Jim Brocklehurst and Colin Firth talk to Steve Pratt about parenthood after making a movie where every member of the cast ended up dicussing their fathers.

OSCAR-winning actor Jim Broadbent had a very close connection with his role in the film of Yorkshire writer Blake Morrison's book And When Did You Last See Your Father?

The story of a father/son relationship follows how Morrison (played by Colin Firth) deals with his father Arthur's terminal illness and imminent death. Broadbent, who won a best supporting actor Oscar for his performance in Iris, drew strong parallels with his own parental relationships. "The father I play in this film was an exact contemporary of my own father," he says.

"They were born in the same year, had an awful lot of similar experiences, a love of old cars, were both philanderers. There was so much I could draw on."

The role brought back memories of his own father's death more than 30 years ago. "My character in the film died in exactly the same way as my own father, from cancer with the family around him. I was heartbroken as a 22-year-old. It was a long time ago, but I remember being utterly distraught by the experience," he says.

Morrison wrote his book shortly after his father's death and, although based on events in his life, Broadbent believes the story touches on a universal truth. "His book is such a success because it's such an honest account of relationships and, in particular, relationships with your parents," says the actor.

"Certainly lots of people will find resonance. Everybody on set was talking about their fathers while we were shooting." His relationship with his own father was fairly typical. "I loved him, felt embarrassed and infuriated by him, the usual teenage stuff between fathers and sons," he says.

Both Broadbent's parents were interested in the arts. His mother was a sculptor and his father encouraged him to take up acting. Young Jim won a place at drama school, but wasn't an instant success on graduating. "I wasn't really good looking enough to get the parts," he says. "It was four or five years after I left before I saw a TV camera. I just didn't think I was very interesting either."

His CV proves him wrong. Not only has he worked with many top directors, including Spielberg and Scorsese, but won awards, most recently a Bafta for his portrayal of Lord Longford in the TV drama Longford.

He's never deserted this country for the US, remaining based in the UK with his wife and two step-sons. Playing a dying man has made his appreciate family life even more.

"It certainly made me think about my own mortality. That's probably something you do as you get older anyway. It made me think about my father dying and my mother and other people I have known," he says.

"It was quite a relief to film my own death scene and still be alive. Actually the hardest part was to carry on playing dead. People were nattering all around me and prodding me, and I knew that if there was even the slightest eye twitch we'd have to go again.

"Blake did tell me I would win a world championship for playing a corpse."

He has upcoming roles in two of the biggest movie projects around - Harry Potter And The Half Blood Prince, playing retired teacher of magic Horace Slughorn, and the new Indiana Jones movie.

COLIN Firth had little time to prepare to play Blake Morrison in the film. "Basically, it involved getting on a plane in New York and arriving just in time to shoot. We'd met a few months before and I'd known the book for a good ten years. And a lifetime of having a dad." The issues in the film are "so wired to all of us, that I don't really think you have to look that far, to find bits of your life that overlap, even if the deaths are not the same", he feels.

"My father couldn't be more different from Arthur Morrison, but I still had issues. And I had that dreadful piece of programming in my system, that however far I think I've gone in life and however much I've moved beyond the trials of living with my family, it only takes five minutes walking into the family home and I'm 16 again."

For any working person, he sees it as a constant issue that you question how available you are for your children. "I am. As actors, we have quite a lot of downtime, and however all-consuming the work period is, the downtime is real downtime at home, probably more so than with people who have a regular job. So one thing balances off the other," he says.

He didn't seek out Blake Morrison and when they met he considered him more of the author than the character. "There didn't seem to be anything in his behaviour, speech patterns or appearance that had information that was going to add anything.

"The adaptation is quite a big reinvention of the book. There's nothing of a film in the book, there are little episodes you can imagine being filmed, but it doesn't have that shape. It doesn't cry out to be a film at all. It's a series of brilliant, courageous observations."

And When Did You Last See Your Father? (12A) opens in cinemas tomorrow.