“People Are Formed By Hardships,” Colin Farrell tells Hot Press

Talking about his wild years in Dublin, Colin reveals that he had a syringe held to his neck when he was 20. He also jokes that he doesn’t remember filming Miami Vice, and talks about his first son, Jimmy.

“I was buying hash out the back of the flats at Digges Lane,” he tells Hot Press. “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.”

Rather than indulging in the customary condemnation of people involved in the drug scene, Farrell reveals an innate empathy with those who find themselves outside the pale of conventional society.

“People are formed by hardships,” he says, “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. There but for the grace of whoever or whatever.”

Regarding Miami Vice, the film in which he starred, Farrell recalls: “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.”

Farrell’s first son Jimmy has Angelman Syndrome, a rare developmental disorder.

“There’s no rule book,” he says of being Jimmy’s father. “You just go by what you saw growing up... 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.”

Read the full interview with Colin Farrell in the latest issue of Hot Press (with Christy Moore on the cover).