When the bad boy turns good

BEING Colin Farrell has doubtless been the fantasy of many a man, what with those good looks, the talent and money.

But since he got sober, became a Dad for the second time, and won his first Golden Globe for In Bruges, being Mr Farrell seems to have become an entirely different and more tranquil story.

Still as flirtatious and full of mischief as ever, Farrell is very much back in the driver’s seat of his life, opting for ever lighter and more comedic roles, oh, and kids movies. He credits fatherhood with saving his life and saving him from his own worst excesses.

“People say, “has success changed you?”, I say ‘No, fatherhood has changed me and is the ultimate success’. It’s given me a will to live that I never had. I never really had the will to die, but I never had the will to live that I have now,” he tells me. “I want to be around for a long time and I want to see the boys and men they become and I want to tell them stories about how their old man came to Hollywood and who he did what with and what happened. I now want to leave better work behind as well.”

Farrell’s son James is now 7 and his second son Henry is almost two.

At 35, Farrell has packed a lot in since the TV series Falling for a Dancer and Ballykissangel, along with getting seen in a London theatre by Kevin Spacey, propelled him to international stardom and Hollywood.

His legendary sexual adventures with everyone from Angelina Jolie to Britney Spears, along with his gargantuan appetite for drink and drugs very nearly derailed a very promising future, until he went into rehab in 2006.

“I just got sick of myself and it took me a while to see the good things I have in my life,” he admits candidly. “There are so many good things and to be honest the “career” that I may have and that is deemed as such a glorious thing, is way down there in the pecking order. I have the boys, and friends and family that I adore. They’re all chapters in my life, just different chapters, I suppose.

“It’s the same job I’ve been doing for 16 years or so now. I’m obviously getting a lot more money and people are watching me a lot more and that’s par for the course. If I take the paycheck, I have to expect, not necessarily accept all the time, that people are going to write things or say things about me that I can’t control. But I love the job of acting. I don’t think it’s the most important job in the world, but at the end of the day, I keep coming back for more, so there must be something right in it.”

So how what’s it like for the boy from Castleknock who meant to be a soccer player, to have become the handsome man who women want to be with, and men want to be? He shrugs and gives me that smirk.

“Maybe it’s been easier than being a bad looking man! The world is a shallow place, but it’s not something that I worry over or concern myself over. My family would like me to worry more about my looks fading, but it’s not a head space I live in, never has been.”

Good looks seem to be endemic in the Farrell household, which includes two older sisters and his gay brother Eamon. The family is very close and supportive of Colin. His sister Claudine also lives in LA, where she works as his assistant, and the rest of the family are regular visitors.

“My mum and dad are great parents. My dad played a lot of football and my mother is a great woman who’s always there. They just wanted all their kids to do what makes them happiest. Being the baby, I always got away with murder, which is why, maybe, I turned out the way I did! My mother gave us all free rein to do what we wanted to do, as long as we were happy, so it wasn’t that strict at all.

“Having a sense of belonging, a sense of love is all really important. Very few people in my position would be lucky enough to have siblings that are as close and supportive as mine. We are that fucking close man, it’s insane!”

In addition to starring in several mega budget Hollywood movies like Miami Vice and Oliver Stone’s Alexander and currently alongside Jennifer Aniston in Horrible Bosses, and with Fright Night about to open here, and playing Arnold Schwarzenegger’s character in the remake of Total Recall, Farrell has deliberately made it a point to work in Ireland and with Irish directors as often as he can.

In the past five years, he’s made Ondine with Neil Jordan, Triage with Alan Moloney, along with his award-winning performance in Martin McDonagh’s In Bruges. He and McDonagh are reuniting in LA in October for Seven Psychopaths, which McDonagh has also written and will direct. It co-stars Mickey Rourke and Sam Rockwell.

“Martin is just this extraordinary talent and I’ve been a huge fan of his stage work since long before I met him. I’m so excited about working with him again on this. Working with Martin, he has a particular sense of humour that it’s great to be around and a wit that is particular to his London and Irish heritage.

“Working with Neil Jordan, it was great to be back home in Castletownbere where all this madness started for me there with “Falling for a Dancer”, when I was just 21. Dublin and Ireland are a very important part of my life and have formed me to a great degree. I love being home.

“With regard to playing someone who’s Irish, obviously there’s a lot of shit I deeply understand about what it is to be Irish. Much as I like to talk, I couldn’t fully articulate what it is to be Irish, without feeling shame or being dirty. But I do understand it and it’s less work to do dialectically’, he said.

After “Seven Psychopaths” Farrell is due to start work with Brendan Gleeson on his directorial debut in the film adaptation of “At Swim Two Birds”. The movie will be shot in both Ireland and Luxembourg, with whom Ireland recently signed an international co-production treaty. It will star the cream of the Irish male acting aristocracy, including Gabriel Byrne, Cillian Murphy, Michael Fassbender, Brendan and Domhnall Gleeson.

“Brendan has done fantastic work in drawing all this together and I’m really looking forward to getting stuck into it,” he said.

At the risk of asking him to pop psychologise himself, I wonder what Colin Farrell has learned during this wild ride he’s been on?

“I came into all this at 21 or younger and I didn’t know why or what or how or when and I just enjoyed it. And then I kind of stopped enjoying it. For a time, the whole trip got a bit out of hand for me personally and I just stepped back. After “Miami Vice“, I looked back and it was one of those seven year cycles. I had gone from “Tigerland” to “Miami Vice” making something every six months over a seven year period, so it was just a natural break.

“I’ve quietened down, definitely, but look, I’m 35 and I’m a father. I quietened down selfishlessly because it suits me. I just wanted a little peace.”

* Fright Night opens nationwide on Sept 2.