From hellraiser to Hollywood quiet man for Colin Farrell

Having swapped cocaine and whiskey for celery and kale juice, reformed hellraiser Colin Farrell looks like he is about to become the quiet man of Hollywood.

“I don’t take it for granted,” he says. “I don’t undermine how difficult it was, my own journey to getting sober and stuff. I’ve had eight years now, so I feel so locked in and it feels like a really different time. And I don’t miss it.

“I’m lucky not to miss it. I know people that have a longer period of sobriety than I do and they miss it every single day and it’s that much of a struggle for them. I’m very lucky not to miss it.”

Farrell admits that his battle with booze wasn’t an overnight success and that he took his time about it.

“When I got sober, it was time to get sober,” he says. “I could have done it earlier and I would have saved a lot of money and a good deal of heartbreak, but I’m lucky enough to have made it anyway. Better late than never.”

When talk turns to romance and dating in Hollywood, Farrell’s feelings appear to be conflicted and confusing.

Speaking to Patricia Danaher in Tatler Man magazine about love, life, and sobriety, he says: “I have fallen in love in my life and at times it felt so deeply that I couldn’t imagine my life without the other person and I couldn’t imagine that I ever existed 19 or 24 years before I met them.”

But, it seems that it’s not all clean living for the Dublin-born actor. After long intervals of health binges, Farrell, a 37-year-old father-of-two, throws caution to the wind and goes on something of a junk food rampage.

“Just because I don’t drink doesn’t mean I live in extremes,” says Farrell. “I love bad food. I love cheeseburgers.”

It’s a little over eight years since Farrell stopped making sex tapes and falling down drunk in public. He’s working regularly, even if many of his recent movies have failed to match the success of earlier hits, such as 2002’s Minority Report, where he outshone Tom Cruise in a magnetic performance, and 2009’s In Bruges, for which he won a Golden Globe for best actor.

As he approaches 38, the reformed rogue admits that he is relieved to be sober and while he might not lack for people in his life, he’s not especially close to anyone in particular.

“My life is a result of an accumulation of kindness and good deeds and generosities that I have received, just to feel out and survive and go where I have done and done,” he says.

His father played with Shamrock Rovers and, as a youth, he wanted to be a football player like him. Farrell says he could not fit into the role of a sportsman.

“I wanted to be a footballer, but I wasn’t good enough. Certainly, when I was 13 or 14, I knew for sure that I’d dropped the ball, so to speak,” contactmusic.com quoted Farrell as saying.

* Colin Farrell’s full interview is in Irish Tatler Man, on sale now.