PLAYBOY INTERVIEW: COLIN FARRELL
Playboy Magazine, March 2003
A candid conversation with hollywood’s next big deal about casual sex,
condoms, circumcision, heroin, more sex, ecstasy, porn and, oh yes, pussy
You can assume one thing about an actor who chats unapologetically about
his tangles with prostitutes, the celebrity images he masturbates to, drugs he’s
sampled, why he’s happy about his foreskin and his best guess as to his
co-star’s sexual orientation: He’s not an American. Colin Farrell is a
straightforward Irish guy’s guy - he swears a lot, chain-smokes and is
frighteningly generous when answering questions about his personal life and
career. His performance as a hell-raising Vietnam recruit in Tigerland won
comparisons to such badasses as Marlon Brando and Jack Nicholson. Now he’s on
screen with Al Pacino in the CIA thriller The Recruit and plays the villain in
Daredevil, a comic book adaptation that pits him against Ben Affleck. He’ll also
be in Phone Booth, a controversial (and much-delayed) movie about a sniper.
Farrell, 26, is still new kid in Hollywood, but he’s already being paid a
reported $8 million to star opposite Samuel L. Jackson in a red-blooded action
flick based on the Seventies TV series SWAT.
Farrell worried his mother sick with his carousing, bombed out of school
at 17, then lit out to Australia, wild and disorderly, for a year. He returned
to Ireland for a stint in drama school but dropped out in 1997 when he won his
first movie role in the made-in-Ireland drama Drinking Crude. By the following
year, he was a homegrown TV sitcom hero on the hit Ballykissangel, which led to
a small role in The War Zone, actor Tim Roth’s 1999 directorial debut. In London
Kevin Spacey was so impressed with Farrell in a stage role as an autistic teen
that he recommended him to the director of the 2000 film Ordinary Decent
Criminal. That gig landed him an American agent and, soon after, the lead in
Joel Schumacher’s Tigerland and the WWII prison camp movie Hart’s War, in which
he starred as a lieutenant alongside Bruce Willis. Many reviewers said he stole
the show from Tom Cruise in Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report last summer.
We sent Stephen Rebello to meet Farrell for drinks at his hotel in
Santa Monica to find out he’s adjusting to being the "next big thing."
PLAYBOY: Room service just brought you six cold bottles of beer. We’re
sitting on the terrace of your hotel room because it’s a non-smoking floor and
you want a cigarette. This isn’t typical health-conscious Los Angeles behavior.
FARRELL: I have two fucking beers at lunchtime in Los Angeles and I’ve
got an edge all of a sudden. Two beers at lunch and, suddenly, you’re a
"drinker." I understand the obsession in Hollywood. It’s a hard fucking town. So
much importance is placed on the physical, the image, how you’re doing in life.
Salads are huge here. Sushi is huge. It’s not how much love you have in your
life, it’s how much money you get paid. Bottled water is huge. For women, it’s
the French manicured nails and the Brazilian bikini wax, the one that gives you
the landing-strip pussy. It’s not for me.
PLAYBOY: Do you feel out of the place here?
FARRELL: I was with my brother at the Chateau Marmont the other night;
it’s about two in the morning and we’re having couple of margaritas. We’re
fucking steaming drunk from drinking all day, and three guys, 30 to 40 years
old, sit down at the table beside us. When the gorgeous little Filipino barman
comes over and says to them, "Would you guys like anything?" one of them says,
"You know what? I think I’ll have a large Pellegrino, please." I swear to fuck,
I’m not one for going. "Come on, man, drink more - do shots!" but then the other
guy with him went, "I’ll have one of those as well, actually," and the third
guys says, "You know what? That sounds really good. Make it three Pellegrinos -
large." At two in the morning, how the fuck can a bottle of water sound really
good? I understand the health-conscious city, but life’s too short.
PLAYBOY: Does your being a chain-smoker alienate you, too?
