can do, even if it’s not touch­ing a body – it’s a mod­ernist inter­pre­ta­tion applied to the year 1811.

We all not-so-secret­ly want to have that effect on anoth­er per­son – Mac­fadyen is sig­nal­ing to the roman­tics in the audi­ence. That tiny close-up means the world to Pride and Prej­u­dice​’s admir­ers; it has fan edits on Tik­Tok and the most pop­u­lar Let­ter­boxd review for the film sim­ply repeats the words ​“the hand flex” 28 times. Focus Fea­tures, Pride and Prej­u­dice​’s dis­trib­u­tor, has even com­mod­i­fied it, cur­rent­ly sell­ing a range of mer­chan­dise ref­er­enc­ing Macfadyen’s hand flex on their website.

Indeed through­out the film, Mac­fadyen often lets Darcy’s phys­i­cal move­ments reveal his affec­tions where his words can­not. He holds him­self with rigid­i­ty until Eliz­a­beth falls in his line of vision. From eyes dart­ing to mov­ing swift­ly away from her at a ball, these choic­es are much more notice­able on a larg­er screen.

A nat­ur­al nar­ra­tor, Mac­fadyen did his fair share of radio and doc­u­men­tary voiceover work before his por­tray­al of Mr. Dar­cy – his lines are read with an assertive cadence, he doesn’t want you to miss a word, whether writ­ten by Austen or the film’s screen­writer Deb­o­rah Mog­gach. A dec­la­ra­tion of love in the pour­ing rain is only as effec­tive as its actor, and Pride and Prej­u­dice con­tains one of the most icon­ic instances in lit­er­ary and screen his­to­ry. Dur­ing the attempt­ed pro­pos­al scene, Mac­fadyen deliv­ers the beloved line with his smooth, deep voice, con­fess­ing ​“I love you. Most ardent­ly.” Sep­a­rat­ing Darcy’s emo­tion and its scope to two sen­tences instead of one, demon­strates Macfadyen’s deft abil­i­ty at con­vey­ing a cer­tain shy­ness to this lead­ing man. It’s not a stut­ter – rather two facts. Admit­ting one’s true feel­ings is an act of brav­ery, but that doesn’t mean those com­pelled to act on them feel all that brave in the moment.

In one of the film’s final moments, Macfadyen’s sheer size comes back into play. At 6’3” his stride through the moors is dra­mat­ic, while Dario Marianelli’s soar­ing orches­tral score plays in line with his steps. It’s Darcy’s ​“get the girl” moment, and as it’s clear to the audi­ence that Eliz­a­beth rec­i­p­ro­cates his feel­ings, Darcy’s gait seems more deliberate.

The most con­fi­dent man is one who can con­vey his emo­tions clear­ly – above a whis­per, gen­tle to the point of sul­try, Dar­cy pro­fess­es, ​“You have bewitched me body and soul, and I love, I love, I love you.” As the words release from his lips there’s an aching there too that reach­es his eyes. That con­fi­dence blend­ed with need cre­ates not a char­ac­ter, but a real per­son. No true man is an arche­type; emo­tions have waves and Mac­fadyen express­es Darcy’s com­plex­i­ty accordingly.

Between the stu­dios of Lon­don and Los Ange­les, Austen inter­pre­ta­tions are churned out as though it’s bad luck not to. It was only ten years pri­or to Wright’s film, in 1995, that Col­in Firth’s Mr. Dar­cy emerged from the lake in that par­tic­u­lar­ly soaked white shirt. To many audi­ences, the bar had been set – but Mac­fadyen man­aged to make the role his own.