Premiere Interview / Colin Farrell / 05.02.08 (long read)

Source: Premiere

Colin Farrell's Second Act
The 'In Bruges' star talks about taking stock of his career thus far, and why he's decided on a whole new path.

Could Colin Farrell, brilliant bad-boy of high-profile actioners like Minority Report and Daredevil and leading man of epic proportions in Alexander and The New World, be feeling a little light-headed?

"We all, I think, change," Farrell says. "We are very changeable creatures. Evolution is not something that should be relegated to taking place over eons. Revolution takes place in a day. You meet somebody, and they change your perspective on life. It happens very fast. Think of high altitudes. You fucking go up to 15,000 feet and sit there for one night, and your body fucking evolves so quick that the next day you are grand. It is bizarre."

Referring not only to the effects of being elevated to the high altitudes of Park City, Utah, where he promoted his latest film In Bruges, at the Sundance Film Festival, Farrell's remark is also a comment on his meteoric rise from bit player to millennial leading man in just a few years. While he has worked hard, he is quick to point out that the stars aligned in the right place early on for him. "I have been fortunate enough to be part of good work, and to work with fantastic filmmakers whose films I had seen and been weaned on and loved. But…it all happened so fast for me that I never got the chance to go 'Why I am I doing it?' or 'Why am I acting?' or 'What does it mean to me?' It all happened so fast."

After a number of small roles on TV shows and in a few minor films, it was the part of Private Roland Bozz in the low-budget boot camp drama Tigerland by director Joel Schumacher that caught the attention of Holllywood and catapulted the Dublin-born actor into a string of big-budget productions including Minority Report, Daredevil, and Alexander. An actor's career, he ponders, usually begins with some theater work before being followed by several years of television shows and then maybe a few parts in feature films. "Well, I did, like, that much theatre and that much television," he says, indicating a small measure between thumb and forefinger. "And then I just got handed all these opportunities to be the lead man in all these films. It happened so, so quick! It was amazing. And it certainly wasn't all my doing. It was whatever way the universe conspired. And I loved it. But there came a time when I had to just sit back and go 'Why am I doing it and what does it mean to me?'"

And with overnight success also came some very public legal battles (one involving a sex tape of Farrell and a former girlfriend), rehab treatment for drug addiction, and the recent revelation that his son suffers from Angelman Syndrome, a rare genetic disorder. Farrell decided to take a step back and re-evaluate. After Miami Vice, he took on a number of lower profile films, including Ask the Dust (based on the John Fante novel) and Woody Allen's Cassandra's Dream. But, he insists, it wasn't the movies that gave him the opportunity to showcase his acting skills.

"I gave myself the chance. They are the movies that came after I gave myself the chance. I have been involved with movies that I really love and [I have] worked with filmmakers like Terrence Malik, [Oliver] Stone, and Joel Schumacher, whom I adore and whom I worked with twice and is the reason why all this madness started. But I just decided to take stock of what I had been doing. And I want it to [continue] without controlling it or masterminding this idea of a career or any of that shit."

Enter Martin McDonagh. Best known as the playwright of The Lieutenant of Inishmore, and The Pillowman, McDonagh picked up an Academy Award for Best Live Action short for his film Six Shooter, which he wrote and directed. But due to conflicts with the film's producers, McDonagh was almost soured from ever directing a film again. He persevered, however, with the script for In Bruges, a feature film about two hit men forced to lay low in the Belgian town of Bruges after a particularly difficult job.

"We sent the script to Colin," McDonagh says, "because the character of Ray has aspects that are kind of sexy and dangerous and kind of cool, which obviously Colin has in spades. But also in meeting him and hearing his take on the character, I realized that he got the side that I am more interested in, which is the sadness and the despair and the darkness."

In Bruges was the kind of script that now piqued Farrell's interest. Unlike most films featuring hit men, the script was less focused on high-octane action and more on the rhythm and cadence of language.

