Colin Farrell – Twenty years ago with absolutely NO filter

June 2003 By Philip Berk

Has there ever been an actor like Colin Farrell?

Not even the young Richard Harris would have behaved the way he does.

But that’s a good thing.

In a town that oozes  political correctness, Colin is a refreshing antidote.

Not that we’re condoning his liberal use of  four letter words,  but at least they pepper answers that are honest and sincere.

Ask him a hard-hitting  question, and he doesn’t flinch

And neither does he get angry.

Farrell of course burst on the screen three years ago in Tigerland giving a performance that many felt would make him an overnight star, but it never happened.

Still he continued to get important roles opposite the likes of Bruce Willis and Tom Cruise, but to no avail, even his big break replacing Jim Carrey in Phone Booth failed to materialize when the film was postponed because of 9/11.

But now after three false starts, he has a new film with Al Pacino entitled The Recruit, which, if it doesn’t make him a superstar will earn him  People magazine’s dubious honor, The Sexiest man in the World!

Last year when Vanity Fair put him on their cover, he talked about everything from his impulsive marriage and quick divorce to details about his penis.

As one journalist said, it was  “full-speed, off-the-cuff, seat-of-his-pants candor” rarely encountered in Hollywood.

At his press conference in Beverly Hills for the film, I confront him head on.

Vanity Fair called him a “bad boy,” and his costars and director agree. Is he happy with that description?

“Bad is a word,” he replies. “Hitler was bad. Somebody that causes damage to someone else either to them physically for no reason. Some bullies, people that are just fuckers, you know, people that are mean. That shit’s bad to me. I have a cigarette and a beer and it’s bad boy.  We’re all smarter than that, aren’t we? Thank you.”

But doesn’t he encourage that reputation when he gives Vanity Fair a no holds barred type of interview?

“It’s not an image that I’ve perpetuated or sold for the benefit of myself or anyone else, but unfortunately it is one that’s out there. It’s as simple as this. Today is my day off Sunday.  Yesterday was also my day off.  At the moment I’m working a five day week on SWAT (his next movie.) Right? So yesterday and today after lunch I have a few beers, about three or four beers. I’m working on my day off.  My fucking day off, and I’m having a beer and a cigarette and all of a sudden, ‘Oh, he’s in there and he’s drinking. And there’s his  flavorful language in interviews,’ Vanity Fair being one of them.

“Now anyone who knows me or sees the expression on my face or hears the intonation in the tone of my voice when I curse or when I say this, that or the other, gets it,  but in print  I’m a dick. In print,  you don’t get the benefits of hearing the person’s voice, of seeing the expression on his face, the look in his eyes;  so, of course, you’re misconstrued.  

“But if I start compromising myself now I think I’m in for a lot of trouble down the road. I know who I am, and anyone that really knows me or that’s important to me knows who I am. So although I say fuck and this and that and fucking casual sex and beer and all, they can call me  bad boy, but I know who I am.”

But didn’t he give the impression that he got married as a lark?

“Not at all.  What I said was, I fell in love very hard, the two of us wanted to get married, and that’s what we did. We got married, and we fell out of love equally as hard. It was one of the bizarrest eleven months of my life, and it’s that simple. It’s that simple and that complicated and that flippant and that spontaneous, and right or wrong, it’s for nobody to decide but me.  I was the one that did it, and I’d do it all over again through the tears and the laughter. I’d do it all over again, and as you can see I still have this fucking thing on my finger now, with her name. I could give a shit.”

Would he do it again?

“No, I have no intentions of getting married.  I have no intentions of fuck me to fall in love again for a while.”

How did they end up in Tahiti?

“Tahiti was gorgeous.  I had a great holiday in Tahiti. I’d never been anywhere like that.  Never been anywhere that you see on the postcards and the calendars. The two of us wanted to go on a holiday, and we wanted to get hitched, and we thought kill two birds with one stone.  Instead of going to the Elvis chapel (in Las Vegas) , let’s fuck off to the beach and get married in Tahiti and we had a great time.  We had an amazing two weeks.”

What does he say to people who call him irresponsible?

“That’s the ridiculousness of it. You really feel it. You can’t ever see an end to it, and then next thing you wake up and it’s over. But it wasn’t light.  It wasn’t.  Fuck me, it wasn’t light.  It wasn’t for jokes.  It wasn’t.”

Bridget Moynahan, his Recruit costar, says he thinks with his heart rather than his head. What’s his response?

“Yeah, sure, your heart tells you to do one thing, and sometimes your brain tells you to do another, and you have to decide which side of the fence you’re going to sit on.  I’m usually one of the dickheads that goes with the heart, and things like that don’t always work out.  But I never have any regrets or anything. I don’t see it as any big deal.  It was probably instilled in me from my mother, who advised me, do what you want to do, live your life the way you want to live it, be your own person and just be happy.”

