Happy 50th Birthday, Colin Farrell: Revisiting a Classic Interview

Originally published in Hot Press in 2010:

"There are smoke shops and churches on fire,” laughs Colin Farrell as he gestures toward the city beyond the window of Dublin’s Merrion Hotel. “Anarchy can’t be far behind, huh?”

In a better world, we wouldn’t bother with other movie stars: we’d just interview Colin Farrell every day. This would not only make our editor happy, it would make life easier all round.

In an industry noted for glowering personal assistants and compulsory no-disclosure forms, he is, as a current flurry of tabloid headlines suggest, an eye-wateringly frank sort of fellow. A straight-shooter, he reveals small personal details that most folks in the public eye would drag you through the courts for even thinking. Can you imagine Tom Cruise revealing that in the run-up to the birth of his second child, he worried that he’d love both his children equally? Can you picture George Clooney talking through an addiction that caused white-knuckle cravings during early visits with his (admittedly) hypothetical son?

Hardly.

It’s not that Mr. Farrell isn’t media-savvy. Au contraire, he can charm the pants off the most gnarled and bitter journalists, to an extent that ensures their protective instincts kick in. In the past, however, his easygoing manner and the exquisite business of simply Being Colin Farrell, has left him open to gutter reportage. An early Fightin’ Irish write-up in Vanity Fair, you may recall, stopped just short of drawing leprechauns around the page.

For all the sniping, for all the kiss-and-tell scoops, for all the ex-girlfriends who have behaved in a less than gallant fashion, Colin Farrell gets the last laugh. Some of his contemporaries could point to better box-office receipts or superior films, but they don’t get sent up on Family Guy.

“I was actually like a cartoon for a while,” he shrugs. “So fair enough.”

This country may have produced character actors of the calibre of Brendan Gleeson and dishy blokes of the Robert Sheehan and Cillian Murphy variety, but only Colin has sailed into movie-stardom proper. Like Grace Kelly, who built a golden reputation from a handful of movies (and only four good ones) Colin Farrell doesn’t need to appear in Avatar for the movie-going public to know who he is. Despite his attachment to high-profile flops like Alexander or low-profile and criminally neglected films like The New World, Colin Farrell shines on.

Fame, however, has yet to go to his head. He still prattles on like a regular bloke you happen to run into on the street, someone you sort of know recently returned from a spell abroad. In a way, it’s a neat trick. It’s disarming. It certainly renders any list of proper journalistic inquiries to be totally useless.

“How’s tricks? How’s the kids? How’s Hot Press getting on?” he asks. “I used to read Hot Press growing up, you know?”

Oh yeah?

“Yeah. But not mad regularly. For me, music is music and I find all sorts of stuff is really affecting. I never care about genre. I just like the emotional connection. I’m a pretty simple man that way. I’m not a rocker. That was my brother’s job. He’s more of a Hot Press man.”

And on he goes, asking about the late Michael Dwyer (“a gorgeous man: I really miss talking to him”), about the Dublin International Film Festival, about the brutal weather we’ve been having.

For all the parasites that would happily go through his bins, he still talks through his personal arrangements in a way that might allow a stalker to draw a detailed map: “I’m only over here for four days then back home. I rent a place in Ballsbridge for when I’m back. There’s no space in the Ringsend house. Both my sisters are in Los Angeles now. Catherine has been living there for six years: Claudine just got her own apartment.”

He laughs. “I’m slowly and quietly breaking up the family.”

Alicja Bachleda, Colin Farrell and Neil Jordan in 2010. Photo: David Shankbone

He remains unguarded and open, but he has changed. The Colin Farrell of the early 2000s, the wild young fellah you’d run into at the tail-end of a 72-hour session, is nowhere to be found. In December 2005, Mr. Farrell voluntarily checked into rehab for addictions to recreational drugs and painkillers. He hasn’t looked back since. The 2010 model is a fitter, healthier and more productive Colin. He no longer swears. He no longer parties at an Olympic level. He no longer lurches from one movie to another.

“I worked back to back for seven years,” he notes with a small shake of the head. “It’s not a sad story. It was a very interesting time and a very fortunate time – I don’t want people to think I’m whining - but I didn’t really have any life outside it. I had plenty of life in it, travelling around from one film set to the next. But I think my life is a lot healthier now. I’m fortunate. I’ve a couple of boys so if I go to work it has to be something that I really love, you know?”

To that end, he hasn’t worked for months, save three days on Crazy Heart with Jeff Bridges. He likes it just fine.

“I enjoy the work more now,” he says. “I wouldn’t say necessarily that I have attained any clarity of understanding about what it is I do or what it is I want from it but I have more clarity about what it is I used to have. And I know I don’t want that.”

