Why did Colin Firth document his Kingsman injuries?

The 54-year-old British actor – best known for playing Mark Darcy in the Bridget Jones movies and winning an Oscar for his portrayal of stuttering King George VI in The King’s Speech – breaks from stereotype to play a gentleman spy in Matthew Vaughn’s new comic book movie – whose umbrella is a deadly weapon.

Colin insisted of the stunts and action sequences: “Let’s just say it’s all me. I said that to somebody and they looked at me with horrified disappointment that I would tell people such an egregious lie. It basically is.

“The stunt guy had to do a couple of things involving a rig but what you’re seeing is well into the 90 per cent me.

“One of the reasons I feel so driven to tell people is that I wouldn’t go through all that pain for nothing.

“And when we were actually shooting it, the stunt guy said, ‘Let’s get the B roll in to film some of this because nobody’s going to believe it’. And every time I got a bruise or a broken tooth it got photographed. Rather than get the nurse in, it was ‘Get the cameras in so we can show you’re going through it’.”

But the Pride And Prejudice star admitted the training wasn’t easy.

Colin confessed: “It took a long time and I’m not a natural at this. I started to get delusions I was by the end.

“It was three hours a day for about six months and a team of about 10 guys. It started off in my back garden, they’d come along and it began with a squat and lunge and somersaults and then the choreography kicked in and I warmed to it and found it exhilarating.

“This wasn’t the stuff I was doing when I was young. I wasn’t one of the more athletic drama students, my recreation was a lot more sedate when I was in my youth so it was a chance in my fifties to do something completely different and go into a bit of a physical world for a while.”

:: Kingsman: The Secret Service is released on Thursday, January 29.