COLIN THE GREAT
The wildman of Hollywood gets the chance to really let his hair down as the star of the blockbuster movie, Alexander, which will take to the screens at the end of the year once the dust has settled on Troy. Yes, Colin Farrell as the Macedonian King Alexander, goes on the rampage to conquer the known world during the fourth century BC. Off the set, Colin has had a few rampages of his own but since he and ex-girlfriend Kim Bordenave had a son together in September 2003, he claims something in him has changed.
“It’s not like a major metamorphosis. The first time you hold your baby in your arms, a sense of strength and love washes over you that I never thought possible. I thought it possible for my mother and father to love me, but I love him in a different way, and a stronger way than I love my mother. It’s a very strange thing. I adore my mother, she’s everything to me but fatherhood is a very strange love, and a very beautiful love and a very pure love, unconditional to the extreme. It doesn’t change your work ethic but it certainly gives you a deeper resource to draw from.
“I don’t set out to be some sort of
wildman although that’s what I have been labelled,” he says. “I just take life as it comes and the way it has come to me is that I am a guy who is in an amazing position in life. I don’t take it at all seriously but I just enjoy what it means to me. I am what I am and would be whatever cards life had dealt me.
“I don’t want to spend my life watching what I say or how I say it or watching over my shoulder all the time to see what people thinkof me or what pictures the photographers are taking. That’s not what life is about for me. I have been told to be more careful but I can’t be like that. I know that I am probably better known for being what I am off the screen than for my acting.
“That will change though. There have been others before me who had the same image because they didn’t care too much what people thought of them. Then one day, someone says, ‘Hey, this guy can really act’ and suddenly they become a hero and spoken of in hushed terms by all the right people in all the right places. Yet they are still the same guys. Maybe that will happen to me.”
Colin Farrell is not an image seeker, he simply lives life his own way, something he has always done, since childhood. “My father was a professional footballer and I would have loved to have been the same but I did not like the discipline that was needed then. I discovered drinking and girls and for me that was what life was all about. “I knew I didn’t want to go and work in a factory or an office so I tried to find a career that was more in keeping with the kind of life I wanted. |
This review from FQ MAGAZINE November/December 2004
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I AM VERY PROTECTIVE OF HIM TOO. I SMOKE BUT I WON’T SMOKE NEAR HIM AND I WON’T LET OTHER PEOPLE SMOKE ANYWHERE NEAR HIM EITHER. HE CAN MAKE HIS OWN CHOICES LATER ON BUT RIGHT NOW I WANT HIM TO HAVE A GOOD START
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I did a bit of modelling work and I fancied being a pop star. That’s why I tried to audition for Boyzone. That didn’t work so I joined a dance troupe which did line dancing shows all over Ireland. With that and a bit of modelling work I got by and was able to enjoy myself. “I probably enjoyed myself too much and did not really have much control. The drink was getting too much for me and I ended up going through a big depression. I even saw a shrink and he helped me get my head back in shape. “I went to Australia for a short time with some mates and I even got a job in a bank. That didn’t last so I went back to Ireland and joined the Gaiety School of Acting in Dublin. Something kept telling me to look at acting. I don’t think they were impressed by me and I dropped out. They were probably relieved.
“It all started to happen though when I was in one of those small audience plays in London. Kevin Spacey came in and must have seen something in me because he put me forward for Ordinary Decent Criminal. That led to other movie offers but really it was Ballykissangel which put my face in front of everyone. When you are in a television show every week you cannot be ignored.
“I take my acting seriously, I do a professional job, I don’t mess people around and I think I am good at what I do, I certainly work hard enough. Nobody can point their finger at me and say that I let anyone down at work. I do my best to act and I’ll do mostly what I’m asked to do. A few people asked why I showed all I had in Tigerland. Why not?” Nobody ever has.
If anything, Colin Farrell has a very good reputation on the set and charmed everyone in the making of Alexander when he put photos of his new-born son everywhere. James is Colin Farrell’s middle name and also the name of his son. “I am very proud of him and I don’t like being away from him for very long,” says Colin. “I am very protective of him too. I smoke but I won’t smoke near him and I won’t let other people smoke anywhere near him either. He can make his own choices later on but right now I want him to have a good start.”
Although he is feted in Hollywood, Colin prefers to regard Dublin as |
home. “I’m Irish and Ireland is my country. I stay in LA when I need to and I stay wherever I am filming be it Spain or Thailand but Dublin is home. It’s my Irishness which has made me what I am, like it or not. I don’t fall for all the Hollywood stuff. I’m not in love with it all. I don’t like the mutual admiration bit. I don’t mind going to parties and having a laugh but I wouldn’t want to live with that all the time.”
Colin Farrell is the last person to believe his own publicity. “I don’t believe how people can write some of that stuff,” he says. “Yes, I like to have fun, yes I have drunk too much, taken a few too many tablets and I like women but if I had done all the things I am supposed to have done and been with all the women I am supposed to have been with, I would probably either be a complete wreck now or dead. I like to enjoy myself and I can be wild, very wild but I am not trying to commit suicide.
“I don’t set out to be an anti-hero but I don’t believe in spending hours in the gym or having loads of treatments to make myself look special. I can’t be bothered with that. Basically I’m just a lucky guy who has fallen on his feet. I get paid too much money, I have a terrific life with lots of friends, I travel and see the world and people either think I’m great or they hate me. I can understand that.
“If I wasn’t in my position I would probably hate me too. I suppose I am successful, I don’t know. I have never planned anything in my life and I am not going to start now. I know what movies I’m working on next and that’s about it.”
Alexander is rumoured to have cost about $150million (£83million) and has a massive cast which includes Anthony Hopkins, Angelina Jolie, Val Kilmer, Brian Blessed and countless other international stars. “It is a huge movie and while I have others around, this is the really big one for me and after all the work and the detail that has gone into it, I hope it lives up to everyone’s hopes,” says Colin. “Not only that, but I had to have blond hair for it, so it had better have been worth it.”
For someone who failed his Boyzone exam, things are looking pretty good for Colin Farrell. Aged just 28, he has Hollywood, not to mention a bevvy of beautiful women at his feet. But nevertheless, the Irish actor claims to not have any great plans for the future. “The present is pretty good,” he says. “I’m working hard, I have a beautiful son and as long as I can be with him and he knows who his dad always is and I can go to work as well, I’m fine.”
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