“I was thinking, who could play this fellow?” Edward Berger says. “You know, we go to some pretty dark places.”
They do. Ballad of a Small Player, the director’s follow-up to Conclave, closes in on a gambling addict as he courts self-destruction amid the nauseating decadence of Macao’s supercasinos.
“He’s a fraud, a liar, a thief and, of course…”
“And I straight away thought, ‘I know the right man!’” Colin Farrell ventriloquises with a hearty chuckle.
RM Block
And we’re away. You don’t so much interview Farrell as curate his conversation. A professional down to his neat fingertips, he gives you, in 20 minutes or so, enough material for a smallish book.
He was like this as cocky whippersnapper, but, now closing in on 50, he has a great deal more to talk about. Childhood in suburban Castleknock. Promising years as a young soccer player. The audition for Boyzone. Training at the Gaiety School of Acting. Local breakthrough in the TV series Ballykissangel. International breakthrough in Joel Schumacher’s Tigerland. A period in rehab for addiction to painkillers and recreational drugs.
I observe that one or two journalists have, cynically, as I too am about to, used Ballad of a Small Player as a route into conversation about that difficult period. This is, among other things, a film about addiction. “Lord” Doyle, protagonist of Berger’s blaring, deliberately alienating picture, cannot stop himself throwing good thousands after bad. He also guzzles lakes of champagne and sucks trainloads of Cuban cigars (despite not much caring for either).
So is gambling addiction an entirely different business from substance abuse?
“No, I don’t think it could be classified as an entirely different business when you see the consequences of losing yourself to any addiction,” Farrell says. “Whatever it may be, however it presents itself – whether it’s sex, shopping, food, booze, drugs, gambling – the very nature of addiction demands a perilous flirtation with your absolute demise.
“While the expressions are different, and they present themselves differently, they usually are born of some kind of unanswered inner turmoil.”
So there is some connection to Farrell’s own earlier struggles. But he is eager to confirm that all life experience gets chewed into every performance.
“Every film I’ve seen, every book I read, every song I’ve heard, every conversation I’ve had goes into every single job that I do in various ways. Yes, I might have had a bit of insider-trading perspective on the nature of addiction. But, having said that, I never once felt I had to consciously reflect back on any experiences I’d had.”
It is not fair of us to keep dwelling on a relatively brief period of Farrell’s life. That crash came late in 2005. Tigerland, a gruelling tale of the Vietnam War, was not a colossal hit when it was released, in 2000, but it did enough to get him noticed in Hollywood.
Steven Spielberg cast him in the ripping Minority Report. Oliver Stone made him the lead in the (let’s be kind) fitful Alexander the Great. Michael Mann’s Miami Vice, a film whose reputation has soared over the decades, was shot before he started the long, tricky road to a clean life. Few stars have pulled off such a reinvention so convincingly.
Farrell has always acknowledged the importance of his children. James Padraig Farrell, who has a severe genetic disorder, was born to the actor Kim Bordenave in 2003. Henry Tadeusz Farrell, son of Alicja Bachleda-Curuś, his costar in Neil Jordan’s film Ondine, entered the world in 2009.
If U2 are playing the Sphere in Las Vegas, you’d better believe I’ll get good tickets – because I know the lads for 20 years
— Colin Farrell
Meanwhile, Farrell set to working with an enviable array of great directors. Terrence Malick for The New World. Yorgos Lanthimos for The Lobster. Sofia Coppola for The Beguiled. An Oscar nomination finally arrived for The Banshees of Inisherin, in 2022.
Anyway, he is not quite finished with his treatise on addiction.
“If we continuously go back to something that is just purely pleasurable, it will be at the cost of so many aspects of life that may be accessible to us,” Farrell says. “Especially with the advent of technology, and particularly with regards to social media.
“I have kids. I wrestle with TikTok and Snapchat and all this kind of stuff. That idea of a quick moment’s fulfilment is lovely. I’m not against it. There’s no moralism here. I think you know me well enough to know that. But you have to be suspicious of it – purely in a neurochemical fashion. This thing that was designed to offer us the opportunity to connect across the globe has caused a greater degree of separation.”
Berger, a dryly amusing man from an Austrian and Swiss background, is listening intently. He must worry about shorter attention spans eating up the audience for movies.
“I don’t worry about it, because it’s just a different medium,” he says. “Movies are actually getting longer. It’s fashion. People have had an overdose of 10 hours or 30 hours of television. They want to go back and see two-and-a-half-hour movies.”
It is now a quarter of a century since Farrell made the jump from Ireland to Los Angeles with Tigerland. Notwithstanding those early difficulties, he could hardly look better on it. The early roguish demeanour has matured into a more complex charisma. Wisely, he remains as much a character actor as a romantic lead, eschewing pathos in The Banshees of Inisherin and Ballad of a Small Player, unrecognisably malign for his Emmy-nominated turn as the Penguin in that TV series.