FARRELL: My brother and I were having a cigarette outside a hotel when
a woman got out of the car with two little boys, six or seven years old. One of
the little fellows looked up at my brother and me smoking and said to his
mother, "What’s the fire those guys have in their hands?" I shit you not. His
mother said, "Oh, nothing. That’s bad, bad." She was right. It is bad. But he
had never seen a fucking cigarette at six or seven. Isn’t that amazing?
PLAYBOY: Your fingers are pretty scraped up. Are you now or have you
ever been a brawler?
FARRELL: Last night I was opening a bottle of fucking beer but I
couldn’t get the top off and my fingers slipped, I scrapped, yeah. I remember my
mother getting a report when I was very young, which she still has: "Colin is
getting in too many fights."
PLAYBOY: What were you fighting about? Bullies? Girl troubles?
FARRELL: Girl trouble, for me, is when you fall in love - that’s
fucking girl trouble. If you have a bad lay, that’s not girl trouble. A girl not
returning your phone calls or spreading rumors about you, that’s not girl
trouble, just a pain in the ass. But to fall in love – that’s girl trouble.
PLAYBOY: When did you first get into that kind of trouble?
FARRELL: I was 16 when I fell in love with a girl named Amelia, who
came from this big Portuguese family we were friendly with in Castleknock. Her
two brothers, Tony and Chico, are still my best friends, and Amelia married
another of my best mates. Am I painting a fucking picture of Dublin as an
incestuous fucking place? Because it is. She was the real deal for me. But this
one Halloween, I’d gotten into a bit of skirmish at school and the next day I
heard 20 blokes were looking at me. I was already not getting on great in
school, and boarding school had been suggested, so I thought, Fuck it, I’ll go
to boarding school for a wile and get out of the Dodge.
PLAYBOY: Did you put a damper on you and Amelia?
FARRELL: I was in love with her and besotted by her. I’m soft about
these things. I found it very hard because I only saw her once a week, on
Sunday. I wanted to spend every second with her, but I was in boarding school
with bunch of fucking dudes, playing table tennis and bartering for fucking
bottles of Coke.
PLAYBOY: Was she the first sexual experience you had?
FARRELL: No, my first was with an Australian woman. I had this friend
in school who was a big e-head. I used to be a fucking e-head. I used to smoke
fucking puppies like they were fucking candy for two or three years in the
Dublin club scene and got completely into it. You’d be fucking doing 15 of these
a weekend and you might pop them on Wednesday as well. It was your scene. It was
really a way of life, not a weekend-warrior thing. The mates you were hanging
out with were all fucking e-heads.
PLAYBOY: So you’re saying ecstasy played a part in your losing
virginity?
FARRELL: I had a really good mate, Eliot, who was a huge fucking
drinker, popping back Guinnesses to beat the band. He knew I was fucking e-head,
and he’d always say, “You’re with all them fucking wankers doing pills, you
fucking tosser. Who do fuck you think you are? Why don’t you have a fucking
drink?” I said, “We still drink. I tell you what. Some night I’ll go out with
you and I’ll fucking do what you do and someday you’ll go out and do what I do.”
So one night we went to the club I’d always gone to, a gay club in Dublin called
Shaft. After one or two A.M., when the other places closed down, Shaft became
gay, straight, whatever. We went there and danced into the wee hours.
PLAYBOY: With each other?
FARRELL: It was close on the floor, but there was no gyrating - or
geez, he would have started throwing fists. There would have been killing. It
was about 4 A.M. and Eliot was nearly comatose, so I put him in taxi an sent him
home because I'd met this Australian woman who was 36 and basically said to me,
“Do you want to come back to my house and fuck?” We went to her place and were
lying on the bed kissing and she opened a bottle of champagne – which I fucking
hate. But I took a sip, and as I did, she reached under the bed and pulled out a
wicker basket with about 400 condoms in it – different flavors, colors, ribbed.
She said, “Pick one,” and I said to myself, “I am in fucking trouble here.”
PLAYBOY: And were you?
FARRELL: For about four hours straight. I thought I’d found the holy
fucking grail.
PLAYBOY: Which condom did you choose?
FARRELL: Oh, God, I didn’t choose anything, fucking idiot that I was.
PLAYBOY: Was that the first time that you thought you might have a way
with ladies?
