TORONTO - Colin Firth's dashing Mr. Darcy cooled his pent-up passion with a dive into a pond that resulted in the wet shirt that launched a million sighs in the 1995 version of Pride and Prejudice. Ever since, directors can't resist the urge to submerge him on-screen. Notable dunks can be found in the Bridget canada goose Yorkville Jones sequel, Love Actually, Mamma Mia! and even last year's more dramatic A Single Man, the source of the actor's first Oscar nomination, as a closeted professor who grieves over his deceased male lover."You're right," says the British actor, resigned to his damp fate by now. "I've been thrown in the water in nearly every film."But in The King's Speech, the film-festival favorite that opens today and whose march to awards-season glory has been deemed all but inevitable by prognosticators, Firth remains bone dry. Instead, his stuttering George VI (or Bertie, as he was known to friends and family) concentrates on untangling his tongue in time to rally his English subjects via radio as World north face black War II is about to erupt. PHOTOS: Browse our archive of Colin Firth picsHowever, it appears Firth doesn't need to be doused to be desirable, since romance infused with wry humor is definitely in the air in this period- piece affair.Rather, a bromance blossoms, one that exists between Firth's uptight royal - forced to take the throne after his besotted north face apex bionic brother, the Duke of Windsor, abdicates to wed an American divorcée - and Geoffrey Rush's wily Australian speech therapist, Lionel Logue, who refuses to be impressed by his patient's lofty status. Or, as he so eloquently puts it, "My game, my castle, my rules."Their initial protocol- provoked standoff eventually dissolves into heartfelt admiration and elevates what could have been simply two me wife, aka the Queen Mum and mother of Elizabeth II) just sent a text: 'Send my love to the two lovers.' "Apparently, their closeness continued after the cameras stopped. Firth, 50, confesses to being in mourning after Rush, 59, whose scenes were down parka shot first so he could run off to another commitment, left him in the lurch. "Yes, Geoffrey had to go do some meaningless play, which is his true calling," he says. Even Bonham Carter could not console him. "Helena, who I adore, was constantly going, 'Well, I'm not Geoffrey.' ""He had terrible Rush withdrawal symptoms," adds an amused Rush, whose brief time spent with Firth while they promoted 1998's north face kids Shakespeare in Love might now qualify as foreplay.The Oscar winner for 1996's Shine, a native Aussie like his character, was most delighted by the scene when the monarchs pay a visit to Logue's humble home after a misunderstanding causes a rift between the two men. "What fascinates me about this story," Rush says, "is that you have the most unlikely meeting of two people, an imperial figure and a colonial nobody. And they find common ground. We started calling it a bromance about halfway through."It dawned on Firth that it was a situation not unlike those in the third acts of cheap arcteryx most of the romantic comedies he has done. "This is the moment where, after the fight and the refusal to acknowledge that the relationship will ever go on again, the boyfriend comes to the house and says a line that is very reminiscent of what happened in the beginning of arcteryx outlet the romance," he says, clearly citing from the Bridget Jones playbook. Following his advice, a suitable piece of dialogue was devised, "a fabulous one about waiting for a royal to apologize."Pulled from history books However, TV veteran Hooper, who was drawn to The King's Speech because of his own mixed Anglo and Australian heritage, didn't build his considerable reputation just by playing matchmaker tol screenplays where the character writing is anywhere near as good as when the characters are drawn from history," says Hooper, who may next attempt an adaptation of Nelson Mandela's autobiography with the legendary South African leader's consent. "I'm tired of scripts where the character is just a function of cheap columbia the plot, but I am consistently drawn to iconic figures who are highly flawed. It isn't difficult to humanize them because they have such an active struggle."SA