The movie that damaged Colin Farrell “emotionally and psychologically”
There isn’t an actor out there with a flawless filmography, but certain failures tend to hit harder than others. In the case of Colin Farrell, that moment came when he collaborated with one of the finest filmmakers of a generation on their long-gestating passion project.
Oliver Stone had wanted to tell the story of Alexander the Great in a sprawling historical epic for decades, but it wasn’t until 2004 that his dream was finally realised. Between those two points, he’d won four Academy Awards and directed several indelible works of cinema, but the $155million Alexander was declared dead on arrival.
Barely recouping its budget from cinemas, Alexander was pummelled by critics, ignored by paying customers, and suffered the ignominy of landing six nominations at the Golden Raspberry Awards, including ‘Worst Picture’, ‘Worst Director’, ‘Worst Screenplay’, and ‘Worst Actor’. To put it bluntly, the movie Stone had always wanted to make was the biggest bust of his entire career.
The response generated such overwhelming negativity that Farrell was noticeably affected, to the extent that he considered abandoning acting altogether. “That was tough. I say tough relative to a charmed life, but I’m not going to apologise for how much it affected me emotionally and psychologically,” he said of Alexander per The Mirror.
“I was going to walk away from acting. I couldn’t buy a packet of cigarettes without feeling I needed to apologise to the guy behind the counter in case they saw the fucking thing,” he added. On paper, Alexander had all the necessary ingredients to be an awards season contender, only for the exact opposite outcome to unfold.
The potential prestige was something Farrell acknowledged, too, albeit with a self-deprecating slant. “We all had our tuxedos ready. I’m not even joking. We were all like, ‘Right, lads, we’re off to the Oscars. This is a sure thing.’ And then it came out,” he explained. “The reviews came out, and I remember someone going, ‘Oh God, it’s not good.’ And my publicist going, ‘It’s really not good.'”
Stone desperately tried to salvage Alexander by releasing no less than three alternate versions, but neither his Director’s Cut, Alexander Revisited: The Final Unrated Cut, or Alexander: The Ultimate Cut could undo the damage. Sometimes, holding onto a project for so long can end up yielding nothing but untold disappointment, with Farrell caught up in the blowback just as much as the person wielding the megaphone.
The leading man may have been hit hard by its catastrophic failure and the toll it took on him, but fortunately, he didn’t follow through on his plans to ditch acting. However, it did make him more selective and less confident when it came to choosing roles in the future.
