At the 2010 Golden Globe Awards, host Ricky Gervais made a quip about Irish actor Colin Farrell being a stereotype of an Irishman, referring to Farrell’s reputation for drinking. It was a joke waiting to be written, because for a large part of the last decade, Colin Farrell was a walking, talking cliché. Drink, drugs, and indiscretions with porn stars: Everywhere the man went he seemed to leave a trail of celebrity gossip in his wake. Furthermore, not only did he seem powerless to deflect the hype, but appeared to be doing all he could to live up to it.
Yet while his public image looked to be heading straight for the crash barrier, Farrell’s professional career suffered little. While his early movies (American Outlaws, Hart’s War) may not have been commercially successful, follow-ups such as Phone Booth, Alexander, and The Recruit were well received at the box office. In 2009 he won a Golden Globe award for his performance in the dark comedy In Bruges, and later that year starred opposite Jeff Bridges in the Oscar-winning movie Crazy Heart. That Farrell’s career seems to have been unaffected by his bad boy image is undoubtedly testament to his ability. Professionally it seems there’s little he can do wrong.
Discovered by Hollywood agent Josh Lieberman, Farrell got his big break in 1999 in the Vietnam movie Tigerland. Hollywood was immediately seduced – no doubt helped by the cool character of “Bozz” Farrell played in the movie, as well as his looks and charisma – and offers started pouring in. For a young man who’s admitted that he’s always wanted to be famous, it’s easy to see how Farrell would have grabbed all that was offered to him. And if Hollywood wanted a working-class Irish boy, complete with brooding good looks and the gift of the gab, then, as they say, if the cap fits, wear it.
But Farrell proved that regardless of how much drink and drugs he’d consumed, or was consuming, he wasn’t immune to their consequences. In December 2005, just after filming Miami Vice, he checked himself into rehab, suffering from exhaustion and addiction to prescription drugs according to his publicist.
Around the same time, Farrell filed a lawsuit against his former partner Playboy model Nicole Narain over the public disclosure of a 14-minute sex tape the pair made in 2003. The lawsuit was later settled out of court. “It seemed a good idea at the time,” Farrell said about the incident. And one that undoubtedly proved rather costly.
The same year, English actress Dame Eileen Atkins revealed that she’d been propositioned by a young film star for “sex with no strings,” but had declined because of the age gap (Dame Eileen was 70 at the time, some 40 years Farrell’s senior). Although the two had worked together on the 2006 film Ask the Dust, Farrell made no comment initially. However, during an interview with the English chat show host Jonathan Ross, Farrell joked about how he had been turned down by the actress.
Then there were the cases of alleged harassment and repeated calls to telephone sex worker Dessarae Bradford. The case was dismissed due to lack of evidence on Bradford’s part. However, in July 2006, she evaded security and confronted Farrell while he was filming an interview for Jay Leno’s The Tonight Show. Farrell reportedly escorted the woman off the stage, handing her back to security, and then apologized to the audience, describing Bradford as his “first stalker.”
There’s always been something of the rogue gentleman about Farrell, the above incident being a classic example. Oftentimes he’s come across as someone who, when not entangled in sexual liaisons (real or imagined) or checking himself in and out of rehab, treats his profession as little more than something he manages to fit in in-between partying.
In an interview with the Times newspaper at the beginning of 2010, Farrell admitted that much of his behavior during the past decade was an attempt to hang on to his “Irishness,” to prove to everyone that he was still one of the boys. But the drink and drugs which undoubtedly contributed to the way in which he dealt with fame no longer feature in his life. Farrell says he hasn’t touched drugs since the summer of 2006 or drunk alcohol for almost two years. He admits that without the alcohol he’s now able to focus more clearly on what’s required of him professionally and doesn’t run the risk of turning up for work hung over, something that happened a lot in the past.
Perhaps the reason for Farrell’s new found maturity is fatherhood. He and his current partner, Polish actress Alicja Bachleda, became parents to Henry Tadevsz in October 2009. Farrell and Bachleda met while filming Ondine, a Neil Jordan film in which the actor plays (ironically) a reformed alcoholic fisherman. In addition to Henry, Farrell has a son, James Padraig, born in 2003, whose mother is US model Kim Dordenave.
Whatever’s responsible for Farrell shaping up his act, he seems to want to tell the world about it; there’s a certain confessional style to his reinvention (his Catholic guilt coming into play perhaps). In presenting a Golden Globe award in 2009, he referred to his sniffing as being the consequence of a cold and “not the other thing it used to be.” And at the same ceremony in 2010, he met Gervais’s quip about his drinking with the statement: “I once was a cliché.”
Only time will tell whether Colin Farrell’s talk is true, or whether it’s just a load of old blarney.