FARRELL: I still haven’t figured that out. I know I am fairly fucking
affable bloke and all, but that doesn’t always equal charm or a ticket to
woman’s pants. Sometimes you just end up being “the nice guy” or “cute”. I
remember being 14 in summer school and fancying the fuck out of this beautiful
blonde bird named Lisa. I looked like I was 12 years old with my baby face. I
remember asking one of her mates to put in a good word for me and she came back
with, “She thinks you’re really cute, but you’re just not her type.” Fucking
bastards. I have never from that day forth felt I had any great understanding of
how to charm women or anything like that. But I’ve done OK.
PLAYBOY: Would you say that you were precocious?
FARRELL: I didn’t start early, though I caught up pretty quick. I see
no fucking harm at all in people enjoying each other’s bodies in a two- or
three-hour or 20-minute period. Two people in a bathroom in a nightclub when
they both know what they’re doing and are both fucking enjoying it – if it’s on
those terms, even the sleaziness of doing it in a bathroom or someone’s hotel
room can be one of the funniest things. I’ve always been a firm believer that
casual sex is a fucking good thing. There is far too much fun to be derived from
it for it to be anything but good. Just put a fucking hat on.
PLAYBOY: Which you’re done ever since the Australian woman who had the
400 condoms?
FARRELL: One gets drunk and one is a fucking dickhead from time to
time. We all forget. But I try, all the time.
PLAYBOY: If you were to start your won line of condoms, what would you
name it?
FARRELL: Don’t Forget.
PLAYBOY: Is your success rate with women better since you’ve become
well known?
FARRELL: It is easier for me to get laid in Los Angeles, for sure.
When I first came here three years ago, I put myself at the Holiday Inn in Santa
Monica and used to go on my own each night to the Third Street Promenade. Some
nights I’d come home on my own, some nights I would come home with a girl, some
nights with a room full of fucking strangers and we’d get pissed and stoned and
get laugh. Those were great times, particularly because anyone who was nice to
me or gave me the time of the day was doing it because they wanted to. They were
either bored or lonely like I was. They laughed at my jokes because they thought
I was actually funny. Now the lines are crossed. Are people treating you the way
they are because of your name or position, whatever that may be? I’m a good
judge of character. I can look into someone’s eyes – I hope I’m not being too
naïve – and know if they’re a good or bad fucking egg.
PLAYBOY: Have your pickup lines changed much since those Holiday’ Inn
days?
FARRELL: I wish I had something like, “Shall I phone you or just nudge
you for breakfast in the morning?” That kind of shit. I am not very good at
chatting up or making my way over to someone and going, “Hey.” If I’m introduced
to someone and the conversation progresses, fine. Next thing, an hour later, I
could be saying, “Do you want to go have fucking dinner or drinks or whatever?”
I’m a fucking nerd when it comes to that shit, man, like fucking approaching
women and stuff. I leave that to my mates.
PLAYBOY: What makes you most aware of the difference between Irish
girls and American girls?
FARRELL: Fucking Brazilian bikini wax, for a start. I ate a lot of
pussy at home, but I never saw a vagina until I came here; they were all covered
at home. Girls are not as hugely into grooming at home as they are here, which
is not a fucking problem at all – just different flavors of the same lollipop.
In Ireland, there’s not so much importance placed on the physical appearance
referencing what someone is like as human being. In Ireland, birds are all clean
– it’s just that a lot of them have a big, hairy pussies. In Ireland, we think
that to have the prettiest toes in the world and the most beautifully groomed
pussy does not an interesting, generous, intelligent person make.
PLAYBOY: Any other major differences?
FARRELL: Irish women are really strong compared to American woman. A
lot of them have tongues like serpents. Irish girls are great fun. They drink
all night and fucking get pissed out of their minds. And if they want to have a
row with you, they do. There is a good bit of casual sex and girls are seldom
the ones being abused and misused. They’re just getting off you what you want to
get off them. So I love the fucking society there. A one-night stand did never a
bad person make.
PLAYBOY: Do you find Americans woman fascinated by an uncircumcised
penis?
