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50 AUGUST 2015

Ten years ago, Colin Farrell was a hard-drinking tabloid fi xture devoted to raising hell. Today, he’s a clean-living single dad devoted to raising two sons. Th e acclaimed

actor opens up about sobriety, fatherhood and his latest riveting role, on the hit HBO series “True Detective”

HIS AIM IS TRUEin�conversation

Dolce&Gabbana Three-piece suit;

Christian Louboutin Boots

story�Sean Manning

photography�Michael Muller styling�Jenny Ricker

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COLIN FARRELL

AUGUST 2015 51

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52 AUGUST 2015

COLIN FARRELLDolce&Gabbana Burgundy wool sports coat; gray knit sweater

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AUGUST 2015 53

COLIN FARRELL

 Just a few short years after being discovered in 1999 by Kevin Spacey on a West End London stage, Dublin native Colin Farrell was one of Hollywood’s most sought-after stars, working with such auteurs as Steven Spielberg, Terrence Malick, Michael Mann and Oliver Stone. He was also one of its most unabashedly hedonistic leading men. Rare was the magazine profile that didn’t feature him imbibing, and his array of paramours—as reported by the tabloids,

anyway—ranged from pop stars to Playboy playmates to fashion models. Confirmed among the latter was Kim Bordenave, who in 2003 gave birth to their son, James. Despite James having Angelman syndrome, a rare genetic disorder that affects cognitive development, speech and motor skills, Farrell’s lifestyle wasn’t immediately tempered by fatherhood. As he told Details in 2012, “I made a decision not to change. I literally said, ‘I’m not changing! I’m gonna be his friend!’ Like a 28-year-old, drug-addicted, drunk friend is exactly what my 6-month-old son needs.”

Farrell ultimately entered rehab in late 2005 and has remained sober ever since. Other significant life changes have included settling in Los Angeles full-time, becoming an outspoken advocate for Angelman syndrome and, in 2009, fathering a second son, Henry, with actress Alicja Bachleda-Curuś.

What has not changed is the astounding quality and versatility of his work, be it the dark comedy of In Bruges, the modern fairy tale of Ondine, the musical drama of Crazy Heart, the heartrending biopic of Saving Mr. Banks or the absurdist romance of soon-to-be-released The Lobster, which won the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival in May.

Currently, Farrell appears as tormented cop Ray Velcoro in the second season of HBO’s lauded series “True Detective.” Over green tea at the Four Seasons Hotel in New York, the 39-year-old actor spoke to Rhapsody about the show, his sons and his checkered history of on-screen grooming.

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54 AUGUST 2015

COLIN FARRELL

First, obviously, we need to talk about that “True Detective” mustache.You know, me and bad hair in films … I’ve been burned, man. Burned. Nic [Pizzolatto, the creator of “True Detective”] showed a couple pictures of me years back when I had a little mustache. He was thinking, “That’s not a bad look.” And I was like, “I swore this would never happen again.” [Laughs.] But the mustache went back to a man who in some kind of quiet way is defining himself as outside the rules of convention. It went back to Velcoro really feeling that he belongs in a different time and a different place. He comes from a long line of those kind of Western lawmen who fashioned themselves in that way.

Did you watch the first season of the show before you were cast?I don’t watch that much TV. Truly—I’ve never said this before—I’ve never seen an episode of “The Sopranos” or “Breaking Bad.” I have a lot of catching up to do, a lot of box sets that I want to hit one of these days. But a friend said to me, “Have you heard of this thing ‘True Detective’? You should watch it.” I was coming back from London, and I watched the first three episodes on the plane, and I was just astonished. It just broke down the wall between cinema and television. It just rendered those classifications obsolete. The production value was astonishing. The writing was extraordinary—better than the majority of the films that are produced. As soon as I got home, I blew through the last five episodes. Everyone I met, I was asking them had they seen it and what did they think of it. I just couldn’t get my head around it. It was so good. And when I spoke to Nic and read the first two episodes [of season two], I was again blinded by the specificity, the depth of the history that each of the characters carries around with them. Like in the first season, the murder mystery takes second place to what’s of paramount importance to Nic, which is human beings and human behavior.

Matthew McConaughey’s Emmy-nominated perfor-mance as Rust Cohle in the first season achieved instant cult status. Were you mindful of that in the way you approached Velcoro? Did you set out to make him completely different?Not really. It’s like, I’ve heard said that if you try not to be like your parents, you will end up like them. I didn’t have any instinct to either emulate or avoid any kind of mirroring. I thought Nic was specific enough in how he sculpted each of our voices that there was nothing that was reflective of what I had seen before. I think, with regards to a certain kind of nihilism and world-weary knowledge with how things work, that’s the only comparison I could see between Rust and Ray.

