‘Phone Booth’: How Colin Farrell took inspiration from Samuel L Jackson’s ego
Making a movie is a team effort. In addition to all the collaboration that goes on behind the scenes, the talent in front of the camera also needs to work together to get the desired result. You simply can’t make a great movie on your own. Well, unless you’re Colin Farrell in Phone Booth, of course.
Directed by Joel Schumacher, 2002’s Phone Booth starred a young Farrell as Stu Shepard, a man who gets pinned down in a public phone box by an unseen sniper. The movie, which also starred Forest Whittaker, Katie Holmes, and Kiefer Sutherland, did extremely well, grossing $97million on a budget of just $13m. Farrell spends most of the 81-minute runtime inside the booth, and he explained that this experience reminded him of another actor.
“It reminds me of Sam Jackson,” the Irish actor told Movies. “When I said to him, ‘What was it like doing Star Wars with all those blue screens?’ and he said, ‘Oh, it was great because I got to work with my favourite actor – me’.” This might seem a bit arrogant, but come on, this is Samuel L Jackson; the guy’s earned the right to be as full of himself as he was.
“It was good fun in Phonebooth,” Farrell clarified, explaining that he enjoyed how short the shoot was at just ten days. “There was no waiting around. There was no indulgence. Everyone from the top bosses to the caterers and the sparks were just working their arses off.” When asked about long shoots, Farrell made reference to Oliver Stone’s Alexander, in which he played legendary conqueror Alexander the Great. He said it got “tedious” around the six month mark and called it “heartbreaking” when the film wasn’t a success. If you’d spend six months making a film that nobody liked, then you’d be upset too.
Phone Booth reunited Farrell with Schuamacher, whom he had previously worked with on the Vietnam War drama Tigerland. This was the star’s first leading role in a major picture, one that catapulted him into the public eye. “Joel Schumacher took a big gamble on me with Tigerland, and it just went off from there,” he recalled, calling the fame and fortune he found in the aftermath “years of head spinning”.
Schumacher and Farrell would never work together again, bar a brief cameo from the actor in Schumacher’s next film, Veronica Guerin. “I love Joel,” remarked Farrell. “He kind of did discover me.” Prior to Tigerland, the star of The Penguin was best known for his role in the BBC drama Ballykissangel, which depicted an English priest adjusting to life in rural Ireland. Small change compared to what was to come.
In 2023, with the help of another frequent collaborator, Martin McDonagh, Farrell landed his first Oscar nomination for his work on The Banshees of Inisherin. Considering his very public battles with substance abuse and other well-publicised low points, it’s uplifting to see that he’s been able to pull himself out of a tailspin and put his talents to good use. He’s come a long way from being stuck inside a phone booth.