FARRELL: They are kind of fucking fascinated with a foreskin, aren’t
they? In Ireland, at birth we don’t get the tip of our fucking knobs chopped
off. I fucking completely disagree with that. People say, “It’s much cleaner to
have no foreskin.” What, have you never heard of a fucking shower? Of Q-Tips?
Whatever you want to do it, just clean the fucking thing. I was at the party
with 20 people, one of them an agent from CAA, when somehow the subject of
foreskins came up. She said, “I just don’t understand a foreskin. I’ve never
seen one.” So I whipped out my dick and said, “Here, that’s all it is. A bit of
skin.” I did a little Puppetry of the Penis thing and showed her what it
was about. You would have thought she was at a circus the way she was looking at
me.
PLAYBOY: Why do actors and prostitutes seem to make good bedfellows?
FARRELL: It’s really as fucking simple as sometimes I don’t want to go
to a bar and get to know someone because I know all I’m looking for is the
simple act of sexual intimacy. It’s like ordering a fucking pizza. Someone comes
around, you spend an hour, you have a smoke with them afterward. It’s harmless
interaction. I have never been with a prostitute that I haven’t been completely
polite to and just treated like fucking human being. I’m not a great man for
degradation.
PLAYBOY: No leather, whips, clamps, chains and dungeons?
FARRELL: Not yet, but I’m young. I’ve got time. I’ve just got to get
that particular phone number.
PLAYBOY: You’re not wary of the hooker going straight to the tabloids
about you?
FARRELL: There is safety in the idea of getting a high-class hooker
who’s going to keep her fucking mouth shout. You do whatever you want to do
behind closed doors, and they don’t become involved or embroiled in your
personal life. I’m very fucking flippant with all that shit. I could really give
a fuck what people say about me. If there were an article about me in the
newspaper saying “Irish actor found with prostitute in LA hotel,” my mother
wouldn't say, “I can’t believe you did that.” She would say, “Did you pay by
check or fucking cash? Is there a paper record?” She knows I’m not a bad fucking
guy.
PLAYBOY: In 2001 you and actress Amelia Warner were married for
approximately four months. How did that affect you?
FARRELL: It was tough. Being in love and then finding yourself not in
love as you once were, for me, was a fucking jagged little pill. I couldn’t
understand it. I couldn’t understand how I felt different. I am not going to
talk about her, though. Just respect that. Being in love is tough and it’s
gorgeous and I’d do it all over again.
PLAYBOY: How did Hollywood impress you when you were growing up?
FARRELL: I was always influenced by Steve McQueen, Brando, Clift.
Ernest Borgnine I’ve seen in I don’t know how many fucking movies. I think I was
eight or nine when I had a fucking mad thing for Marilyn Monroe. When I saw her
movies, I’d just never seen anything like her. I fell madly in love with her and
she was actually the first woman I ever fell in love with. I used to leave
Smarties, the Irish equivalent of M&M’s, under my pillow with a little note
saying, “I know you’re dead, but these are very fucking tasty and you should
come and have a few. I won’t tell anyone.” I’d get pissed off every night when
I’d go up to bed and the fucking Smarties would still be there. I couldn’t
figure out why Marilyn didn’t just want to take one of my fucking Smarties.
PLAYBOY: Why Marilyn in particular?
FARRELL: Even as a kid, you could look at her on-screen, look into her
eyes, her face and see how sweet, insecure, gentle, weak and maybe afraid she
was of the whole thing while embracing it with big open arms. Mix that up with
the boldness, the dirtiness of her character, the hips, the walk on her, that
she was the dirtiest fucking ride and had the fragility of a bird with a fucking
clipped wing – I mean, that would brake a man’s heart every time.
PLAYBOY: Was she a sexual fantasy for you?
FARRELL: Did I ever wank to her? Yeah, I would have, but I would
usually just fucking whack off to calendar and magazine girls. Marilyn was more
kind of a dream, an idea I would have while lying on my back thinking fucking
romantic thoughts. But for wanking material, you’d always go to trashy mags. I
used to whack off to Naomi Campbell. I went though a year of where I couldn’t
get her out of my mind. I’d think of her and just be touching myself.
