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inconversation
HIS AIM IS TRUE
Ten years ago, Colin Farrell was a hard-drinking tabloid
fi xture devoted to raising hell. Today, he’s a clean-living
single dad devoted to raising two sons. The acclaimed
actor opens up about sobriety, fatherhood and his latest
riveting role, on the hit HBO series “True Detective”
storySean
Manning
photographyMichael Muller stylingJenny Ricker
Dolce&Gabbana
Three-piece suit;
Christian Louboutin
Boots
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COLIN FARRELL
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COLIN FARRELL
Dolce&Gabbana
Burgundy wool sports
coat; gray knit sweater
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COLIN FARRELL
J ust a few short years after being discovered
in 1999 by Kevin Spacey on a West End
London stage, Dublin native Colin Farrell
was one of Hollywood’s most sought-after
stars, working with such auteurs as Steven
Spielberg, Terrence Malick, Michael Mann
and Oliver Stone. He was also one of its
most unabashedly hedonistic leading men.
Rare was the magazine profile that didn’t
feature him imbibing, and his array of
paramours—as reported by the tabloids,
anyway—ranged from pop stars to Playboy playmates to
fashion models. Confirmed among the latter was Kim
Bordenave, who in 2003 gave birth to their son, James.
Despite James having Angelman syndrome, a rare genetic
disorder that affects cognitive development, speech and
motor skills, Farrell’s lifestyle wasn’t immediately tempered
by fatherhood. As he told Details in 2012, “I made a decision
not to change. I literally said, ‘I’m not changing! I’m gonna
be his friend!’ Like a 28-year-old, drug-addicted, drunk
friend is exactly what my 6-month-old son needs.”
Farrell ultimately entered rehab in late 2005 and has
remained sober ever since. Other significant life changes
have included settling in Los Angeles full-time, becoming
an outspoken advocate for Angelman syndrome and, in
2009, fathering a second son, Henry, with actress Alicja
Bachleda-Curuś.
What has not changed is the astounding quality and
versatility of his work, be it the dark comedy of In Bruges,
the modern fairy tale of Ondine, the musical drama of Crazy
Heart, the heartrending biopic of Saving Mr. Banks or the
absurdist romance of soon-to-be-released The Lobster, which
won the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival in May.
Currently, Farrell appears as tormented cop Ray Velcoro in
the second season of HBO’s lauded series “True Detective.”
Over green tea at the Four Seasons Hotel in New York, the
39-year-old actor spoke to Rhapsody about the show, his
sons and his checkered history of on-screen grooming.
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COLIN FARRELL
First, obviously, we need to talk about that
“True Detective” mustache.
You know, me and bad hair in films … I’ve been burned,
man. Burned. Nic [Pizzolatto, the creator of “True Detective”]
showed a couple pictures of me years back when I had a
little mustache. He was thinking, “That’s not a bad look.”
And I was like, “I swore this would never happen again.”
[Laughs.] But the mustache went back to a man who in
some kind of quiet way is defining himself as outside the
rules of convention. It went back to Velcoro really feeling
that he belongs in a different time and a different place. He
comes from a long line of those kind of Western lawmen
who fashioned themselves in that way.
Did you watch the first season of the show before you
were cast?
I don’t watch that much TV. Truly—I’ve never said this
before—I’ve never seen an episode of “The Sopranos” or
“Breaking Bad.” I have a lot of catching up to do, a lot of box
sets that I want to hit one of these days. But a friend said to
me, “Have you heard of this thing ‘True Detective’? You should
watch it.” I was coming back from London, and I watched the
first three episodes on the plane, and I was just astonished. It
just broke down the wall between cinema and television. It just
rendered those classifications obsolete. The production value
was astonishing. The writing was extraordinary—better than
the majority of the films that are produced. As soon as I got
home, I blew through the last five episodes. Everyone I met, I
was asking them had they seen it and what did they think of
it. I just couldn’t get my head around it. It was so good. And
when I spoke to Nic and read the first two episodes [of season
two], I was again blinded by the specificity, the depth of the
history that each of the characters carries around with them.
Like in the first season, the murder mystery takes second place
to what’s of paramount importance to Nic, which is human
beings and human behavior.
Matthew McConaughey’s Emmy-nominated performance as Rust Cohle in the first season achieved
instant cult status. Were you mindful of that in the
way you approached Velcoro? Did you set out to
make him completely different?
Not really. It’s like, I’ve heard said that if you try not to be
like your parents, you will end up like them. I didn’t have any
instinct to either emulate or avoid any kind of mirroring. I
thought Nic was specific enough in how he sculpted each of
our voices that there was nothing that was reflective of what
I had seen before. I think, with regards to a certain kind of
nihilism and world-weary knowledge with how things work,
that’s the only comparison I could see between Rust and Ray.
