{"id":462414,"date":"2025-09-30T06:41:13","date_gmt":"2025-09-30T06:41:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/462414\/"},"modified":"2025-09-30T06:41:13","modified_gmt":"2025-09-30T06:41:13","slug":"colin-farrell-on-his-career-from-tigerland-to-the-penguin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/462414\/","title":{"rendered":"Colin Farrell on his career, from Tigerland to The Penguin"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tIn The Ballad of a Small Player<\/a><\/a>, Edward Berger\u2019s adaptation of Lawrence Osborne\u2019s 2014 novel, Colin Farrell<\/a> plays Lord Doyle, an Irish con man and high roller in Macau whose luck, he fears, may be about to run out. Farrell, however, is still on a roll. <\/p>\n

\n\tThe Irish actor received the Golden Icon Award at the Zurich Film Festival<\/a>, in recognition of his career achievements and, in a wide-ranging Master Class discussion on Sunday, discussed the \u201cextraordinary, unearned good fortune\u201d that has been his life in cinema. <\/p>\n

\n\tGrowing up in Dublin, Farrell had no plans to act. \u201cI wanted to be a footballer, a soccer player. I was handy enough,\u201d he recalled. His father had played professionally for Dublin club Shamrock Rovers and sports were \u201cthe one way my father and I could have communication and a relationship. It was tricky everywhere else, but when it came to football, we were good to go.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHis dream of a professional soccer career ended when, \u201cI started drinking and smoking and all that stuff.\u201d Acting came via his sister Catherine, who went to theater school. \u201cIt was the first time in my life when I heard that she was going to, quote, unquote, study acting. It sounded ridiculous. I didn\u2019t think it was something you could apply yourself to within a formal structure.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tFarrell followed his sister to theater school. \u201cWhich gave me the chance to do something I do very well, which is drop out,\u201d he said. \u201cI dropped out and started working.\u201d<\/p>\n

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

\t\t\t\t\tColin Farrell in \u2018Ballad of a Small Player.\u2019<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tNetflix<\/p>\n

\n\tFarrell landed a role in the popular BBC series Ballykissangel and got his first film role in Tim Roth\u2019s directorial debut The War Zone (1999) \u2014 alongside his The Ballad of a Small Player co-star Tilda Swinton. But it was Joel Schumacher who changed everything, casting the still-unknown Irishman in Tigerland (2000) as a young soldier going through boot camp before heading over to Vietnam.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cJoel kind of changed my life,\u201d Farrell said. \u201cHe wanted a bunch of unknown actors. He took a chance on an Irish kid.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tAfter Tigerland, Farrell\u2019s rise was meteoric, leading to roles in Hollywood productions working alongside \u201cmy childhood heroes,\u201d from Tom Cruise in Minority Report to Al Pacino in The Recruit. \u201cI got to work with Al Pacino in my third year of acting on film. It was pure bananas.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe speed of it all was overwhelming. \u201cIt was so loud, it was so global, and I was so unprepared,\u201d Farrell said. \u201cI was only 22, but I was really [emotionally] 12. I hadn\u2019t earned it. The thing I understand now, at 49, is that there\u2019s no earning the degree of good fortune that came my way.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tBy his own admission, the combination of sudden fame and heavy drinking nearly ended his career. \u201cAt a certain point, big Hollywood stopped calling. I got a certain reputation, which I probably earned.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe turnaround came with Martin McDonagh\u2019s In Bruges in 2008. \u201cI read the script, loved it, and then I tried to talk Martin out of casting me,\u201d Farrell said. McDonagh didn\u2019t listen.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt was a bit of a turning point. It might have been the first job I did sober,\u201d he recalled.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn Bruges was a hit and the role marked the beginning of Farrell\u2019s second act, defined by more personal, often darker choices, from Yorgos Lanthimos\u2019 The Lobster and The Killing of a Sacred Deer to his Venice-winning, Oscar-nominated performance in McDonagh\u2019s The Banshees of Inisherin.<\/p>\n