PLAYBOY: Have you met her since?
FARRELL: I have, yeah, but I haven’t told her. There was Linda
Fiorentino, too. I used to fucking whack off the her, especially in The Last
Seduction. When I met her, I told her.
PLAYBOY: How did that go?
FARRELL: She quite liked the idea. I didn’t get a slap in the face, so
I think she took it as all right.
PLAYBOY: Have you ever called a phone sex line?
FARRELL: Christ Jesus, yeah man, and they’re terrible fucking things.
When I was about 16 or 17, I remember calling them from the downstairs living
room of my parent’s house, trying to whack off. When it didn’t work, I had to
hang up, go upstairs, grab a fucking porno mag and finish it off with that.
You’d want to be in some kind of funky place in your head for sex line to get
off, knowing you’re probably talking to some bird with a cigarette dangling out
of her mouth, finger her nails and looking nothing like she’s saying she looks.
I never really got off on the fucking thing.
PLAYBOY: What about porno movies?
FARRELL: Yeah, I love porno movies. I always have. They’re great,
great fun. I’ve been buying porn movies since I was 14 and found a shop in
London and then went to Soho for the first time. I was like, “Oh, my God – sex
everywhere. This is great.” I thought I was in heaven.
PLAYBOY: Any favorite titles, either past or present?
FARRELL: No, they’re in constant rotation.
PLAYBOY: You grew up in a fairly cushy Dublin suburb called
Castleknock? What sort of trouble did you get into there?
FARRELL: Just the usual little bits and peaces that kids get involved
in – you know, dabbling in a couple of substances in shouldn’t have been doing
or getting caught smoking joints, stealing a couple of cans of Coke and 10 packs
of cigarettes from a shop. I got arrested for drunk driving and spent night in
the clanger. Thy typical clichéd growing-up things.
PLAYBOY: When did you start dabbling in illegal substances?
FARRELL: I think I was 14. The first time was at my friend’s house and
we had made a concoction of fucking booze – Cointreau, gin, vodka – put it in a
tankard and got sick as fucking dogs. Then, my friend’s brother came home with
this lump of fucking brown stuff. We knew it was hash and, at 14, oh the fear it
gave you that you were, for all intents and purposes, smoking heroin. Anyway, he
put the hash in a Bic pen, burned it, and we sucked it and were out of our
fucking minds. But probably didn’t start buying hash until I was 15 or so.
PLAYBOY: Where did you get your money back then?
FARRELL: I worked in bits and pieces. I was the youngest of the four
kids and my mother was always fucking great. She let me get away with murder. I
come from real working-class stock. My mom’s dad was a chauffeur – and I’m not
talking about a fucking stretch limo, either, but a nice Bentley or a Jaguar. My
mom’s mom made all the kids’ school uniforms in the parlor of the house.
Eventually, my father did very well for himself with various jobs, although he
didn’t start out like that. We’re very simple family. We work hard and we play
hard. We like to drink and have a good time. I don’t come from stock that sits
around breaking things down and analyzing life much.
PLAYBOY: Your father, Eamonn, and your Uncle Tommy were well-known
football player for the Shamrock Rovers in the Sixties. Did you have to live up
to that or live it down?
FARRELL: Geez, I wish I had a fucking penny for every time I said to
someone in a bar, “My dad’s Eamonn Farrell and he used to play for the Shamrock
Rovers,” and they didn’t know what the fuck I was talking about. It wasn’t like
he was a major superstar, but within the right circles, at certain pubs and
certain areas of Dublin, you’d go in and the old guys would have seen him play
football live a crowd of 40,000. I have a big scrapbook of newspaper clippings
and his jersey with three shamrocks on the back, in mothballs.
PLAYBOY: How has your mother, Rita, shaped your life?