And both characters are alcoholics. You’ve actually
played a lot of alcoholics recently: “True Detective,”
Saving Mr. Banks, Seven Psychopaths, Ondine.
[Laughs.] Can you imagine I never drew the line
between those?
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“It was a misguided
attempt to hold on to what
I felt was a quintessential
Irishness, which
involved an unabashed
gregariousness and massive
amounts of booze. ”
Thom Browne Sunglasses;
Lanvin Oxblood moto jacket;
ATM Gray T-shirt
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COLIN FARRELL
As someone who has struggled with drinking and has now
been sober for a decade, do you find it difficult to play
alcoholics? Does it dredge up any of those old yearnings?
Certainly no yearnings. There is some kind of just …
like a ghost of a fondness for what it’s like to be caught
in the grip of that much self-inflicted, self-indulgent pain
and darkness. As horrible as it was, there was this weird
accompanying romance that gets so many of us in trouble.
But I find living a sober life—I haven’t had a drink in 10
years—it’s easier to go into these places with clarity and
a certain objectivity rather than get enmeshed or lose the
line that delineates wherever the perceived self is from the
character. One of the greatest performances of a drunk I
have ever seen in my life is Richard E. Grant in Withnail
& I, and Richard has been sober all his life. But I would be
disingenuous if I denied the existence of a line of experience between what I’ve felt and been through in my life.
In Ondine, my daughter in that film was sick with kidney
failure. My son … I don’t consider him sick, because he
hasn’t got something that he wasn’t born with. He was born
with a congenital condition.
What are the biggest challenges of raising a child
with Angelman syndrome?
The hardest thing is what you’d imagine the hardest thing is:
seeing your child have a seizure. But they’re under control.
He hasn’t had a breakthrough seizure in three or four years.
Outside of that, the hardest thing is the same hardest thing
as with Henry. It’s just trying to be present and be kind but
firm and not smother your children in your own deeply set
and dangerous desire to be loved from your own childhood.
As a parent, you want your child to really like you. Seriously,
it’s pathetic. Those kind of simple pitfalls are the same for
James as for Henry. To have one healthy child and then
another with some issues, it compounds what’s already just
a nefarious web of minefields and traps that you can’t seem
to avoid—traps of concern and worry and fear and shame
and regret for stuff that hasn’t even happened yet. But at
the same time, it’s really wonderful. It’s the best thing that’s
ever happened to me, and it’s a lot of fun. My boy’s story
isn’t a sad story.
Did you wrestle with the idea of them growing up in
LA rather than Ireland?
Not at all. I’m not that nationalistic. I love Ireland deeply. I
couldn’t even verbalize it in a succinct or pleasing way. I go
home and there’s an emotional dialogue that begins inside
my body. But anytime I hear the many people around the
world in many different languages saying, “‘Insert country’
is the best country in the world,” I want to choke myself. I
want to be like, “Have you been to every single one?” Too
much nationalism is such a divisive thing.
You’ve said that much of the carousing early in your
career was owed to you wanting to remain true to
your Irish outsider status in Hollywood—that it was an
attempt to stay true to your roots.
It was a misguided attempt to hold on to some kind of sense
of what I felt was a quintessential Irishness, which involved,
you know, an unabashed gregariousness and massive amounts
of booze. And surely there is a greater depth to the meaning
of Irishness than those two things.
How do you view your career now versus those early days?
I still want my work to be well received. I still want to know
I’m good and all that. But less do I now identify myself with
it. Less do I look at it for my sense of worth. And less, in a
way, do I care about it. A lot of that has to do with my boys.
I don’t put this weight on my boys, but I think a lot of it’s
due to them. It’s due to finding a level of involvement in
my community and better relations with my family at the
age of 39 than I ever had. I have a small group of friends
in Los Angeles that it took me 15, 16 years to have, who I
love, every single one of them. Good people, fun people, a
really kind bunch of misfits. And so, with all that, it allows
me to care for the work more. Because I’m not going, “This
is me, and this is what I am, and this is all I’ll ever be, and
this is how I’ll be remembered.” I really do think that the
best thing I can leave behind is the world a little bit better
than when I arrived—if my two boys are healthy and happy
or if I’ve ever said a kind word to anyone. I’m not talking
about changing the world. I’m talking about the smallest
thing, a teardrop in the Pacific Ocean.
Vivienne Westwood Navy wool coat;
Dolce&Gabbana Floral shirt;
Lanvin Black pants; IRO Black boots
Groomer
Sacha Quarles
Location
A $3.85 million Hamptons-style compound on Montcalm
Avenue, in California’s Hollywood Hills, with views
of the Hollywood Sign and the Griffith Observatory,
developed by American Coastal Properties. For more
information, contact Isaac Fast of Coldwell Banker
Previews International at (323) 210-1434.
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COLIN FARRELL
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