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Born March 31st, 1976 to a Dublin working class family, Colin James Farrell was a character from the start. As the youngest of four children having to hold his own in Ireland's tough hoods, Colin developed a loud mouth and quick temper.
His father and uncle were soccer players for the Shamrock Rovers, one of Dublin's major teams. Wanting to follow in his father's relative fame, young Colin signed up for training camp. But being a fun-seeking lad, he found the rigors and discipline of athleticism too strenuous. At 17 he dropped out of school and spent a year in Australia fooling around with his mates.
Farrell grew up with American movies, and the idea of acting had matured enough in his mind to lead him to attend the Gaiety School of Drama. Little did he know that learning to act had the same demands as training to be a soccer star. He dropped out (again) after winning the role of Danny Byrne in the BBC's Irish pastoral comedy, Ballykissangel. After a role in his first film -- in 1997's Drinking Crude -- Farrell jumped straight onto the theater stage.
He enjoyed modest success in Dublin's theater circuit, a remarkable feat considering the abundance of unemployed actors there. In addition to Farrell's theater work, he landed a starring role in the 1998 romantic miniseries Falling for a Dancer, and even caught actor Tim Roth's attention; Roth hired Farrell for a major role in his 1999 directorial debut, The War Zone.
In London, Farrell continued doing stage work and worked for productions like the famed Donmar Warehouse. It was there that luck greeted him. Kevin Spacey, who was in the A Little World of Our Own audience, was so impressed with the young man that he recommended Farrell for an upcoming movie, Ordinary Decent Criminal in 2000. The role landed him an American agent, and soon Farrell found himself auditioning for director Joel Schumacher's (Batman Forever and 8MM) acclaimed film Tigerland, about conflicted Vietnam GIs.
Despite the movie's poor showing at the box office, Farrell became an instant hit among critics and studio execs. He was cast as Texan hero Jesse James in the 2001 Western American Outlaws, for which he spent months in Texas working on his drawl.
He likened his lightening quick American fame to "skipping 100 rungs on the ladder," and things did not slow down anytime soon. Farrell next appeared as the title role in Hart's War (2002), as a law student/WWII soldier asked to defend a POW falsely accused of murder, and starred alongside Bruce Willis.
He skipped a few more dozen rungs playing Detective Danny Witwer in Steven Spielberg's Minority Report. Many critics even claimed he stole the show from Tom Cruise. He then reunited with Joel Schumacher in the 2002 thriller, Phone Booth, and was himself flabbergasted to be working with Al Pacino in The Recruit (2003). In fact, he appeared in another five movies in 2003: Daredevil with Ben Affleck, Veronica Guerin with Cate Blanchett, S.W.A.T. with Samuel L. Jackson, Intermission, and A Home at the End of the World.
He recently finished filming Alexander in Morocco, a movie about Alexander the Great in which he plays the title role.
In his relatively short career, he has won an Irish Film and Television Award, and received GQ's Leading Man of the Year accolade, both in 2003. Farrell is the father of James, his 2-month-old son with model Kim Bordenave. His family still lives in Dublin. |
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