FARRELL: With strong fucking hands. She is firm believer in whatever
fucking makes you happy. She instilled in us all the idea that we could be
whatever we wanted to be if we did it for the right reason, out of love or
complete hunger for that thing. She’d say she wanted me to be a lawyer, but at
the end of the day, you’ve got to live with yourself. It doesn’t matter if
you’ve got a big fucking car and you’re getting invited to all the fucking
charity balls in the world if you’re not happy.
PLAYBOY: You had a hard time in school and got booted out at 17. What
was the big offense?
FARRELL: I wasn’t going to many classes, I was taking three-hours
lunches and getting caught with my friend Eliot and all the lads in the pool
hall having a couple of pints, then going back to classes. I’m sure people could
smell the beer off our breath. The last school I was in was particularly strict,
really a bunch of fascists. They had security cameras in the fucking study hall
and we’d wire ourselves with our stereos, put our hands over our ears and go to
sleep. A study supervisor grabbed me one day and I threw him up against the
wall, saying, “If you ever touch me again, I’ll rip your fucking head off.” I’ll
never forget packing my bags and walking out of the school feeling like a
fucking rock star. I’d been fucking looking forward to getting kicked out of the
school for a long time.
PLAYBOY: Did you ever worry you’d never find your way?
FARRELL: I never really worried about it, though my mother worried
about it for years. I mean, I never really knew I’d fucking be sitting up here
on the balcony of a fine hotel, having a drink with you and knowing in the
morning I’m going back t shooting a movie with Samuel L. Jackson. But I knew I
would be all right.
PLAYBOY: What happened when you told your father you wanted to be an
actor?
FARRELL: He laughed hard and he laughed long, and he said, “What do
you want to be, a fucking play actor?” Then the first paycheck came in, and he
slapped me on the back and said, “That was a great idea, son.” My mother was,
from day one, “Well, if that’s what you want to do, try it.”. I had been
depressed, just up and down and all over the place. My mother was a nervous
wreck. Apart from acting being a big thing for me, it was kind of relief for he
because I’d found something that I actually liked, that I could throw my energy
into.
PLAYBOY: Success found you pretty quickly.
FARRELL: I had four of five great years over there, you know? I was
lucky enough to work in Dublin with great actors and on some TV shows. It was
like a day job. I’d go to work at eight A.M., shoot the show Ballykissangel,
we’d wrap at five or six, I would come home at the same time the lads had
finished installing kitchen and working in the clothes shops and we’d all go to
the pub. It wasn’t like a bog “Wow, you’re an actor, man” type affair.
PLAYBOY: Any problems for you appearing naked on camera in Tigerland?
FARRELL: There was just two girl, two boys, three crew members and
Joel. We were all just sitting around naked as fuck, having a laugh. It was not
a very sexy environment, man. The say the camera puts on 10 pounds. Not in the
fucking nether region. I had a dick like a cashew nut, man. If I could walk
around naked all the time, though, I would. The first thing I do when I come
home is rip off all the clothes and just plop myself into bed. Not a fucking
problem, man.
PLAYBOY: Tom Cruise was your co-star in Minority Report. What was he
like?
FARRELL: Extreme positivity. Tom was fucking great on the set to all
the actors, the crew. You know all that bullshit about extras not being allowed
to look at him? That’s a load of fucking wank. He was generous. Obviously
ambitious and very strong and very, very competitive. But really, a very
generous fellow.
PLAYBOY: Did you two pal around?
FARRELL: I wouldn’t have seen that in a million years. I really had a
good time with him, but I don’t know him. I mean, he’s Tom Cruise. He’s got so
much going in his life. I never got to have a drink with him, but why the fuck
would he?
PLAYBOY: How many of your friends in Ireland asked you if he was gay?
FARRELL: Quite a few of them. It was one of the first things that they
asked.
PLAYBOY: What’d you tell them?
FARRELL: I said, “I don’t think so,” and I stand by than. Who knows
what goes on behind fucking closed doors? But if I were to bet my life on
whether he was gay or not, I wouldn’t think twice. I would go, “I bet my life
he’s not,” and I firmly believe he’s not. Look. I’ve met fucking guys who are
straighter than me and tougher than me suck cock. There’s a guy in Dublin who is
so effeminate and extremely camp it’s hilarious, yet he’s very happy,
heterosexual married man with two kids. There’s no rhyme or reason to it.
