{"id":94830,"date":"2025-09-30T14:07:08","date_gmt":"2025-09-30T14:07:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/94830\/"},"modified":"2025-09-30T14:07:08","modified_gmt":"2025-09-30T14:07:08","slug":"colin-farrell-pitched-penguin-series-for-the-sake-of-makeup-design","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/94830\/","title":{"rendered":"Colin Farrell Pitched ‘Penguin’ Series for the Sake of Makeup Design"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tFor Colin Farrell<\/a>, portraying broken characters in his latest works, \u201cBallad of a Small Player\u201d and \u201cThe Penguin,\u201d has offered a chance not only to lean into new emotional and physical challenges, but also embrace the near possession that comes with performing under heavy makeup. <\/p>\n

\n\tFarrell discussed his latest works at the Zurich Film Festival<\/a>, where he presented Edward Berger<\/a>\u2019s gambling drama and accepted the event\u2019s Golden Icon Award. <\/p>\n

\n\tThe Irish actor also spoke openly about his eventful career, which took off with Joel Schumacher\u2019s 2000 Vietnam War-era film \u201cTigerland,\u201d leading to major Hollywood films like Steven Spielberg\u2019s \u201cMinority Report,\u201d Oliver Stone\u2019s \u201cAlexander\u201d and Michael Mann\u2019s \u201cMiami Vice\u201d before waning as a result of his own personal excesses.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn playing Lord Doyle, the character in \u201cBallad of a Small Player,\u201d Farrell portrays a gambling addict in the casino mecca of Macau, a high roller who\u2019s quickly running out of luck and breaking down both physically and mentally.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cHe\u2019s somebody who\u2019s on the precipice of a kind of insanity, and that also has its physical implications as well,\u201d Farrell explained. \u201cThere is something going on with his heart that he doesn\u2019t quite understand, whether it\u2019s anxiety or whether it\u2019s some kind of cardiac issue.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tLike a car engine hitting the red line, Lord Doyle is \u201cconstantly anxious, fever-pitch energy, and a kind of a mania has overtaken him born of desperation. \u2026 He is living in an incredibly aggressive kind of spiritual or emotional vacuum, no connection to anyone, like addicts, regardless of what the addiction is, inevitably end up inhabiting.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tFarrell was immediately taken by the very different role. \u201cThe script was beautiful.\u201d At the same time he found it disturbing.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt was so dynamic and it was so singular and like nothing I\u2019d ever read. I find as an actor, reading things and having a certain degree of choice I\u2019m fortunate enough to have, you either lean into something as you\u2019re reading it or you don\u2019t. \u2026 Inevitably I end up leaning into things that I feel I haven\u2019t explored before just because it\u2019s fun. It\u2019s just really fun. It doesn\u2019t take much for me to feel like I\u2019m repeating myself, you know, and that can feel kind of sticky in an unfortunate way. So this was very singular. It was very unique. I\u2019d never read anything like it. I flew through it. But I kind of felt nauseous reading it as well, because the film is, if you ever see it, it\u2019s incredibly loud. The colors are very brash. It\u2019s very bombastic. I mean, there\u2019s nothing subtle about it \u2014 I will say that now. And it was the same in reading it. It was kind of an assault on the senses in reading as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe Ballad of a Small Player\u201d was also the ideal opportunity to work with Berger, who won the 2023 international feature Oscar for \u201cAll Quiet on the Western Front.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tFarrell had been familiar with Berger\u2019s previous work, in particular the series \u201cPatrick Melrose\u201d with Benedict Cumberbatch. \u201cI thought that was extraordinary storytelling.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHe and Berger had already been in contact early on about working together.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cEd and I were talking about doing \u2018The Ballad of the Small Player\u2019 before \u2018All Quiet on the Western Front\u2019 came out. And then it just took off for him, just globally, internationally. He\u2019s been an extraordinary storyteller for years. For decades he\u2019s been working in his chosen field as an artist and writer and director.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAlthough a very different genre, Farrell similarly embraced the role of the Penguin in Matt Reeves<\/a>\u2019 \u201cThe Batman,\u201d which led to the hit HBO series. Although he initially didn\u2019t understand Reeves\u2019 take on the character, it all made sense once he saw the Penguin\u2019s look.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tColin Farrell as The Penguin<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tHBO Max<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI was thinking of Burgess Meredith and I was thinking of Danny DeVito \u2026 and that child who sat on the carpet in Dublin at the age of 5 watching \u2018Batman\u2019 \u201966, and then at the age of 11 or 12 saw Tim Burton\u2019s \u2018Batman\u2019 with Danny DeVito, and used to draw Batman signals on his jeans. I was like, wow, I\u2019m so excited. The script came, I read it, and I was like, eh? I\u2019ve only got five scenes. I got so greedy. I didn\u2019t really get it, either. That was the shortsighted part.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI don\u2019t know, it\u2019s a bit one-note; he\u2019s a bit silly; he\u2019s a bit of a putz. Could this be more interesting? And I was wrong because it was there on the page. I just couldn\u2019t see it. I had some preconceived notion or something that I was looking for, and it wasn\u2019t that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHe signed on for the role, still not knowing what he would look like. Then Reeves asked him if he\u2019d spoken to Mike Marino, the makeup designer of the Penguin. \u201cAnd I said, \u2018Yeah, we\u2019ve been sending pictures back and forth.\u2019 And he said, \u2018Did Mike show you what you\u2019re going to look like?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI\u2019ll never forget, Matt went, \u2018Come here, come here, come here.\u2019 And he opened up his laptop and he went, \u2018Look!\u2019 It was the first time I saw the makeup \u2026 and the cogs crunched.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tFarrell asked if it was CGI. Reeves said, \u201cNo, [Marino] said he can make you look like that and nobody\u2019ll notice.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI was like, that\u2019s extraordinary. Then the script became clear to me. I could see through Mike Marino\u2019s imagination and every little pockmark and every scar. The character was ferocious looking, but there was also, I could imagine, a sadness to aspects of that character\u2019s life. \u2026 It just gave me so much information.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThen we did a screen test and it was very weird. It was amazing. But it was very weird. You just give yourself over to it. There was a degree of, let\u2019s say, possession. As close to being overtaken by something as I have ever been was on that. A lot of it was the distance that I was afforded, the seeming distance that I was afforded. It\u2019s very powerful to look at yourself in the mirror and see that looking back at you. It was wild.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe makeup helped transform Farrell in more ways than one.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI could riff all day as the Penguin. I could come on this stage and talk to you for five hours and not break character once. The weird thing was, and I\u2019m not saying this as a boast, it was just weird, the strange thing was that I would have a totally different humor, totally different. I used to send my kids messages, you know?\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSwitching to Oz Cobb\u2019s thick Brooklyn accent and pretending to be talking into a phone: \u201cHow you doing, kid? You\u2019re doing your homework?\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tFarrell was so overwhelmed with the makeup job that it led to the idea of making a Penguin series.<\/p>\n

