Colin Farrell owes his entire career to Steven Spielberg: “Really did it for me”
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(Credits: Far Out / Alamy)
If you want to know just how good an actor Colin Farrell is, the answer doesn’t necessarily lie in his most famous performances, in the likes of The Batman or In Bruges, or even The Banshees of Inisherin. Rather, it lies in just how well he can do ‘a normal person’, like in the 2022 real-life drama Thirteen Lives, directed by Ron Howard.
The film tells the story of a group of young Taiwanese footballers who were led deep into a cave system by their tutor, only to be trapped by rising water levels. Expert Thai divers were unable to bring the boys out, leading to British divers heading to the scene to help, one of whom was John Volanthen, played by Farrell in the film.
The actor is so utterly convincing as the softly spoken Volanthen that firstly, you can’t really tell that it’s Farrell at all, and secondly, he almost adds an almost documentary air to the movie because of his everyday inflexions and mannerisms. He underplays the role to the point of perfection because Volanthen is a normal guy who happens to be an expert diver.
Alongside the equally effective Viggo Mortensen, he allows his performance to reflect the real-life humility of the man he plays; Volanthen didn’t seek any credit for the rescue, nor did he see it as particularly brave, simply describing the heroic rescue of all 12 boys and their coach as “a first”.
Active in Hollywood for more than 25 years now, Farrell has built a reputation as one of the industry’s finest, and he hasn’t done it by taking on easy roles. While at the start he was painted as something of a movie bad boy with a troubling reputation and was mostly featuring in action films like Phone Booth or a needless Total Recall reboot, he has since starred in projects as abstract as Yorgos Lanthimos’ bleak 2017 drama The Killing of a Sacred Deer, and the aforementioned Banshees, for which he picked up a Golden Globe and an Oscar nomination.
In terms of his inspiration to enter the world of glitz and glam, he has previously spoken about the blockbuster film that sparked his interest in acting as a young boy in Dublin, namely Steven Spielberg’s alien fantasy ET the Extra-Terrestrial, which took over the world in 1982.
Spielberg’s second alien film after 1977’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the story was inspired by the director’s imaginary friend he dreamt up as a child, dealing with his parents’ divorce. On release, it became the highest-grossing film in cinema history, making a star of child Drew Barrymore and winning an Oscar for John Williams’ soundtrack.
Of seeing the film for the first time, Farrell said, “I cried and I just loved it. I was taken away completely to another world. It inspired in me all sorts of thoughts, emotions, and it has stayed with me very much. ET really did it for me.”
In addition to reprising his role as the Penguin in The Batman Part II, Farrell is busy working on several different projects, including war movie Sgt Rock, a film about writer Norman Mailer opposite Ben Stiller, and a romantic comedy with Margot Robbie called A Big Bold Beautiful Journey. That film will hit cinemas in mid-September, just before a Netflix film starring Farrell is released, named Ballad of a Small Player. His character is a high-stakes gambler trying to avoid paying his debts by lying low in China, thinking he may have got away with it, until a private investigator, played by Tilda Swinton, tracks him down.
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