PLAYBOY: You made Hart’s War with Bruce Willis in Prague. Is it true
Willis seldom knew his lines?
FARRELL: He learns them – he just fucks them up a lot. But that’s
funny, and you slag about it. He’s just like me. Prague is mad, mad city. Man,
there’s fucking darkness to be found in that place. I couldn’t wait to get out
and I will never go back.
PLAYBOY: You’ve worked and continue to work with some very big names.
If you were having a really bad night, is there anyone you would call?
FARRELL: Pacino. I wouldn’t think twice about picking up the phone. I
shot The Recruit with him in Toronto and sometimes he would have to stay over
the Four Seasons. We’d race out to the fucking bar and have dinner and talk
about scenes, or we’d just shoot the shit. He was fucking great with me –
completely generous, funny and quirky. He’s just a fucking genuine dude, and I
had all the time in the world for him. He used to call me “Kid,” like, “Hey, how
you doing, kid?” and I nearly got a fucking boner every time he said it, you
know? Moments like sitting at the Four Seasons with Pacino improvising because
the scene we’re doing the next day isn’t as fleshed pit as it should be – that’s
when I think. How the fuck did I ever get here? Didn’t finish school. Was told
I’d be fucking nothing. Told in drama school I mumble too much and wouldn’t
work, and here I am sitting with Michael Corleone, Scarface. God, that’s
amazing. I am a lucky little cock.
PLAYBOY: In another one of your new movies, Daredevil, you play the
villain Bullseye, a man with deadly aim, to Ben Affleck’s blind, acrobatic
superhero. How did that go?
FARRELL: That was just a case of “Check your subtlety at the door.” It
was very large, man. I might be ridiculously over-the-top in this one. How could
I do character research to play Bullseye? Walk down the Third Street in Santa
Monica trying to kill people with fucking safety pins? You just have to go for
it. Be large and bask the fact that you’re allowed to do it, for once.
PLAYBOY: Any tales of superhero-supervillain bonding between you and
Ben Affleck?
FARRELL: I only saw him on the set and he’s really lovely fucking
dude. I did not get to know him very well at all, but I thought he was dead-on.
I did one big fight scene with him and that was good fun. He’s a big fucker, as
well – six-foot-four or something.
PLAYBOY: Have you ever felt electricity with a female co-star?
FARRELL: Bridget Moynahan is an amazing fucking woman. I had a great
time working with her on The Recruit – and I’m not even talking about chemistry,
because nothing happened between us and she’s been with a dude for four years,
happily. She beautiful, strong as an ox, knows who she is and she’s bold as
brass-brazen yet she’s also as fucking soft and sweet as they come. Working with
actresses doesn’t get much better that the experience I had working with Bridget
Moynahan.
PLAYBOY: Which actresses are on your “must work with” list?
FARRELL: I love Angelina Jolie’s work. I think she has an amazing
ability to get under the skin of character and do her thing. I would love to
work with her and obviously, Halle Berry, whom I’ve had a crush on since I was
about 12. She seems lovely, a sweet girl.
PLAYBOY: Does she know how you feel about her?
FARRELL: I met Halle when I was up in Toronto on the se of X-Men, but
I had four cold sores on my lip and felt like a two-year old. I kept my hand
over my mouth, saying, “It was really nice to meet you. Really nice to meet
you.” Oh it was terrible. I’m not afraid of telling her. Maybe she reads
Playboy. I’m sure her husband does.
PLAYBOY: Clearly you enjoy a good drink. Can you work with a buzz on?
FARRELL: I never had a buzz on and worked, I’ve dealt with hangovers
during works. Bad ones. And I’ve worked with them. It gives you little something
else to fight against, a little something to play off of. I did a community play
once in a park in Sydney, Australia for kids, not a professional theater, and I
was stoned out of my head from reefer. I’ll never fucking do that again. I was
just freaked. I could hear every word coming out of my mouth. I couldn’t spit
out the words fast enough.
PLAYBOY: Does coke scare you?