What was he like as a kid?  

“I was mischievous like kids should be. I had a good time.  I’ve always enjoyed life and yeah, I was a nice kid. But I wasn’t great in school. I was all right.”

Did he always want to be an actor? 

“I remember at one stage wanting to be a few things.  I wanted to be a pilot for about two months. Now I’m afraid of flying. I don’t know how or why I wanted to do that.  I also wanted to be a journalist and I wanted to be a footballer. They’re the three things outside of what I am doing now I can remember wanting to be. But I wouldn’t have been good enough for any of them anyway.”

What does he do with all the money he’s making? (He was paid $8 million for the Recruit.)

“Nothing. The next job I’m doing is on the East Coast, so I bought an Airstream that I’m going to live in for the two months that I do that job, and that’s all. I bought fucking nothing, man.”

No Ferraris?

“No Ferraris, no house, no  I still live in the same gaff I’ve had for five or six years.  Yeah.”

What qualities does he find attractive in a woman?

“I dunno.  But you know when you see it. There’s no particular criteria. I adore  women, I have three, in my family.  Two sisters and a great mother;  so I’ve had a lot of female influence in my life and I adore them.  I’m not talking about sex. I adore women.  I adore them as people, as human beings so I love being around them.”

Would he like to have children?

“Some  yeah, I’d love to someday.  Someday, yeah.”

How long is he prepared to postpone that?

“I dunno.  I am not sure.  I mean, I got time. I can put it off some years, but definitely once I start, I won’t stop. I’ll have as many as she gives me. You know I love kids.”

Does he still think he’s the luckiest man on the face of the earth?

“Absolutely.  I mean, I’m like a broken record I’ve said it so much. I’m the luckiest person I know. There’s no other way to look at it . I’ve been in the right place at the  right time.”

How does he deal with all the attention he’s getting?

“Sorry to disappoint you but I can walk down the street anywhere and nobody ever comes near me.  It’s the good thing about being in four films. I haven’t exactly fucking sparkled up the box-office, you know.”

But he’s impressed studios and producers?

“Yeah, it’s great. It means as an actor I get to choose more than I ever thought I would, what I want to do, and what I don’t, and as any actor will tell you, that’s a really privileged position to be in.”

In the film he plays a technology wiz, which is why the CIA wants to recruit him. What is his relationship to technology?

“Terrible, man. I haven’t got a cell phone. I have a sister that has a cell phone. I have  laptops, but I can’t type for shit. I’m really bad. Really bad technologically, yeah. I want to go  back to the quill. Computers?  terrible, man.”

Would he make a good CIA agent?

“I’ve never done anything that would lead me to believe I could be a spy.  I shit my pants the first time I was on set with Pacino. How cool am I going to keep it with a bunch of Arabs in the Middle East, you know.”

How intimidating was Al Pacino?

“It wasn’t him. It was me. I was extremely nervous, because in the last three years I’ve been fortunate enough, as you all know, to work with some huge names, great actors, some big stars. This was different. Pacino’s different.  For all for all the beautiful reasons.  Because he doesn’t give a shit about  celebrity,  the legendary  status, the iconic status, all that stuff. He’s one of the finest actors that has ever lived and he’s given some of the finest performances on film in the history of cinema. So being fully aware of that and having grown up on all his work, whether it’s Scarface, Dog Day afternoon, The Godfathers, whatever, I had a whole relationship with him already, as do my friends  at home.  We’ve watched his movies over and over again. So when I was on a set with him,  it was intimidating, yeah.  Not because of him.  He was a gem from the get go, you know, from the onset he was a gem.  He can’t act for shit,  but he’s a nice fucking man. I mean, he was really lovely with me and kind of took me under his wing. He was so natural and so comfortable and just so generous with me. We joked around a lot. We had a good laugh.  We really had a good time doing it.”

On screen he has a flawless American accent. How does he hide his thick Irish brogue?

“I have a dialect coach, the same guy that I’ve worked with now on five or six films. He’s amassed a library of audio tapes from various people that he’s talked to and interviewed. So when we find out what we’re doing next, where the character’s from, what type of accent it is, he goes and he picks out these audio tapes, and we listen to it over and over again, listen to the cadence, the patterns, the rhythm of the speech, and then we start applying it to the text and we start getting that as comfortable as possible. He’s on the set every day. He comes up in between takes; at times he pisses me off. I want to kill him,  but he’s great, and so that’s how I do it. But I grew up with American television so I always from a kid had American sounds in my head.”

Since Tigerland, he’s worked nonstop.

How come?