\n\tAbout three weeks into the shoot he approached producer Dylan Clark about doing a show. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cMike\u2019s makeup design was so extraordinary and really was very moving, like it was very touching again, to be a part of it, because I just felt like I was stepping into the lineage of artists like Dick Smith, who did the original \u2018Planet of the Apes\u2019 and did F. Murray Abraham\u2019s makeup, Salieri, on Milos Forman\u2019s \u2018Amadeus,\u2019 and won the Oscar for that; Dick Smith, who\u2019s no longer with us; Mike Marino was a pupil of his, kind of an apostle of his; Rick Baker, all these extraordinary artists \u2014 Rob Bottin, who did all the makeup in \u2018The Thing\u2019 back in the days when makeup was all practical.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cSo I felt doing that part, I was like a part of Hollywood history. It was really cool. But there was no plan for it. It was because the makeup was so extraordinary, I thought, this is such a waste to only have five scenes of this, not me, in it. We can do so much with this beautiful makeup that Mike designed.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAfter the film, Clark contacted Farrell to discuss the idea for a series they would pitch to HBO, he added. \u201cAnd that was it. But we had no idea that it would be received the way it was at all. Truly. No idea.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tFarrell is eagerly awaiting Reeves\u2019 \u201cThe Batman\u201d sequel.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhile emphasizing that he can say very little about the project, he noted, \u201cI can tell you, I read it start to finish. And as much as I loved the first script \u2014 I know I had misgivings about the Penguin part \u2014 but the first Batman film, the script I read was brilliant.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe sequel, he added, \u201cis deeper, it\u2019s scarier. The stakes are higher emotionally. \u2026 Just as a fan of scripts and stories and films, it\u2019s so brilliant. And Matt, he took his time and he created just an extraordinary story, really. So full of feeling, really sad in parts. I\u2019m very excited to see it, whatever my involvement in it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For Colin Farrell, portraying broken characters in his latest works, \u201cBallad of a Small Player\u201d and \u201cThe Penguin,\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":94831,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[268],"tags":[434,9441,9442,18,117,19,17,11750,9446],"class_list":{"0":"post-94830","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-celebrities","9":"tag-colin-farrell","10":"tag-edward-berger","11":"tag-eire","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-ie","14":"tag-ireland","15":"tag-matt-reeves","16":"tag-zurich-film-festival"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94830","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94830"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94830\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/94831"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94830"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94830"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94830"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}