"Sober Yet Still So Intoxicating"

Colin Farrell is a veritable wild card in Hollywood’s current acting greats. A man known for his wild reputation with the tabloid press, Farrell’s unpredictable nature has also led to an already diverse career, with roles in films like Phone Booth, S.W.A.T., Minority Report, Alexander, The New World, Miami Vice, In Bruges and even recent Oscar contender Crazy Heart.

Now the 34 year-old actor stars in his most unlikely role yet, as Irish fisherman Syracuse in the fantasy drama Ondine. Colin was candid about how he considered Syracuse was the most exciting role of his career.

“I loved it,” he says of it, “I just had thoroughly enjoyed the read from start to finish. And Neil [Jordan] gave it to me and he gave it to me somewhat hesitantly as in, I was just thinking, this was just something that I wrote, have a look at it, and I called him the same day or the next day and said that’s brilliant. I just loved Syri, he was very gentle and he had this incredible lack of self-pity for somebody who had been through so much difficulty in his life, who had so much loss kind of befall him. He had lost his mother probably very recently before the start of the film at quite a young age. His daughter was a recovering alcoholic in a very drunk town. He had his dissolved marriage behind him,”

“I mean, he had all these things that had happened in life, which happen to a lot of people, of course,” Farrell adds, “But his way of dealing with them, unbeknownst to him even, was with a complete lack of self-pity and I thought that there was such grace to that, the fact that he wasn’t aware of it even, I just really respected him. It was the first time in twelve years that I was hesitant to walk away from the character. Usually, the last two or three weeks of a

"Sober Yet Still So Intoxicating"

film, I begin to feel a bit of agitation, a bit separated, you’re kind of frustrated to get back in and do it and you feel it’s either time to completely believe the delusion or not be yourself anymore or go back to your own life. It begins to feel that time. And with this guy, I knew I’d just miss him.”

Despite the fact that Farrell and Syracuse share a commonality as Irishmen, the Dublin native says he relates to the character on a much more deeper level.

“I just can relate to him as a human being,” Colin says, “I mean, I think we all if we can take the time to look with any sense of keenness at all, we can all relate to each other a lot more certainly than we do when we give ourselves the time to in everyday life. So on that note, there was things that cross-referenced his experience with my experience, maybe in a more obvious, more tangible way than most characters I’ve played.”

“But even those things I recognize them in reading and then I kind of let go that I had any personal, I didn’t want to bring, the way that I would deal with the exact same issue that may fall on top of me would be very different from the way Neil would or you would,” he continues, “So it’s not the issue that makes the person, the person that’s dealing with the issue that makes the person, so that in mind is probably better to just step way away from it from there. It was all in there in Neil’s writing anyway though, so if it wasn’t in the lines, it’s definitely in the subtext or the silence.”

One aspect of Syracuse’s nature that Colin particularly commented on was his inarticulate nature.

“Beautifully inarticulate man,” he describes, “There’s honesty in inarticulacy, great honesty. Words can be such a weapon for duplicity or subterfuge. There’s no subtext

"Sober Yet Still So Intoxicating"

to that.”

One thing Farrell says was not a quality in this particular Irishman was loquacity.

“There’s no need for him,” Colin says, “There was probably was a desire at one stage, but he was somebody that kind of removed himself from the societal grid completely. He both removed himself and he had been ostracized.”

“I don’t know which stone was thrown first,” he continues, “I think the ostracization was probably the first stone flung. “He tried to live for a while in the community and it didn’t work. He knew one way to exist and it wasn’t working and it didn’t work, so he pulled himself out.”

Colin does mention that the chance to do a film in his home country did provide him a return to a much simpler world than that of his adopted world as a Hollywood star.

“It was lovely,” Farrell says, “I mean I have a fairly quiet life in Los Angeles. I really do. I really don’t frequent the restaurants and clubs so much where you know the paparazzi are. I’m kind of left alone, which is nice. But having said that, there is a sense of isolation and a sense of otherworldliness that comes when you get to somewhere like Castletownbere. It’s really off the beaten track, even as far as the further reaches in Ireland go. It’s somewhere that’s not on the tourist…I mean, it’s north of Castletownbere is a place called Killarney and there’s the Ring of Kerry and coaches of tourists are on that route.”