"On the surface, it was a hilarious read. And the way in which these fellows communicate and the use of language of course — for which Martin is, justifiably, very well-known for and respected — was so astounding and so different, and just so unique that that was the thing that gripped me first."

Farrell plays Ray, a depressive hit man teetering on the verge of suicide, who, along with Ken (Brendan Gleeson), another hit man, is banished to Belgium's best-preserved medieval city to cool their heels by their boss Harry (Ralph Fiennes) after a particularly bloody hit in London. The two must melt into the throngs of tourists while they await further instructions from Harry, but their stay in the city becomes a series of surreal experiences involving, amongst others, a dwarf American actor (played not by Peter Dinklage, as many have erroneously reported, but by Jordan Prentice), Dutch prostitutes, and easily angered sightseers. Farrell notes that while there is tragedy and that the two hit men "had come from a place of pain and a horrific incident, a transgression," he was equally enamored by the "the situations, the inherent comedy" of the script.

"That was the great [thing about the film]: to see that — as hilarious as these lads were, looking at the film objectively and how funny some of the situations were — underneath it all was an incredible amount of despair, an incredible amount of loss. And that the two of them were each other's point of redemption in a way."

Farrell also clearly enjoyed the Odd Couple element of his pairing with Gleeson, a fellow Irishman with whom he had not yet had the chance to act. Under McDonagh's direction, the two spent quality time in Belgium in rehearsal.

"[We] were fairly incubated for those three weeks, just bandying around ideas and talking about the text and what was below it all, the subtext," Farrell says. "So we did garner a greater understanding of the characters. But it kept speaking to us. I thought we would run out of steam before three weeks were up. I thought we would have nothing to do or you would get it to a stage where you had flogged it to death and then we would get up there and it would be repetitious. But the script was so good and so complex that it just kept revealing more questions. The more questions we asked, genuinely, the more that were revealed. So it was an exercise that had no end."

Says Gleeson of their prep time together: "Colin is relentless in terms of bearing down and getting to how suicidal [his character] is. It became a very profound, dramatic thing. Maybe that was a surprise. The psychological exploration became so profoundly dramatic and harrowing so early on. We suddenly began to think: 'God, this is pretty heavy stuff.'"

From Casablanca to Madagascar, films have helped stimulate travel to some of the world's farthest-flung off-the-beaten path destinations. But whether or not In Bruges will generate as much interest in this tiny Belgian town as Crocodile Dundee did for the Australian outback remains to be seen — for one, asking Farrell to "sell" the city of Bruges might be a tough task.

"I was bored out of me tits by the first week. Excuse my French. You know, with a lot of places it depends on how you are feeling or where you are. You could go to the same place in two different times of your life and you would think that the place was completely different — it is the energy you give, you project your own stuff. For me, I found it quite stultifying. We arrived in the dead of winter. It was dark every day at four o'clock. And the streets were empty. There was bitter cold gnawing at you," Farrell says, though he does concede that the city itself is beautiful. "There is a majesty that is just jaw-dropping. But there was nobody on the streets, and it was kind of eerie. It felt very lonely."

But, the alienation and loneliness proved useful for Farrell in developing his character's brooding darkness. The actor says both he and Gleeson drew their own inspiration from the city, which, he says, "really is a character — Bruges was the first cast member."

Next up, Farrell stars opposite Ed Norton in the cop saga Pride and Glory written by Joe Carnahan (Narc, Smokin' Aces), and he is attached to Philip Noyce's adaptation of the Tim Winton novel Dirt Music. A sure-fire big-budget summer blockbuster does not appear to be on the horizon, but Farrell refuses to pigeon-hole himself.

Asked if the recent re-evaluation of his acting path will impact the sort of films he will chose, he says candidly: "I don't know. I am not going to limit or box myself in by having a particular structure or code of work. I did three pieces with writer-directors in the last year and a half and enjoyed them all immensely. And I am enjoying this for now. I will see what comes."