Feature: Colin Farrell

He Looks Like Butter Wouldn’t Melt

In an interview that really should be read after the watershed, Farrell speaks candidly – and we mean it – about his massive success – and his determination not to let it go to his head!

After his breakthrough role in Tigerland, Colin Farrell was hailed as Hollywood’s Next Big Thing. But his follow-up, Hart’s War alongside Bruce Willis, wasn’t a success and Tom Cruise and Steven Spielberg kept him on the sidelines in Minority Report. But his patience has been rewarded.

The expletive-laden Irish lad who smokes like a chimney and drinks like it’s always last call, has hit the jackpot. Roger Donaldson’s suspense thriller The Recruit, in which he shares the screen with superstar Al Pacino, was Number One in its first weekend at the US box-office. Following on the heels of the hit film, Colin plays assassin Bullseye opposite Ben Affleck’s comic book superhero in Daredevil and fights for his life in Joel Schumacher’s much-delayed sniper-thriller Phone Booth. Getting $8 million to play a rifle-toting badass in the upcoming SWAT (with Samuel L Jackson) Colin’s new-found success and the women he’s had hanging on his arms has landed him on the covers of all the big US magazines. When he arrived at the première of The Recruit holding hands with pop princess Britney Spears and bragged about his love for porn, beer, recreational drugs and prostitutes in a memorable Playboy interview, the US tabloids had found a new favourite.

That interview offered memorable Colin quotes like: “I’ve always been a firm believer that casual sex is a f***ing good thing. There’s far too much fun to be derived from it to be anything but good.” Or, “Sometimes all I’m looking for is the simple act of sexual intimacy. It’s like ordering a f***ing pizza.” And, “I have never been with a prostitute that I haven’t been completely polite to and just treated like a f***ing Human Being.” No wonder the lad has become a favourite of the National Enquirer!

In The Recruit, Colin proves that it’s more to him than tabloid headlines. He plays a CIA operative training at The Farm, the agency’s secret training ground where Al Pacino is his back-stabbing instructor.

“I enjoyed every second of working with Pacino,” enthuses the 26-year-old Dubliner. “He’s a f***ing artist and a craftsman supreme. To watch the man is like a gift.”

Colin was a bit intimidated when he first met the icon because, he admits, “He is the Godfather! But all the stars I’ve worked with [Bruce Willis, Tom Cruise, Ben Affleck] have treated me well and not abused the situation they’re in, so any feelings of intimidation went away quickly.”

About playing the bald bad boy Bullseye in the heavily-hyped DareDevil, he says: “It was a case of check your subtlety at the door, and try to have as best a time as you can doing it. Bullseye is such a f***ing showman, and so over the top. It’s a really small part, but it was a lot of fun.”

by Roald Rynning

Get the full interview in
Film Review (Apr)

Photo © Buena Vista Pictures
Feature © Visual Imagination 2003. Not for reproduction

Taken from

Film Review (Apr)
#629, April 2003
ships from Feb 27 2003
News-stand Price
UK £3.30 / US $7.95

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