“I’ve stored up twenty-two years of living before I even started this job, so I  don’t think about it too much. I figure I’m at the start of this journey, trying to figure out this job, doing this thing. Occasionally I get time off.  I get two weeks off here.  I get six weeks off and I go home.  Whenever  I’m not working here, I’m on the first plane back to Dublin, you know, and I see my friends. I see my family, and I hang out, and I take it easy and I have a good time.That’s what I do. But then I start thinking about the next one and usually I come back here to get away from all my friends and family  for a week or two before I  start the next job just to clear the head, you know.”

According to the Vanity Fair article he had to do seventeen takes for one scene on Minority Report. Doesn’t that give him a bad rap as actor?

“I don’t care, because you ask anyone that’s ever worked with me, anyone. Am I focused? do I work my arse off as hard as I possibly can? And they’ll tell you. That was a day after my birthday and I went out and I had a few drinks. I take my job serious and I was nervous.  I was working with Tom (Cruise) and I didn’t do seventeen takes.  I did about thirty-two, and that’s a fact.  What am I going to do?  Run away from it, try and hide it from people because I’m afraid that they’re going to judge me and think I’m a lesser actor.  No. I got the scene done, and I was ready for it, but I shit myself that day, and Steven  (Spielberg) was cool. He gave me a take for every year of my life but he cut me short by about five years.”

Is he interested in politics, and does he have an opinion about the war in Iraq?

“No, no, man, I’m a twenty-six-year-old actor. I’m still trying to figure out myself, you know, and no way would I get involved. I have done small things for some charities and stuff,  but that’s as far as it goes, and in respect to the war, Jesus, your own country can’t change what Bush wants to do, how am I going to fucking do it, you know.”

What kind of music does he like?

“I like all sorts of music.  Anything from  Eminem to Boston to Radiohead to obviously U2, you know, to the Post, whoever, everything, you know, dance music, everything.”

Was he ever been recruited for anything?

“I was recruited for a boy band once when I was sixteen.  It was in a nightclub in Dublin.  This fellow came up to me and he said ‘I’m going to make this band.  It’s going to be huge’ and I went great and he went, ‘Sing for me,’ and I sang “Careless Whisper,” and I was fucking tone deaf.  He said, ‘It’s not going to work, kid,’ but the band did good.” 

Who were they?

“Boys Own. And  they did great!”

AND THREE YEARS LATER

                              By Philip Berk

It was his refreshing candor that impressed me the last time I interviewed Colin Farrell. 

So I’m not surprised when, at his press conference for S.W.A.T, he privately tells me he considers the film a “piece of crap.”

The film (it stands for Special Weapons and Tactics) isn’t quite as bad as he thinks, but it’s no better than a routine episode of the original series which aired thirty years ago.

So not only do we have an actor who doesn’t want to talk about the film he’s in; we have a movie star who doesn’t want to talk about his personal life.

And for good reason.

The tabloids have gone bonkers over his impending fatherhood, even though he’s    assumed that responsibility like a real man.

In contrast to the impression he gave last year, in a Vanity Fair interview,  when he made light of his quicky marriage in Tahiti.

So is this the new improved Colin Farrell we’re interviewing?

Hardly.

True he doesn’t swagger into the room with a beer bottle in one hand and a cigarette in the other. 

But he arrives looking so unkempt and unshaven, you’d think he just crawled out of a hole.

Which is not far from the truth.

For the past few weeks he’s been living in a trailer parked on an avocado field in Ojai, seventy miles up the California coast, There he’s preparing for his most important role yet, that of Alexander the Great. Oliver Stone is the director.

Instead of neatly combed thick black hair, his head is covered by a knitted cap which he won’t remove.

And for good reason.

“I’m blond, and it’s because I’m a dickhead,” he tells me. “I went into a chemist’s and bought a four-dollar tin of blond dye and this is what happened. Now I’m waiting for it to grow out.”

Warts and all you’ve got to love him.

So how will fatherhood change his life? I ask him.

“I have no idea. There are certain things I’ve put in place. I have a very good relationship with his mother (it’s a boy they’re expecting) and I’m very excited about it. All I know is I’m going to be the best father I can be.”

But marriage is not part of the deal?

“I don’t ever want to be be married again. I don’t ever want to be in a normal environment. I’ve seen families that have married and had kids and it goes pear-shaped. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to be a bad parent and it can’t work and it can’t be a beautiful thing. I have to just make sure that it is.”

And it’s what he wanted?

“I want very much to have this child. I want to bring a child into the world. It’s an exciting time and I can’t wait.”

But he won’t be there for the birth?

“Unfortunately I’ll be filming in Morocco, but my sister is going to be over here so at least someone of my family will be there. I’m no too happy about that, but that’s the way it turned out.”

What was his friends’ reaction when they found out?

