“It was pure movie magic”: when Colin Farrell became overwhelmed by his inner child
Starring memorably as the Scouse brute in The Gentleman and the less-threatening Irish hitman in In Bruges, there is yet a childlike quality to the onscreen charisma of Dublin’s Colin Farrell. Previously winning two Golden Globes and appearing on Time magazine’s list of most influential people in 2023, it was a recently animated remake that would allow Farrel to bask in boyish wonder and relive his childhood on set, arguably, an equal achievement.
The Irish star’s first feature film was an American war drama titled Tigerland, released in 2000. Starring Farrell in its leading role as troops headed onward to Vietnam, the flick today can be credited with the actor’s versatility, particularly upon considering the curveball he recently undertook in auditioning for a children’s movie. However, considering his other potential career routes, namely auditioning for the boy band Boyzone and taking up professional football in his teens, the actor thus carries this openness into each new role.
Featuring unrecognisably as the Penguin in 2022’s The Batman remastering and the subsequent spin-off HBO series, there was, again, less opportunity for Farrell to directly act out his inner child, but it was a step towards the fictional role by which he says to have been overcome.
Aptly, off-screen, Farrell is a proud father to two boys, 21 and 14, who have been “lighting up his life”, he told the Irish Examiner. But with them frequently visiting the set of Dumbo throughout 2019 – the live-action adaptation of the 1941 classic – it was not them that influenced the 48-year-old to be infected by the magic of childhood nostalgia, but rather the work of Disney’s Tim Burton.
Playing Holt Farrier, a former circus performer influenced by his children to embrace the birth of an apparently flying baby elephant, Farrell appears reluctant on screen but could not have been more receptive to the magic of Disney behind the scenes. Speaking to Movies.ie, he notes that whilst his “boys are a tricky audience”, he was elated at the chance to work with Burton. “Every cell in his body seems to vibrate with creative energy,” says Farrell, “he’s pure magic”.
In treading atop real grass on set and familiarising himself with the 150 circus performers parading on Burton’s request, the actor stated that “in 20 years, the day I arrived on that set was, for me, and the kid in me, one of the most overwhelming experiences I’ve had”, asking the interviewer, “did you ever have that fantasy of being locked in a department store at night?”
Likened to how Dumbo himself beckons a trusting environment to fly, existing in the presence of fantastical set designs and not merely green screens, can evidently bring a grown man to “well up,” he admits. And with joy off-screen inherently trickling into the experience of an audience, justifying the budgets needed to work in physical environments despite the ease of CGI, it is as reassuring to discover that as long as analogue exists, even an actor of Farrell’s gravitas can still find those ‘pinch-me’ moments.
