Colin Farrell names the toughest role of his career: “It was fucking bleak”
Even actors who don’t ascribe to method acting can find themselves sinking into the emotional world of the films they’re working on. If you’re making a comedy or a romance, this might be an enjoyable side effect of the job. If you’re making a tragedy or a horror movie… not so much.
Heath Ledger is probably the most notable example of an actor who fell too deeply into the darkness of a role, but there have been countless others over the years. On a very basic level, turning up to work every day and having to put yourself into the headspace of a serial killer or a person grieving the death of a child is not a particularly enjoyable way to spend your time, so it’s no wonder actors like Adam Sandler and Sarah Jessica Parker seem to prefer making artless comedies in beautiful locations rather than heavy-hitting dramas.
Colin Farrell has delved into his fair share of dark material throughout his career, from the surreal and unsettling worlds of Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Lobster and The Killing of a Sacred Deer to the dark but commercial fare of Daredevil and The Penguin. However, in an interview with IGN, Farrell revealed that the most challenging film he ever worked on was Gregory Hoblit’s 2002 World War II drama Hart’s War. In the film, Farrell portrays the titular officer, Lieutenant Thomas Hart, who is captured and tortured by the Germans, enduring a harrowing stint in a prisoner-of-war camp alongside Bruce Willis’ Colonel William McNamara.
“Hart’s War was fucking tough,” he said. “It was so long and so depressing, and it was cold and grey. Four and a half months, man, it was fucking bleak.”
The film was shot on location in the Czech Republic, and, given that it’s set in a prisoner of war camp, was no doubt an uncomfortable experience physically and emotionally for all involved. Unfortunately, despite all the discomfort, the film was not well received. Critics complained that the plot was unnecessarily convoluted and bombed at the box office, making only $33million against a $70m budget.
In the interview with IGN, Farrell compared the production of Hart’s War unfavourably to his experience on Joel Schumacker’s Phone Booth, which was released the same year. In it, he plays a publicist who is trapped in a phone booth after a serial killer calls and tells him he’ll kill him if he hangs up. Filmed in and directly around the phone booth, the film is nerve-shreddingly tense, raw, and contained, but Farrell said he took some pleasure in the challenge.
“On Phone Booth, there was very little waiting around because we had twelve days to shoot this whole thing,” he said. “So it was just, go, go, go.” If Phone Booth was a 100-metre sprint, he said, Hart’s War was “a marathon,” and he clearly preferred the former experience to the latter. Ironically, Phone Booth was also much better received by audiences and critics, earning nearly $98m at the box office off of a tiny $13m budget.