“Castletownbere is just a little bit further than that and you have to go out a little bit extra,” he adds, “Nobody really goes there, so it has its own Dutch cyclists every now and then, a father and son with white beards. I specifically remember those lads, but it was lovely because the town was a set and the town was a character in the film and the town was the inspiration for

"Sober Yet Still So Intoxicating"

this story from Neil. And so, we really welcomed into these people’s lives and they were all in it, every single member of the community was in it in t the film at one stage or another. It was extras and a couple of them had speaking roles. And it was just lovely to really live down there for three months, to wake up and go to work on that film. It was film that I think because of its heart and the crew were more invested in, than I’ve experienced, they usually are in the film. It was like the sense of optimism in the film kind of pervaded everywhere, so it was lovely. It’s a very specific kind of topography. It’s quite lovely.”

The actor said another thing he enjoyed about doing Ondine was just being able to eat again after he had to adhere to a strict 300 calorie a day diet for his last film Triage

“Just ate,” Colin says, “I was on a strict diet for a few months.”

Colin also says he enjoyed learning the ways of the Irish fisherman from a local resident in the town of Cork named Val McCarthy.

“It was lovely,” he says of the experience, “It was a very basic situation, that boat, just gorgeous and chunky and took you about a half a mile to do a U-turn. It was two weeks with Val and more than learning how we did, dropping parts and pulling them up. We emptied them and put the nets out and then pulled them back in and a lot of it was done by wind system. The boat was forward/reverse and all that stuff, but the time spent with Val that was most helpful was listening to how Val feels about the fishing industry and how he feels about his life on the sea for the last twenty years and the personal cost that it’s brought onto his life literally and being

"Sober Yet Still So Intoxicating"

away from his family as much as he was and also how addictive that was and that the peace and not belonging and not being tethered to anything, and yet, having these real-life obligations on the mainland.”

“He really was really generous with his own experiences and his own perspective and he was, while again, not the same as, but there was some really cross-point experiences between Syracuse’s experience and Val’s, which is not to say anything about Val’s, but that was the coolest part,” Farrell continues, “It was literally me on a boat just putting the kettle on and smoking fags and drinking cups of bad, bad coffee in chipped mugs and me talking with him, like, ‘Well, you know, there was this time…’ Oh, just magic with him. Pretty cool.”

We wondered if the experience had made Farrell a better fisherman.

If I got thrown out on that boat with a fishing rod, with a net, I think I could,” Colin says. “Yes, I could, I don’t know if I could get it out of the net, no I could. I could definitely guide the boat.”

Colin also speaks of working with Mexican actress Alicja Bachleda-CuruÅ› who plays the title character, a woman Syracuse believes to be a mythological creature of the sea. Since doing Ondine, he and Bachleda-CuruÅ› have become a couple and have a son together.

“Alicja seemed lovely and smart and charming and I had seen Trade, so I was a fan of her work and that was that really,” he says of her, ” I think I was quite intimidated by Alicja because she was very smart and articulate, played the piano.”

We asked Farrell if he found doing Ondine more challenging than working alongside Oscar winning actor Jeff Bridges in Crazy Heart.

“More intimidating was being on stage with Jeff Bridges with thousands of people, especially when you think it was a country-western gig and somebody might throw a can of Coors Light at your

"Sober Yet Still So Intoxicating"

head,” he claims, “It felt like they were robbed of their $10 and any of your moves before. I mean, I can know each experience comes with different challenges and stuff. I loved. That was a buzz. That was. Being on stage on a Toby Keith concert with 14,000 people was an absolute buzz. I kind of get it a little more than I did before. Bono, at times, gets a reputation for having something of a bloated ego. Nonsense. The man is humble.”

“After that 14 minutes on the stage of that Toby Keith concert, I’d be live driving around in a chariot with a lower leaf,” Colin adds, “Seriously, the buzz was amazing and you know how that worked out. I hope that history won’t be repeating itself. And then, the other thing, which is the complete opposite, of working on this, it was myself and Val most of the time. When we were shooting, it was me and the fishermen that owned the boat that we used in the film just out in the water and it was just beautiful. Yes, it was just a completely different experience, just this kind of valid.”

It’s an experience that Colin says he’d happily do again with Bridges if he was asked to.

“Sure, if he calls me up, I’ll be there,” Farrell says.