As we’re talking, he’s on a rare break from domesticity to promote Ondine. The film, a tricksy mermaid fable from director Neil Jordan, sees Mr. Farrell adopt a rolling Cork brogue to play Syracuse, a lonely fisherman who catches a mysterious girl – possibly a mythological selkie - in his net.

“Neil Jordan didn’t even tell me about the mermaid!” he protests. “He wouldn’t even give me a sound byte. All I got told was (lapses into an uncannily good impersonation of the filmmaker) ‘have a read and see if you like it, yeah?’ But from the opening scene – fisherman trawling off the Cork coast pulls up a girl in his net – I just thought, Jaysus, where we going? The film just sets up a whole series of anti-rules. You don’t know what system is in place. I loved the character Syracuse from the get-go. He has all these hardships but completely lacks self-pity. I just thought the whole thing was so sweet, you know?”

Colin Farrell in Ondine

As anyone not living in a cave will know, the girl in the net is played by Alicja Bachleda-Curuś, who has since given birth to Colin’s second child, Henry Tadeusz Farrell. The new family are doing well and have settled into a groove around Colin’s first son, Jimmy, who has Angelman Syndrome, a rare developmental disorder.

“I couldn’t be happier but it’s full-on,” he says. “There’s no rule book. You just go by what you saw growing up. Hopefully you saw some decent things and hopefully you can read the signs that say ‘Don’t go here’ but even then you’re in at the deep end. You have to get on with it and be good. It’s like everything else. There’s no set bunch of rights or wrongs. There’s only what you make and what you find.”

I wonder if he didn’t worry about the publicity tour for Ondine. Like Colin at the time of filming, Syracuse lives for his daughter who has special needs. He is also a recovering addict. Wasn’t the star worried such parallels would invite some very intrusive inquiries?

“Yeah,” nods the actor. “There are analogies there. He played a particular character for a while and it didn’t work for him. But you know me, darling. I don’t have to answer anything I don’t want to. I’ve always done my own thing, you know? And I think this is such a lovely film, I really do. It’s like a trinket – I don’t want that to sound patronising – but it’s like some magical piece of china you find in the back of a junk shop. It’s worth risking a few dodgy questions.”

And besides, the new, squeaky clean Colin Farrell has no problems talking you through the hard times. He still hangs on to his batchelor pad in Ringsend in case his sisters need it when the clan return for Christmas, but the old gaff isn’t quite as lively as it used to be.

“Oh Jesus,” he says. “There was practically a red light outside the door. It was Ireland’s smallest, busiest discotheque for years. It really was, man. I remember I had 42 people in that place one time and they were standing on tables so they could all fit in. Mad, mad stuff.”

Does he remember it all?

“Nope,” he says. “It got worse than that. I lost about two years before I quit. I can’t remember anything about anything. I don’t remember making Miami Vice. I’ve seen bits of it since and I just stare blankly at them. I don’t remember any of it. At least that’s my excuse for all the people who thought it was shite. Ha.”

Miami Vice (2006)

“I’ve thought a lot about it,” he continues. “You’d think people would be more worried about governmental representation or looking after the homeless or those who are already on drugs. If the CDC looks on drug addiction as a disease, the rest of us should too.

"I got a syringe stuck in my neck when I was 20. I was buying hash out the back of the flats at Digges Lane. I had been there before loads of times and had no problems. So, this particular time, I let my guard down and this guy threw me down a chute. Big metal door and syringe to the neck. At the time, I was raging. I was thinking ‘he’s this and he’s that.’ The older I get, the harder I find it is to judge anyone. I haven’t walked in their shoes. I don’t know how it feels under their skin. I’m not saying it was a good thing. I’m not saying it was nice behaviour. But I don’t know where he was coming from. People are formed by hardships and when you live in a society that’s very unforgiving of those that don’t have, hardships can lead you down some very dark places. I’m so lucky, darling. There but for the grace of whoever or whatever.”

Is it still there in the morning when he wakes up, I wonder?

“No. Not anymore. I’m five years off. And it’s not like white knuckle. It was tough for the first year and a half. It was hard. It was maybe the hardest thing I ever had to do. There was constant anxiety and fear. But it did get better. It did get easier.”

We’re glad he’s come through it. He’s such a decent old stick. Lesser mortals might have faltered.

“I wouldn’t change any of it, anyway” he says. “I’ve worked with Al Pacino and Neil Jordan and Oliver Stone. You really do find those guys inevitably have a deep passion for film, for what they’re doing. When it’s the worst of times, that kind of energy can carry you through it. I can’t complain. I’m the luckiest man around.”

You'll find more classic interviews with Colin Farrell (an earlier, wilder one!), Sinéad O'Connor, Gerry Adams, Mary Robinson and more in History In The Making: The Book of Hot Press Interviews – available to pre-order now.