Colin Farrell tried to convince Martin McDonagh not to cast him ‘In Bruges’
Martin McDonagh’s The Banshees of Inisherin sees the director back together with two of Ireland’s most revered actors: Brendan Gleeson and Colin Farrell, both of whom starred in the director’s 2008 crime-comedy In Bruges. Boasting a flawless script and incredible performances by Gleeson, Farrell, Clémence Poésy and Ralph Fiennes, the film is a testament to McDonagh’s unique talent. How strange, then, that Farrell tried to turn down the role of Ray.
By 2008, Farrell had cemented himself as one of Hollywood’s most sought-after action icons, having starred in 2002’s Minority Report opposite Tom Cruise; S.W.A.T with Samuel L. Jackson and Jeremy Renner; and 2003’s The Recruit with Al Pacino. To the movie-going public, Farrell was a gun-wielding heartthrob and – according to Company Magazine – the world’s sixth sexiest man. Such a reputation is rarely good for an actor, frequently leading to a lifetime of performing the same roles over and over again.
“I actually tried to talk Martin out of trying to hire me for In Bruge,” Farrell said during his Actor’s Roundtable with Brendan Fraser, Austin Butler, Adam Sandler and Ke Huy Quan. “I sat at the Hudson Hotel with him in New York, and I said, ‘you really shouldn’t hire me; you should hire someone else. And he said, ‘oh, that’s interesting – why?’ And I said, ’cause I come with a certain amount of baggage. I said, ‘There’s a certain narrative’. I said, ‘This script is so good: you don’t want anyone coming in with the baggage I have. So cast someone else.'”
McDonagh took Farrell’s feelings into account but wasn’t going to be so easily dissuaded. “He went, ‘That’s great, noted. I want you,'” Farrell continued. “And I went, ‘OK, I’m in’.” The character of Ray offered Farrell an opportunity to alter his career trajectory, to show the world that he was capable of making even the most disagreeable characters strangely likeable. “Bruges – personally, creatively, and all that jazz – was a big turning point for me,” he said. “Martin is so wonderful at what he does, and he’s such a unique and singular voice.”
The project also introduced Farrell to one of his closest friends, Brendan Gleeson, who starred as Ken Daley, Ray’s fellow hitman. “Brendan, I adore,” he began. “Brendan’s like what we call back home in Ireland ‘amamchara’, you know, a soulmate. He’s one of those people. There are people in your life who come, and you just make sense to each other in some way. And it doesn’t make sense that we make sense to each other because we’re so different looking. We come from very different places, we live very different lives, we move through the world in a very different way. And yet, I swear to God, I’ve known him longer than the 46 years of my life. There’s something about the man’s soul.”
You can revisit one of Farrell and Gleeson’s most memorable scenes from In Bruge below.
