ACADEMY Awards voters love a great performance as a British monarch. And they love a great performance embodying a disability.

    Colin Firth, who earned his first Oscar nomination for last year’s “A Single Man,” this season delivers on both counts in “The King’s Speech,” playing King George VI as he reluctantly ascends to the throne amid a lifelong battle to overcome a debilitating stammer.

    Often playing glib characters with a biting tongue, as he did in the “Bridget Jones” romances and the comedy “Easy Virtue,” Firth is the utter opposite of eloquent as George VI, father of Queen Elizabeth II, who was known by his given name Albert, or Bertie, to his family.

    “I suppose I wasn’t looking to undermine my eloquence, such as it may be, or to interfere with my own ability to complete a sentence,” Firth, 50, said at September’s Toronto International Film Festival, where “The King’s Speech” played ahead of its theatrical release Friday in North America.

    “What fascinated me is what is in that stammer that tells us about what he’s going through,” Firth said. “Those silences that Bertie finds himself in when he hits one of those blocks are a positive abyss, and they may only last a second or two, but they probably feel like an eternity.”

    Though early critics prizes and the season’s first big film nominations are weeks away, “The King’s Speech” has buzz as a potential front-runner across the board at the Oscars.

    Along with Firth, who could emerge as the best-actor favorite, the film has strong acting prospects for Helena Bonham Carter as Bertie’s wife, Queen Elizabeth, and Geoffrey Rush as his wily speech therapist.

    Firth, whose parents were university professors, studied drama and got his start on the British stage, including productions with the Royal Shakespeare Company. He gradually worked his way into television and film in the 1980s and had a breakout performance as the aloof romantic hero, Mr. Darcy, in a 1995 TV adaptation of Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice.”

    Firth’s other credits include “The English Patient,” “Love Actually,” “Nanny McPhee” and “Mamma Mia!”

    Though few people today know much about Albert’s speech problem, the story of his rise to the throne is well-known. He became king in 1936 after his brother, Edward, abdicated so he could marry Wallis Simpson, a twice-divorced American.

    It was possibly the worst time for a stammering king. The new medium of radio had taken hold, and Albert’s father, King George V, had become adept at live broadcasts to his subjects.

    For Albert, each time he went before a microphone was torture, yet he came to power as World War II approached, an era when British citizens needed reassuring words from their head of state more than at any period in their history.

    Tall and broad-shouldered, Firth bears little resemblance to the more slightly built king. Yet director Tom Hooper saw a personal or spiritual connection between the king and Firth that was vital to the film.

    “King George VI clearly is nice to his core, and he’s a very gentle man and has a deep humility,” Hooper said. “Colin is nice to his core, very humble, also a very gentle man. That great moral compass, great goodness, great decency, I felt that connection to him was the most important thing.”

    (SD-Agencies)