The making of Colin Farrell: How the actor quietly went from top of the flops to king of the silver screen

You’re probably aware of this series of videos on YouTube about actors that follow a successful, recurring format. No, it’s not Variety’s ‘Actors on Actors’ series, or GQ’s ‘Breaking Down Their Most Iconic Characters’. It’s an unofficial YouTube format called “WTF happened to this celebrity?!”

Generally, these videos are made about actors who have fallen off a bit, quit their career, or just... aren’t very good anymore (i.e WTF happened to Macaulay Culkin? or WTF happened to Ezra Miller?). But one of the biggest injustices in the history of this video series is the fact that there is one about Colin Farrell.

“WTF happened to Colin Farrell?” It’s called, naturally. But nothing has happened to Colin Farrell. The actor is back on the silver screen as we speak with the critically acclaimed new Martin McDonagh flick, The Banshees of Inisherin, which the BBC have even predicted might win him an Oscar.

Before this, he was commended for playing the UNDISTINGUISHABLE role of The Penguin in Matt Reeves’ The Batman, alongside Robert Pattinson, and prior to that he was in Palme d’Or nominated The Killing of a Sacred Deer. Basically, in answer to “WTF happened to Colin Farrell?” He’s doing really well, thanks!

But how did he get famous in the first place, and has he always picked roles this well (in short: no, but we’ll get into that)?Let’s take a look back at the Irishman’s diverse career history, and how his winning charm has worn away at us for the last 20 years.

Starting out

Farrell got his big break in 2000, when St Elmo’s Fire and The Lost Boys director, the late great Joel Schumacher, took a shine to him and cast the unknown actor in his Vietnam war drama, Tigerland.

Farrell has made it clear how grateful he is to Schumacher for his big break, and speaks highly of the director at any instance. Even during the actor’s press tour for The Batman this year, he took the opportunity to defend Schumacher’s widely-mocked Batman films (Batman Forever and Batman & Robin). “That hurt him,” Farrell said, “I know his Batman films and how they were recieved really hurt him, because the only thing Joel, honest to God, ever went out to do was entertain people.”

Following Tigerland, Farrell starred in the well recieved Minority Report, S.W.A.T and Daredevil cementing him as not only a handsome new starlet, but a talented actor in his own right.

Getting things just a tad wrong

Early in his career, Farrell took care to choose his roles well. But, he wasn’t actually making much money off them. Critical acclaim doesn’t always translate to being well paid, and so Farrell took on a few more “commercially safe” roles to ensure there was a bit more cash flow. This didn’t end well.

Farrell’s first big stumble came after the release of Alexander, in 2004, where he starred alongside Angelina Jolie. Farrell wanted to do the film because of director Oliver Stone, who had directed Platoon (1986) and Wall Street (1987), but to say this film wasn’t as well recieved as those would be an understatement. Alexander was absolutely panned, and Farrell later divulged that the reviews hit him so hard he almost quit acting.

“That was tough,” he told Irish Central, “I say tough relative to a charmed life, but I’m not going to apologize for how much it affected me emotionally and psychologically. I was going to walk away from acting.” And in a show of trademark Farrell charm, he admitted he “couldn’t even buy a packet of cigarettes without feeling like I needed to say sorry to the guy behind the counter just in case he happened to see the thing.”

Getting things very wrong

Farrell then made some further missteps, including the 2006 remake of hit 80s show, Miami Vice. The issue was not just that Miami Vice was bad, but that Farrell admitted to being inebriated during basically all of it. “I just completely fell to s*** on that one,” Farrell told the Indendent.ie. “It was literally the first time I couldn’t say to anyone around me, ‘Have I been late for work, have I missed any days, have I been hitting my marks?’ Because the answers would have been yes, yes, and no [...] I lost the ability to be confident that I could make a change myself.”

In fact, Farrell didn’t even recognise himself when watching the film - he had no memory of it. “I was at the premiere and didn’t know what was happening next. But it was strange because I was in it,” Farrell said, according to Irish Mirror. “The second it was finished I was put on a plane and sent to rehab as everyone else was going to the wrap party.”

Colin Farrell gets a little better at choosing

Things started to look up around 2008, when Farrell was cast in Martin McDonagh’s hit flick about two hitmen stuck, you guessed it, in Bruges, alongside Brendan Gleeson (who Farrell is reunited with in The Banshees of Inisherin). The role became one of Farrell’s most notable and beloved, and also forged the relationship between him, Gleeson, and director McDonagh, which, as we know now, would pay off in droves.

That’s not to say he didn’t do a few stinkers in the meantime, though. Farrell remained unpicky, and took a selection of roles with no real pattern to them - a turn in Horrible Bosses, a bit part as a handsome drunk in Scrubs, and as one of the iterations of Tony in The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus after Heath Ledger’s death left the role open and the movie unfinished.

He’s since described the latter as one of the most important roles in his career, even if it’s often forgotten, telling AccessHollywood: “It’s not hard for me to imagine that if I ever look back on the films I’ve been a part of, and the stories I’ve had a hand in telling, one will stand out as so unique an experience, as to be incomparable. This experience was the shooting of ‘The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus’. The reasons for its uniqueness, sadly, are probably obvious to anyone who reads this.” He later added: “Being part of this film was never about filling Heath’s shoes as much as seeing them across the finish line.”

Colin Farrell gets good at choosing!

Then came Colin Farrell’s decade long upward incline. From 2012 onwards (or, to put it bluntly, after he did that terrible Total Recall remake), the actor picked his roles more carefully, starting steady, and ending triumphantly.

Farrell rejoined McDonagh in 2012 for the Christopher Walken and Sam Rockwell fronted Seven Psychopaths, which would be well recieved but sadly eclipsed by McDonagh’s Oscar-winning Three Billboards in 2017. Then in 2015, he was cast for the second season of True Detective, which would be highly anticipated but sadly released with very little fanfare and eventually forgotten. But then, that same year, came the release of The Lobster - a film which would shape Farrell’s career a decade after it had started, and is so unique in its strangeness that its unlikely to ever be forgotten.

“I don’t believe I’ll ever see a film of [Yorgos Lanthimos’, The Lobster director] that I won’t like”, Farrell said in a Variety interview about The Lobster following its release. In the same interview, he opened up about his previous lack of choosiness. “Being a dad of two boys that I want to support [...] there’s a world where I’d still do that”, he said, referencing films which were more likely to bring in a return, but by sacrificing the quality of his characters.

That was back in 2016, but with The Batman, The Killing of a Sacred Deer, and The Banshees of Inisherin - not forgetting a stunning turn as the bad guy in BBC’s The North Water - under his belt since then, it doesn’t look like Farrell is going to have to sacrifice quality for financial gain again any time soon.