\n\tFarrell has also managed to slip back into blockbuster territory, most memorably as the Penguin in Matt Reeves\u2019 The Batman. Being cast, he said, was a dream come true for \u201cthat child in Dublin who used to draw Batman signals on his jeans.\u201d But he admitted, on first read, he didn\u2019t get Reeves\u2019 take on the cartoon villain.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI was so excited when I got the script and then I read it and was like \u2018I\u2019ve only got five scenes,’\u201d he recalled. \u201cI didn\u2019t really get it either. I thought he was a bit silly, a bit of a putz.\u201d It wasn\u2019t until Reeves showed him the mockup of how Farrell would look, unrecognizable, in his Penguin makeup, that the penny dropped. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI\u2019ll never forget it. Matt went: \u2018Come in, come in.\u2019 And he opened up his laptop and showed it to me. The first time I saw it, the cogs crunched. Everything in the script became clear. Every little pockmark. The character was ferocious looking, but I could imagine every aspect of the character\u2019s life, even moving ones. It just gave me so much information,\u201d Farrell said.<\/p>\n

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

\t\t\t\t\tRhenzy Feliz (left) and Colin Farrell in HBO Max\u2019s \u2018The Penguin.\u2019<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of HBO<\/p>\n

\n\tThe part proved strong enough to launch HBO\u2019s spin-off The Penguin, where Farrell got to dive deep into the character. \u201cI can do five hours a day riffing as the Penguin, and even my sense of humor changes. I\u2019d call my kids in character.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tFarrell will be back as the Penguin in Reeves\u2019 The Batman: Part II, even though he says, \u201cI\u2019ve got an even smaller role in this one. But I\u2019m OK with that\u2026I\u2019ve read the script, from start to finish, and I can\u2019t say much about it. But it\u2019s deeper, scarier, the stakes are bigger. I\u2019m really excited to see it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWorking on The Ballad of a Small Player also pushed Farrell into new territory. A fan of Edward Berger\u2019s since his 2018 Showtime series Patrick Melrose, Farrell had been talking to the German director about Small Player \u201csince before [Berger\u2019s Oscar-winning movies] All Quiet on the Western Front and Conclave.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThey shot the film on location in Macau, which, Farrell said, was \u201can assault on the senses. It\u2019s incredibly loud, the colors are brash and bombastic. It\u2019s how I felt reading the script. I flew through the script, but I kind of felt nauseous reading it as well. There\u2019s nothing subtle about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAs for his character, Lord Doyle, Farrell described him as \u201csomebody who\u2019s on the precipice of insanity\u2026he\u2019s living in an incredibly aggressive kind of spiritual or emotional vacuum, with no connection to anyone. Like all addicts, regardless of what the addiction is, who inevitably end up in an emotional or spiritual vacuum.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe experience of making the film left him \u201cfairly raw\u2026everyone was fairly wrecked by the end of it,\u201d Farrell said, noting he is looking forward to not working for a while and spending time at home with the kids. <\/p>\n

\n\tReflecting on what has been an extraordinary career with its share of awards \u2014\u00a0the Golden Icon honor follows a decade of awards heat, from a Golden Globe win and best actor nomination for The Banshees of Inisherin to a best actor Emmy nomination for The Penguin, Farrell said he\u2019s wary of the seductions that come with accolades. The point isn\u2019t winning, he argued; it\u2019s staying connected. \u201cThe nominations are the most joyous part of it,\u201d he said. \u201cWinning an award is a little bit of separation. The real juice is just being part of the community, when you and another group of actors are told: You did OK.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In The Ballad of a Small Player, Edward Berger\u2019s adaptation of Lawrence Osborne\u2019s 2014 novel, Colin Farrell plays…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":462415,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3940],"tags":[4080,142831,77,522,451,14673,154784,16,15,154785,152941],"class_list":{"0":"post-462414","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-entertainment","11":"tag-international","12":"tag-netflix","13":"tag-oscars","14":"tag-the-ballad-of-a-small-player","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom","17":"tag-zurich-2025","18":"tag-zurich-film-festival"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115291887212306958","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462414","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=462414"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462414\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/462415"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=462414"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=462414"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=462414"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}