“My friends were going: ‘What the fuck are you doing having a baby? Are you mad?’ And I was going, ‘No, it’s okay. It’s going to be fine. We sorted it out. It can be a glorious thing.”

How about his life style, will that change, and will he have to watch his language around the kid?

“The fuck word never made a bad person. It’s how you use it. It depends on the context and the energy with which you say it. But of course, I don’t want my kid going: ‘Hey, Dad, you fucking bastard, how are you?’ I don’t want that to happen, so I’m going to watch out and curb my language around him.”

And his life style?

“I enjoy life very much, but no more than most people really. It’s the only life I know, so I’m going to have a good time.”

For his role in SWAT he was reportedly paid $15 million. Will all that wealth change him?

“I’m still doing the same job I’ve been doing for the past nine or 10 years. Obviously I’m getting a lot more money, and people are watching me a lot more, writing certain things I haven’t said, but that’s par for the course. If I take the pay cheque, I have to expect it. I love acting, but I don’t think it’s the most important thing in the world. It’s a stupid job at times, and I hate it at times. There are times when I want to give it up because I don’t understand it, but at the end of the day I keep coming back for more, so there must be something right with it.”

So he’s not seduced by money?

“Certainly not at home. All the money really means is I can do things and go places, and if anyone is sick I can help them. And that’s a nice thing. I know that I have some money for my child who’ll be coming into the world in about six weeks. He will be okay and have the education he needs and get a nice house to live in, so it’s good in that way, but apart from that it doesn’t change the important things. If somebody is sick, I still can’t buy the an extra day, no matter how much money I have in the bank.”

In S.W.A.T he’s clean shaven. Was that his choice?

“The L.A.P.D. have rules, either you have a mustache or you’re clean shaven. I’ve seen myself with a fucking mustache, and it ain’t pretty; so I said ‘OK, I go clean shaven.”

He’s gone from one boot camp to another, first for Tigerland, then for The Recruit, this time for SWAT, and some time soon for Alexander.

Which was the toughest?

“The boot camp for this (SWAT) wasn’t really a boot camp. You arrived at 10 o’clock and you finished by 4 p.m. It was just four or five days. You come to it very quickly. It was a good time and I’d do it again. But all it was was boys with toys, playing cops and robbers.”

Will he still be able to work in low budget movies, or is that no longer viable?

“SWAT is actually the only movie I knowingly went into knowing it was going to be a pure entertainment. The truth is I do whatever is presented to me especially if it’s something I want to do at a particular time. Nobody orchestrates my career, so right now I have two low budget films awaiting release. Home at the End of the World was such a beautiful book and Michael Cunningham, who wrote The Hours, wrote such a fantastic script, I was worried they wouldn’t consider me because I was in bigger films. They wanted to go with somebody edgier. I actually had to read for the director before I got the chance to do it. Intermission is a very small Irish film with a $3 million budget. So I’m just going to mix it up.”

What can he tell us about the mother of his child?  (He won’t name her, but the tabloids have identified her as 33-year-old model Kim Bordenave.)

“She’s a great woman. But it’s not my business to tell you about her, darling.”

And is it true his sister acts as his agent in Hollywood?

“Yeah she works with me. I had another sister who was working for me when we first met, Catherine, but now Claudine is working with me. She’s just an amazing help, she’s great company, she’s my friend, and she always has been.”

Does she get the customary 5 or 10 percent?

“She gets fucking nothing,” he laughs. “It’s my sister. She does it for free. No she’s not my manager in the Hollywood sense, but I ask her for advice, and I trust her opinion.’

Does she read his scripts?

“Yes she does. She’s just an amazing benefit to have around as part of my life.” 

How does he view the prospect of two Alexander the Great movies?

“I don’t know much about the other one except that (Baz) Luhrmann is directing and (Leonardo) DiCaprio is in it. I think Nicole Kidman might be playing Olympia. Angelina Jolie is our Olympia. Ours I think is cheaper, but it’s not a competition.”

Does it bother him if his films don’t do well at the box office?

“It’s important, but it’s not where I live. It’s not where my headspace is. I know too well that it took quite a while for any of my movies to do any money at the box office. So now if they do, I’m glad, but you have no power over it. You just leave it in the hands of the gods.”

So it’s not that important to him?

“If you’re asking if I obsess over it, the answer is no. But don’t get me wrong, before it opens I’ll be going, ‘Please fucking let it do something and let someone go see it.’ It costs a lot of money, and I got paid a lot, so just living in the real world I hope it does well. But if it doesn’t, it’s not going to change the way I choose things. “

For the record S.W.A.T. exceeded Columbia’s wildest expectations. It grossed $37 million its first weekend. The same studio’s  Gigli in its opening weekend grossed $3.7