And both characters are alcoholics. You’ve actually played a lot of alcoholics recently: “True Detective,” Saving Mr. Banks, Seven Psychopaths, Ondine. [Laughs.] Can you imagine I never drew the line between those?

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“It was a misguided attempt to hold on to what

I felt was a quintessential Irishness, which

involved an unabashed gregariousness and massive

amounts of booze. ”

Thom Browne Sunglasses; Lanvin Oxblood moto jacket;

ATM Gray T-shirt

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COLIN FARRELL

56 AUGUST 2015

As someone who has struggled with drinking and has now been sober for a decade, do you find it difficult to play alcoholics? Does it dredge up any of those old yearnings? Certainly no yearnings. There is some kind of just … like a ghost of a fondness for what it’s like to be caught in the grip of that much self-inflicted, self-indulgent pain and darkness. As horrible as it was, there was this weird accompanying romance that gets so many of us in trouble. But I find living a sober life—I haven’t had a drink in 10 years—it’s easier to go into these places with clarity and a certain objectivity rather than get enmeshed or lose the line that delineates wherever the perceived self is from the character. One of the greatest performances of a drunk I have ever seen in my life is Richard E. Grant in Withnail & I, and Richard has been sober all his life. But I would be disingenuous if I denied the existence of a line of experi-ence between what I’ve felt and been through in my life. In Ondine, my daughter in that film was sick with kidney failure. My son … I don’t consider him sick, because he hasn’t got something that he wasn’t born with. He was born with a congenital condition.

What are the biggest challenges of raising a child with Angelman syndrome?The hardest thing is what you’d imagine the hardest thing is: seeing your child have a seizure. But they’re under control. He hasn’t had a breakthrough seizure in three or four years. Outside of that, the hardest thing is the same hardest thing as with Henry. It’s just trying to be present and be kind but firm and not smother your children in your own deeply set and dangerous desire to be loved from your own childhood. As a parent, you want your child to really like you. Seriously, it’s pathetic. Those kind of simple pitfalls are the same for James as for Henry. To have one healthy child and then another with some issues, it compounds what’s already just a nefarious web of minefields and traps that you can’t seem to avoid—traps of concern and worry and fear and shame and regret for stuff that hasn’t even happened yet. But at the same time, it’s really wonderful. It’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me, and it’s a lot of fun. My boy’s story isn’t a sad story.

Did you wrestle with the idea of them growing up in LA rather than Ireland?Not at all. I’m not that nationalistic. I love Ireland deeply. I couldn’t even verbalize it in a succinct or pleasing way. I go home and there’s an emotional dialogue that begins inside my body. But anytime I hear the many people around the world in many different languages saying, “‘Insert country’ is the best country in the world,” I want to choke myself. I want to be like, “Have you been to every single one?” Too much nationalism is such a divisive thing.

You’ve said that much of the carousing early in your career was owed to you wanting to remain true to your Irish outsider status in Hollywood—that it was an attempt to stay true to your roots.It was a misguided attempt to hold on to some kind of sense of what I felt was a quintessential Irishness, which involved, you know, an unabashed gregariousness and massive amounts of booze. And surely there is a greater depth to the meaning of Irishness than those two things.

How do you view your career now versus those early days?I still want my work to be well received. I still want to know I’m good and all that. But less do I now identify myself with it. Less do I look at it for my sense of worth. And less, in a way, do I care about it. A lot of that has to do with my boys. I don’t put this weight on my boys, but I think a lot of it’s due to them. It’s due to finding a level of involvement in my community and better relations with my family at the age of 39 than I ever had. I have a small group of friends in Los Angeles that it took me 15, 16 years to have, who I love, every single one of them. Good people, fun people, a really kind bunch of misfits. And so, with all that, it allows me to care for the work more. Because I’m not going, “This is me, and this is what I am, and this is all I’ll ever be, and this is how I’ll be remembered.” I really do think that the best thing I can leave behind is the world a little bit better than when I arrived—if my two boys are healthy and happy or if I’ve ever said a kind word to anyone. I’m not talking about changing the world. I’m talking about the smallest thing, a teardrop in the Pacific Ocean.

Vivienne Westwood Navy wool coat;Dolce&Gabbana Floral shirt;

Lanvin Black pants; IRO Black boots

Groomer Sacha Quarles

Location A $3.85 million Hamptons-style compound on Montcalm

Avenue, in California’s Hollywood Hills, with views of the Hollywood Sign and the Griffi th Observatory,

developed by American Coastal Properties. For more information, contact Isaac Fast of Coldwell Banker

Previews International at (323) 210-1434.

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