Berger needed such a character actor for Ballad of a Small Player. Lord Doyle likes to portray himself as an upper-crust David Niven type, but we soon learn that he is an unremarkable Irish chancer.
“I thought immediately, Who can take us into these steps and we will still like him?” the director says. “That’s Colin Farrell. He’s such an open and such a generous man in his emotions. So I felt it would be great if he played it. On top of it, I thought it was extra candy that he’s Irish. Because it’s the ultimate irony – and a great reveal – when he suddenly drops his accent.”
So how does Farrell assess his 25-year journey?
“I don’t want a single year back,” he says. “I wouldn’t mind pumping the brakes a little bit. I wouldn’t mind slowing shit down now. I’m finding the 40s – as I flirt with entering my 50s next year – to be the most meaningful and beautiful chapter in my life.
“Fame? I have my own perspective on the machinations of fame and why it exists socially. There was an aspirational aspect to it. I’m not saying it was deserved, but there was a North Star aspect to it. Now celebrities are being torn down.”
He has stayed on the right side of that conflict for the past decade or two. Living quietly in Los Angeles (for the most part), he has managed to keep his social life pretty much to himself. He is still a movie star, but, before that, he is an actor. That is an appropriate base camp to occupy in middle age.
“I’m somebody that’s benefited from it,” he says with characteristic honesty. “If U2 are playing the Sphere in Las Vegas, you’d better believe I’ll get good tickets – because I know the lads for 20 years.”
“Can you get me tickets?” Berger says, laughing.
“They are not there any more, darling. And I can’t get them back on stage. I’m not that famous. Ha ha! But if they’re playing again on tour, do let me know.
“I’ve leaned into it. When my kids have needed care I’ve probably skipped a queue. Somebody shouldn’t be able to skip a queue. But I defy any parent to not get their child there if they could.”
He talks about how fame has changed and how celebrities are now there to be torn down. That derives, in part, from the way the current process – the business of promotional interviews – has altered in the digital age.
Too often, all that gets through to readers is the supposedly scandalous headline. Too many people barely realise there is an article to be clicked on that gives context and explanation. Someone reads “Colin Farrell says we should invade the Isle of Man” (he didn’t really say that) and fails to encounter the paragraph that frames it as a joke.
“Ha ha! They said they weren’t going to print that, Donald,” he says. “That’s why I’m more suspicious about print – not because of the journalists’ intentions, but oftentimes the tone in which something is said has as much information within it as the actual words that are used, sometimes even more.
“And so that’s why I’m suspicious about the printed word. It used to be totally the opposite. But I feel more comfortable now if I’m being recorded on camera. So, if I make a faux pas, I can apologise for it in the moment. Otherwise it might come back and haunt me.”
Something else has shifted in the years since Farrell first hit it big. Back then, Irish movie stars were as rare as Irish space shuttles. You had Liam Neeson and Pierce Brosnan from the preceding generation. But no other Irish 20-somethings were keeping him company on the A-list.
It’s extraordinary to see our homegrown talent doing what they’re doing, especially on such a global stage. I don’t feel any mentorship. I don’t feel any seniority
— Colin Farrell
Après Colin, le déluge. Saoirse Ronan emerged as a multiple Oscar nominee. Over the past few years Paul Mescal, Jessie Buckley, Ruth Negga and Barry Keoghan have followed. We meet during London Film Festival, where Buckley, playing Agnes Shakespeare in Hamnet, has cemented her position as unbackable favourite for the best-actress Oscar. I think I know what Farrell will say. But I wonder if he feels as if he’s a mentor – or a John the Baptist, perhaps – for all the stars that followed.
“No, I feel it purely as a fan,” he says. “It is just extraordinary to see the work that Paul’s been doing – and Jesse and Saoirse. It feels like Saoirse has been around a couple of decades. But surely her age would render that to be nonsense.
“It’s extraordinary to see our homegrown talent doing what they’re doing, especially on such a global stage. I don’t feel any mentorship. I don’t feel any seniority.”
Well, time is ruthless in its progress. Whether he likes it or not, younger actors will look to his example when dreaming big.
“Each job, each gig, each project is a restarting of the clock,” he says. “I’m starting from scratch every time. I know I have 25 years of working as an actor, but every time I go to work I have the same level of nervousness that I had when I was doing Tigerland in the year 2000.”
Farrell smiles his still-eager smile.
“I will never forget the first time I was offered the role as a parent,” he says. “Recently a script came in where I was offered the role of a f**king grandfather! Guess what? Biologically it all makes sense.”
It comes to us all.
Ballad of a Small Player is in cinemas now. It streams on Netflix from Wednesday, October 29th