FARRELL: I wouldn’t touch that fucking shit. Cocaine would be the road
to ruin for me.
PLAYBOY: Because you’d like it too much?
FARRELL: Yeah, I’d get addicted. A great friend of mine in Dublin is a
driver and all he said to me was, “When you get to Hollywood, if I ever hear
you’re on that white powder, I’ll fucking rip your head off.” He’s dead right,
because he knows I’m as bold as brass.
PLAYBOY: And what about heroin?
FARRELL: Heroin’s fine in moderation.
PLAYBOY: Is there anything else that scares you?
FARRELL: Commercial fucking airplanes. I hate flying, I get sweaty
palms, I hear every fucking noise. I usually get out of my head and just go
unconscious or start tripping. My sister hates flying with me because I end up
doing too much Dramamine or sleeping pills that I mix with booze so I don’t know
anything that’s going on. It’s a big fucking train flying through the air and I
hate it. I find it most unnatural fucking thing in the world. (A helicopter
flies over head) There’s a fucking disaster waiting to happen.
PLAYBOY: What would you be doing right now if you were in Ireland?
FARRELL: I’d be drinking pints of Carlsberg. I genuinely miss the
normality of going up to the fucking pub at seven or eight every evening, having
five or six pints and carrying on the same conversation for 15 fucking years
with the same mates, laughing about stupid shit. A lot of people here work their
asses off during week and go fucking bananas on weekends. We work our asses off
as well, but every weeknight, we go and have a few pints with a dinner of
lasagna or some fucking chips, fucking chicken Kiev or a big stake with some
fucking sautéed onions. I miss that, big time.
PLAYBOY: You grew up far from the troubles that have plagued Northern
Ireland for so long. Still, you must have taken a stand on this issue.
FARRELL: In an ideal word, it would be nice for Ireland to be one
county because it’s such a pretty fucking island. But I don’t live up there, so
it’s not about me. It was never on my porch, never on my front doorstep. But it
would affect you, you know, an inordinate amount because at the end of the day,
it’s your Ireland, your country, your people, whether they pledge allegiance to
the queen or not. They have Northern Irish accents, they’re Irish people and
they’re fucking going bananas on each other.
PLAYBOY: What are your feelings about the IRA?
FARRELL: A bunch of fucking scumbags and terrorists – that’s all there
is to it. You cannot fucking put a bomb on a crowded street and kill a lot of
men, women and children and call your cause just. There is not fucking
justification for that. A hit is different thing. It’s still wrong to take
another life, but a hit is a decision made to take one person for a particular
reason. I’m not condoning it, but that’s much easier to justify than what IRA
has gotten involved in.
PLAYBOY: Would you go to war?
FARRELL: If somebody ever harmed any of my family, I would always
fight for what I believe in. if I were alive in 1910, I would have been in the
bushes with a rifle trying to kick the English out of my country back in the day
when we were being suppressed. But as for war, the repercussions are very real.
The blood is read and real and doesn’t dry as quick as you might think.
PLAYBOY: What’s the best thing about having money?
FARRELL: I really don’t want that much. A few beers, a packet of
smokes and I’m a happy fucking boy. The able to so that and be able to send my
mother this or that or, when she’s here, to send her down to a spa for a fucking
$400 six hours of manicures, pedicures, every cure. Oh, fucking man, you cannot
get her out of there. She loves it. What else do I need?
PLAYBOY: All if all the jobs, the fame, the opportunities were to end?
FARRELL: I love my job and I take it much more serious than I take
myself. I think I’ll probably want to do this for a long while. But if it were
all to end tomorrow, I would go home. I’d write. I’d open a pub called
“Flagger’s, from “Flagge”, a nickname one of the lads have me as kind. That
would be grand. But it’s nice to know my level of grandness would be made easier
by the amount of money I’d earned in the past few years. If I decide to pack
this in, or the opportunity to do this was taken away from me, it’s nice to know
I have enough of money to be sure my kids would have an education. And there
would always he a house with food, clothes and central heating. And my beers and
smokes. I’d have some great stories, too.
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